26 March 2025
Working agreements that survive busy quarters
Agreements written during calm weeks often collapse under peak load. Build them for the busiest fortnights, not the quiet ones.
Most management teams can write aspirational norms in an afternoon. The harder task is writing norms that still apply when three people are travelling and a client deadline has moved forward.
Start by naming the failure modes of the last busy quarter. Missed handovers, late escalations, and unanswered messages usually point to missing agreements rather than missing motivation.
Keep the list short—five or six lines. Cover meeting purpose, decision logging, response windows, and how conflict is raised. Ambiguous phrases like “be respectful” help less than “raise concerns in the management meeting before discussing them with the wider team.”
Review agreements at the end of each busy period. Update what broke. Retire what no longer fits. Living documents earn more loyalty than laminated posters.