You can feel it in the meeting where everything sounds right but nothing moves. People nod at “strategy, ” argue over “priority, ” and ship work that doesn't match the brief. The drift isn't malice or incompetence, it's language doing just enough to be agreeable and not enough to be operational.
On the far side of complexity, the work gets simple again: words decide things. When a word decides a thing, an owner appears, tradeoffs surface, and the project starts to move. That's the shift.
The faint signal of alignment gets stronger when you make key terms decision-bearing and test them with small, reversible experiments.
A decision-bearing glossary is a one-paragraph tool that defines a term, the decision it governs, and who owns that decision. It turns fuzzy labels into operational levers.
Define shared terms
You don't need a dictionary, you need a set of switches. Flip them once, and the room lights up the same way for everyone.
Vision is your desired future state, the world you're trying to make true. Mission defines who you serve and why. Strategy captures the choices that connect now to that future, while tactics are time-bound actions that express the strategy. When someone mentions intent versus keywords, they're distinguishing the meaning behind a request from surface tokens, design to intent, instrument with keywords.
Automation differs from autonomy in crucial ways. Automation follows scripted, deterministic workflows, while autonomy adapts goal-seeking behavior to context. Similarly, taxonomy organizes hierarchical labels, ontology maps typed relationships and rules, and schema provides structural blueprints for data instances.
A model creates formal representation, a framework offers organizing principles for decisions, and a system integrates components to produce outcomes. Signal represents causal movement toward your goal; noise is pattern without consequence. A decision-bearing term encodes a specific decision and an owner.
Example: If “priority” means “sequencing by impact-to-effort, ” Product owns it. If “priority” means “what the customer asked for this week, ” Sales owns it. The label stays; the decision shifts.
How to separate signal from noise
Yesterday's conversation felt productive. Today's task feels vague. That gap is where projects bleed time. To close it, translate language into tests by naming the outcome and leading indicator, running a reversible experiment that can change your next move, then logging the choice, evidence, and follow-up. That's signal discipline.
Tactical example: Your team debates “improving onboarding.” Define the signal as “first meaningful action within one day.” Ship a single change, default templates visible on first load, behind a toggle. If activation moves, double down. If not, revert and test a different first-run cue. No drama, just learning.
Direct response is the human version of prompt engineering, it creates conditions for action, removes ambiguity, and aligns desire with outcome.
Use CAM to align
You've got the terms; now make them work together. The Core Alignment Model (CAM) treats language as scaffolding for decisions, not paperwork. Keep it light and live.
Start by choosing three terms that cause the most rework, often “strategy, ” “priority, ” or “done.” Write a one-sentence rule for what each word decides and who signs off. Then link up and down by adding one upstream pointer explaining why it exists and one downstream pointer showing what it triggers. This creates traceable reasoning.
Make it visible by putting the glossary at the top of your PRD or prompt guide. If a term appears, it inherits the rule and the owner. Review in two weeks, keeping what removed friction and retiring what didn't. If your glossary isn't changing, it's not being used.
Example: “Strategy = focus on mobile self-service for small merchants this quarter; Product owns it. Tactics = three changes that reduce support tickets from mobile by 15%. Design/Engineering own them.” When a new feature request arrives, it either expresses the strategy or it waits.
Strategy vs tactics
When everything is a “strategy, ” nothing is accountable. Treat it like a ladder: vision at the top, tactics at the bottom, strategy is the rungs you choose to climb.
Micro-case: Vision, “merchants solve problems without emailing support.” Strategy, “reduce top three ticket types by making answers one tap away in-app.” Tactic, “surface ‘refunds' as a top nav item and add a guided flow.” If a tactic doesn't move the ticket mix, it wasn't tactical, it was noise.
What is the Pitch Trace Method?
It's a simple way to keep words honest. First, capture the “pitch”, the exact term someone uses (“priority, ” “VIP, ” “MVP”). Then trace it to the decision it's supposed to make and the next action it triggers. If you can't trace it, rename it or define it until you can.
Example: A stakeholder says, “This is a VIP request.” You ask, “Which decision does ‘VIP' override, sequencing, scope, or quality bar, and who owns that override?” The method forces clarity without confrontation.
Rapid testing frameworks
A short path beats a perfect plan. These three micro-playbooks cut through ambiguity fast.
The 10-minute glossary happens in the kickoff, define three decision-bearing terms on a shared doc with one owner per term and one sentence each. Everyone starts from the same map, preventing the first rework cycle.
The three-term standup opens by calling one term that's wobbling (“done, ” “priority, ” or “ready”), reconfirming the rule publicly, then proceeding. You fix the alignment leak before updates.
The two-week audit archives a term that didn't matter and adds one that did every two weeks. Your small sane system stays adaptive.
Example: A data lead swaps “accuracy” for “trustworthiness” in the glossary, with decision rule “we favor consistency over completeness when numbers inform pricing.” The next pricing review is shorter because debate follows the term, not the vibe.
Field notes
Platform redesign: The team kept saying “MVP” but meant different things. We defined “MVP = smallest version that changes a user decision, ” owned by Product. Scope shrank, and the first release shipped without back-and-forth on edge features.
Search quality: Stakeholders asked for “relevance.” We defined the signal as “user clicks-to-success in one query, ” owned by Search. One tweak, synonym groups for top intents, moved the metric; several “clever” ranking changes didn't and were dropped.
Consultant anecdote: I once inherited a project where “priority” meant “who pinged last.” We rewrote it to “priority = sequencing by impact-to-effort, owned by Product.” Within a week, the Slack urgency cooled and the roadmap stopped thrashing.
Objections and failure modes
Won't defining terms early kill creativity? It fences the field so you can play faster. Keep the glossary small and revisit it in two weeks.
Our misalignment is incentives, not words. True sometimes. A glossary won't fix power, but it will expose it quickly so you can address the real issue.
We move too fast to debate semantics. That's why the tool is one paragraph. If a term doesn't govern a decision, don't define it.
Cross-functional consensus is hard. Start with three terms inside your team. Publish them. Others will adopt them because they remove friction.
Wrap and the far side
You don't need more meetings; you need fewer words that do more work. Name what a term decides, who owns it, and how you'll test it. That's how you cross to the far side of complexity, where language stops generating noise and starts carrying signal.
Sign up for one practical tool each week, clear definitions, small experiments, and real examples you can run the same day. You'll get a working template, a field-tested micro-case, and a prompt you can paste into your doc. Weekly cadence, no fluff; the pieces here are built from concrete definitions and simple, low-effort tactics that reduce project friction.
Your move: write the 10-minute glossary and name three owners today.
Here's something you can tackle right now:
Define three terms that cause the most rework in your team. Write one sentence for what each decides and who owns that decision. Put it at the top of your next project doc.
