Intrenion

Pattern: Implicit rationing

Time, attention, or budget constraints are enforced informally rather than explicitly prioritized.

In this condition, multiple initiatives, requests, or tasks are formally accepted or approved despite limited time, attention, or budget capacity.
In this condition, there is no published or binding prioritization that ranks commitments against each other.
In this condition, backlogs and queues accumulate while new work continues to enter the system.
In this condition, deadlines are frequently delayed or quietly extended without formal scope reduction.
In this condition, some projects receive consistent attention while others remain inactive without formal cancellation.
In this condition, teams report operating at or beyond full capacity while additional assignments are still distributed.
In this condition, stakeholders experience inconsistent response times and service levels due to opaque selection criteria.

This occurs because formal approval processes allow work to enter the system without coupling intake volume to verified capacity constraints.
This occurs because leaders avoid explicit commitment ranking to minimize visible conflict among stakeholders competing for scarce resources.
This occurs because authority to initiate or sponsor work is distributed more broadly than authority to defer or terminate it.
This occurs because time and attention are not treated as explicitly budgeted resources, even when financial budgets are formally controlled.
This occurs because performance reporting emphasizes activity and responsiveness rather than enforced trade-offs or throughput limits.
This occurs because middle managers and frontline staff absorb overload informally to preserve reliability signals and avoid escalation.
This occurs because the political and reputational costs of openly rejecting or cancelling work are higher than the diffuse costs of delays and partial completion.

Without explicit capacity-based intake limits, backlog growth becomes structurally unavoidable as new commitments continue to exceed throughput.
Without binding prioritization decisions, delays and partial completion become the default mechanism for allocating scarce time and attention.
Without clear authority to terminate or defer work, overcommitment remains stable because no actor can reliably reduce scope.
Without transparent trade-offs, stakeholders escalate urgency signals to compete for attention, increasing political contention and noise.
Without formal acknowledgment of scarcity, planning credibility deteriorates as stated commitments repeatedly diverge from actual delivery.

We decide to cap our active work in progress at a fixed number and refuse any additional task beyond that limit because this gives us a visible capacity constraint that forces explicit trade-offs instead of accepting new requests and informally delaying existing work, and accept that some stakeholders will escalate or label us unresponsive.
We decide to require a written ranked list of our current commitments before starting any newly assigned task because this gives us a documented prioritization order that anchors sequencing instead of informally choosing based on perceived urgency in meetings, and accept that some work will stall while waiting for explicit ranking.
We decide to publicly log every declined or deferred request in a shared document because this gives us a traceable record of trade-offs that clarifies scarcity instead of quietly absorbing additional scope into personal overtime, and accept that this record may expose conflicts and create friction with requestors.

I will not take on any new task once my active work in progress reaches the fixed limit, and I will leave additional requests unstarted until something is explicitly deprioritized.
I will not begin any newly assigned task until I receive a written ranked list that places it relative to my existing commitments.
I will record every request I decline or defer in a shared log and point requestors to that record, rather than handling the work quietly.