scenarios (14)
pick a scenario (14)
Telling your CEO the v2 she announced is wrongPractice raising hard truth to a high-conviction founder — with evidence, with a real alternative, without flattery, without panic.Your strongest IC just told you they're interviewingPractice the conversation that holds the relationship, hears the real reason, and earns the right to keep them — without sliding into a counter-offer reflex.Legal has been silent for three months and just blocked launchPractice surfacing what changed with a stakeholder who has been quiet — and getting to a path forward in 30 minutes without putting them on the defensive.Your project just became off-strategy. The skip-level wants a 1:1.Practice positioning your team's work after a company pivot — without pretending it still fits the new strategy and without abandoning the value.Pitching next year's platform bet to a quarterly leadership teamPractice making the long-bet case to leaders optimizing for the next quarter — without softening the timeline or selling certainty you don't have.The feature you shipped didn't move the metricPractice owning a clean miss with your VP — without deflection, without performative humility, and without abandoning the underlying bet.The designer who won't let go of the redesignPractice making a hard design judgment with a craft partner you respect — when the data says her six weeks of work didn't beat the prior version.The angry customer who's actually rightPractice listening past frustration to find the real broken assumption — and committing to one specific fix without over-promising or hiding behind apology.Your dashboard says success; your researcher says failurePractice synthesizing conflicting evidence — a metric that says ship and qualitative research that says don't — and making a recommendation you can defend in either direction.Defining 'done' with the peer who keeps shipping bugsPractice setting a shared quality bar with a senior peer whose definition of "done" has been creating customer-visible bugs for two quarters.The QA report came in red 36 hours before launchPractice making the ship/slip call when QA finds a P1 edge case the night before launch and your war-room expects an answer in the next ten minutes.Specing the AI feature your CEO just announced on earningsPractice scoping an exec-driven feature into a shippable v1 spec without dropping ambition or making promises engineering can't keep.Defending a delayed launchPractice holding the line on a launch slip without losing trust with a senior partner.Giving feedback to an underperforming peerPractice delivering specific, actionable feedback to a peer whose work is slipping — without damaging the working relationship.