I have to say, I don't really understand this. Can anyone shed some light?

alnewkirkcom 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

"Collaborate by Contract" (CBC) is my framework; it's new, and I'm publishing it piece by piece. It's not an "industry standard" yet, but it's more than theory: it's how I've learned to get execution discipline in teams where vague goals and shifting priorities are the default. It doesn't need to be practiced by the entire org; as with any other type of agreement, you just need two willing participants.

At the simplest level:

A CBC agreement is a short written contract between leaders and reports. Ideally, person to person, but leader and team is fine too. It defines the objective, deliverables, dependencies, expectations, and outcomes (i.e., success criteria). Work doesn't start until all parties agree.

A journal of contracts is just the running log of those agreements. Think of it as the team/dept/org's public ledger, what was agreed, by whom, when, and why, and ideally the artifact captures the negotiations and tradeoffs made to arrive at the final agreement. Patterns show up quickly (who delivers, who misses, where scope creep hides). This makes performance reviews objective and enables meritocracy.

Okay, things change, and sometimes new info emerges: agreements aren't stone tablets. So, agreements might include predefined checkpoints or "if/then" clauses. Instead of pretending we never change, CBC forces us to renegotiate in daylight, with both sides explicit about the cost of changing.

What leaders commit to: clarity, timely decisions, and removing dependencies. If a leader misses their side, say they don't secure the promised resource or they blow their own deadline, that's a contract miss just like an IC failing to deliver code. Also, by signing the agreement, the leader is sayin,g "I agree with this plan/strategy." In CBC, credibility runs both ways.

It's early, and I'm still publishing examples and tooling. But the premise is simple: if you can't write it down, negotiate it, and sign it, it's not really a commitment, it's just vibes.

Also, no, it's not Waterfall, because it's more about documenting "expectations" and "outcomes" than about specifying particular work activities.

cc quag

	▲	quag 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you for the description of CBC. I'm curious about it and your thinking on how to track things over time and see what has surprised us since we got started. It is useful to note down every time you (or your team) sets an expectation with someone (or another team) and then make sure you don't forget about that. It's also useful to be deliberate when setting expectations. Having a public journal could well work for noting down when expectations are set and whenever there is a meeting of minds. I've found when tracking things like this that the amount of data can quickly grow to the point where you can no longer quickly and easily reason about it. The success seems to live and die on the data visualization or UI/UX.

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nobodyandproud 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What don’t you understand?

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quag 3 days ago | parent [-]

Ok, I'll bite. From the article I can't really figure out what collaborating by contract (CBC) is, how it works in practice or how to introduce it to an organization.

A search in Google for "Collaborate by contract" gives three results, all from the same person, all in the last few weeks. Including this new article it's 1776 words in total on CBC. It doesn't seem to be real or something that has been tried out in an organization. It appears to be Al Newkirk's idea for a system that could work, but has not been tried.

Specifically, I'd like to see an example of a contract and who agrees to it; what the journal of contracts looks like; what happens when after an agreement everyone learns something that they didn't know when the agreements were made; what are the leaders committing to and what happens when they fail to deliver that?

Links found on CBC: https://www.alnewkirk.com/bidirectional-accountability/ https://www.alnewkirk.com/understanding-collaborate-by-contr... https://www.alnewkirk.com/maybe-its-time-to-change-the-way-w... https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/1n04s5z/comme...

	▲	nobodyandproud 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Okay, I can work with this. Many teams have working agreements; and companies have employee handbooks. I don’t know if you ever read these in detail, but they’re generally in one direction. Other than dating/relationships (manager and direct reports, etc) and some generally applicable guidelines, it’s favorable to management. One thing I make very clear to my direct reports is that I expect them to hold me to account when I fail to do something or hinder the team; even going above me if needed. But this is ad-hoc. It’s not consistent across the board, and I see managers who are active hindrances to their team or their mission. This is also the norm in many companies, and it’s a problem.