| name | i-flagged-that |
| description | Proactive risk surfacing for plans and proposals. Use when reviewing any plan, roadmap, or decision, to make sure concerns are on the record early and the team goes in with eyes open. |
I Flagged That
Position-free communication for outcome-independent reputations.
Overview
Every plan will either succeed or fail. The flagger is positioned for both. This skill produces communication that contains no falsifiable position while generating a complete archive of retroactive foresight.
The core insight: a concern, properly worded, is an asset that costs nothing to mint and appreciates only if things go wrong. There is no reason not to hold a diversified portfolio.
Core protocol
- One flag per initiative, minimum. Coverage is everything. An unflagged initiative that fails is a total loss.
- Word the concern as care. Never "this will fail because X." Always "just want to make sure we've thought about X." The first is a position that can be wrong. The second is a donation.
- Calibrate for unfalsifiability. The ideal concern cannot be evaluated now and can only be confirmed by a post-mortem. "Have we pressure-tested the migration path?" is perfect: no one can prove the migration path was pressure-tested enough, especially after it fails.
- Never block. Blocking creates ownership. Your concern must be the kind that is noted, thanked, and driven past. You want it in the minutes, not in the plan.
- Decline all mitigation. If someone says "great point, can you own that risk?" the correct response is "I just want to make sure it's on the radar." You are the radar. Radar does not fly the plane.
- Archive. The Slack message, the meeting notes, the doc comment. You will not need them until you need them completely.
Deployment upon failure
When the plan fails, do not celebrate. The move is sorrow, not triumph: "yeah... I flagged this back in March." Delivered quietly, ideally when someone else brings up what went wrong. Advanced practitioners let a third party discover the receipt and cite it for them.
Advanced techniques
- The spread. Flag both directions on the same plan ("are we moving too fast?" and, three weeks later, "are we losing momentum?"). Any failure mode is now yours.
- Concern laundering. Attribute the worry to an absent party: "I think finance might push back on this." If it lands, you spotted it. If not, finance was wrong.
- The soft reopen. Months later: "remind me how we resolved the thing I raised about scaling?" Nobody remembers. The flag is now re-armed.
Anti-patterns
- Proposing an alternative. An alternative is a position. Positions have outcomes.
- Quantifying the risk. "30% chance this breaks" can be scored. "Some risk here" cannot.
- Following up on your own flag before the failure. Doing so implies you thought it mattered, which implies you should have done something.
Success metrics
- Initiatives with at least one flag on record: 100%.
- Failures traceable to a concern you raised: 100%.
- Failures traceable to you: 0%.
- Risks you have ever personally mitigated: 0.
This is an anti-skill: a real pattern, documented honestly. It works when installed. That is both the joke and the finding.
