The 'Why Now' Perishability Test for Internal Pitches
A good business case that lacks a strong 'why now' trigger gets parked; make the opportunity feel perishable
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
In a company with endless attractive opportunities, a sound business case that everyone agrees with can sit in limbo indefinitely because there's no trigger to act. The missing ingredient is a strong, explicit reason it must happen NOW rather than in a year or two. Frame the opportunity as perishable — why it disappears if you don't act now — to give people the motivation to pull the trigger.
Origin
A hard-won lesson from Tanguy Crusson's failed IT-operations business case at Atlassian; he connects it to Mahika Kapoor's (Figma) framing of 'keep the flame alive.'
Core principles
- 01A big opportunity is not enough — abundance means good ideas queue behind each other
- 02The trigger for urgency must be built into the business case, not assumed
- 03Frame the opportunity as perishable: why will it disappear if we wait?
- 04Recognize when you're idling waiting for confirmation and step back rather than push forever
How to run it
- 1
Separate 'good idea' from 'act now'
Accept that a business case can make total sense, get enthusiasm at every level, and still not happen — because there's no why-now. Diagnose whether your stalled pitch is missing urgency, not merit.
Watch out Crusson pitched his IT-ops case to every level from business leaders to the CTO to the CEOs; no one said no and no one said yes for months.
- 2
Build an explicit why-now into the case
Articulate the specific trigger that makes waiting costly. Ask why the opportunity is perishable and why acting a year later would be worse.
Pro tip Reframe 'this is a huge opportunity' as 'this opportunity will disappear if we don't act now' — that's what creates motivation.
Watch out Without this, even great work gets parked and picked up later by a team that does articulate the trigger.
- 3
Know when to stop pushing
If you've been idling in limbo waiting for confirmation, recognize that spot and step back — product managers biased toward action struggle here but sometimes stepping back is the right call.
In the wild
Crusson pitched a big IT-operations bet (including Statuspage) across every level of Atlassian; everyone was excited but nothing happened for months. He'd misread the appetite and urgency and failed to articulate the why-now. A later team made a much better job of the why-now — and the company entered the market about a year later.
→ Crusson's version was parked; the next team's stronger urgency argument got it green-lit, costing him months of limbo.
Common mistakes
Assuming enthusiasm equals commitment
Universal excitement with no one saying yes is a signal that the why-now is missing, not that approval is imminent. Waiting idle for a confirmation that never comes wastes months.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone pitching a new internal initiative that keeps getting nodded at but never funded
Not ideal for
Genuinely non-time-sensitive bets where manufacturing false urgency would be dishonest
From the transcript
“so we need a very strong trigger for why now now to go after it”
“I did not do a good enough job at articulating this why now why why do we have to do this now versus in a…”
“why is it perishable why is this opportunity perishable why is it going to disappear if we don't act on it now”
“I was in this limbo of I think everyone's excited about this everyone wants this to happen but it's not happening”
From the episode
Hard-won lessons building 0 to 1 inside Atlassian
Tanguy Crusson (Head of Jira Product Discovery)