Tell Me What It Takes to Win, Then Tell Me the Costs
Ask for the un-watered-down plan to win first; negotiate the costs down second.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- —
As a team grows, ideas come bottom-up, but people pre-filter them — they avoid proposing anything that sounds too wild or too expensive, so by the time a proposal reaches the funder it has lost the ambition needed to win. Balfour flips the sequence: first tell me what it would genuinely take to win at this; then tell me the costs. Even if the costs look high, the leader and team can then collaborate to pare them back. He would rather have his team pushing him with an ambitious plan than spend time pushing the team to be less conservative. A companion move is to define the ideal end state and iterate toward it — while revisiting and revising that end state as you learn.
Origin
Balfour isn't sure of the source — he guesses it might be from Bezos — but it addresses a problem he hit as teams at HubSpot and Reforge grew.
Core principles
- 01Ambition should be defined before it is constrained.
- 02Watered-down plans waste resources on things that can't win.
- 03You want the team pushing you, not you pushing the team.
- 04Define the ideal end state, then iterate and revise it.
How to run it
- 1
Ask for the winning plan first
Before any cost conversation, ask the team what it would truly take to win at the initiative — the ambitious, un-self-censored version.
Pro tip Signal explicitly that wild is welcome, so people stop pre-filtering.
Watch out If you lead with cost, people default to conservative, safe proposals.
- 2
Then surface the costs
Once the winning plan is on the table, ask for its costs — even if they look high at first.
- 3
Collaborate to pare costs back
Work together to find an approach that keeps the ambition but lowers the cost, rather than starting from a diminished plan.
Pro tip This is the conversation you want to be having — how to achieve the win affordably, not whether to aim lower.
- 4
Define and revise the ideal end state
Set a directional ideal end state for the team to iterate toward; revisit it periodically and update it as you learn.
Pro tip Frame it as directional alignment, not a pixel-perfect spec.
Watch out Teams over-attach to a fixed end state — you must actively revise it or it becomes a trap.
In the wild
Balfour argues most teams would be better served, for yearly planning, by producing visuals of how they want users to experience the product a year out — giving that to the team — than by a nicely formatted set of OKRs.
→ More meaningful directional alignment than a formatted OKR doc.
Common mistakes
Leading with cost or caution
Opening with budget or 'is this worth it?' trains the team to bring watered-down plans that can't win.
Freezing the ideal end state
Letting people attach to a fixed end state without revisiting it causes friction when reality forces a change.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders who fund or green-light initiatives proposed by their teams.
Not ideal for
Trivial, low-stakes decisions where full ambition isn't worth the framing effort.
From the episode
Brian Balfour: 10 lessons on career, growth, and life