What It Is
Courage and Clarity is an operating lens that strips away emotional attachment to legacy projects. It provides a formal mechanic for leaders to legally defund or deprioritize "Priority 2" work so "Priority 1" can finally breathe.
When to Use It
Deploy this framework when your resource utilization hits 100% but strategic delivery hits 0%. Specifically, use it during quarterly planning when the list of "must-do" items exceeds the actual capacity of the engineering or operations teams.
What Decision It Supports
Are we structurally willing to let something fail in order to guarantee the success of our top strategic bet?
Common Failure Pattern
Without this framework, leaders typically choose "The Peanut Butter Approach"—spreading resources so thin across all projects that nothing actually moves forward. The team feels maximum burnout while the business sees zero ROI.