Before you try to sell CBC to anyone else, you need to be squared away yourself. Most leaders skip this step. They jump straight into preaching frameworks without checking whether they’re personally ready to model the discipline. That’s a mistake. CBC lives or dies on credibility: if you’re sloppy, inconsistent, or unclear, no one is going to sign a contract with you in good faith. Preparing yourself is about sharpening your own clarity and execution discipline before you expect it from others.
Get Clear on What CBC Is (and Isn’t)
- CBC is execution discipline in contract form. It forces clarity before action, accountability before results, and sign-off before work starts.
- CBC is not OKRs or KPIs. Those are loose promises dressed up as strategy. OKRs let you move the goalposts mid-quarter. CBC nails the posts into the ground and says: agree first, then execute.
- CBC is not bureaucracy. It’s not about writing ten-page legal documents. It’s about plain-language agreements that fit on one page (more or less) and can’t be misunderstood.
Audit Your Own Habits
- Do you explain expectations with precision? If not, CBC will expose that weakness immediately.
- Do you follow through on commitments? If you’re prone to dropping balls or overcommitting, you’ll lose credibility fast.
- Do you hold others accountable? CBC makes accountability explicit. If you’re squeamish about calling out misses, you’ll struggle.
Align Your Leadership Posture
- Clarity before freedom: You don’t need to micromanage, but you do need to eliminate ambiguity. CBC works only when expectations are unmistakable.
- Dual accountability: CBC is not one-way. You own direction and clarity; they own execution and results. If there’s misalignment, that’s on you. If they don’t deliver, that’s on them.
- Merit over motion: CBC doesn’t reward activity — it rewards delivered outcomes. Be ready to judge results, not effort.
Example: Midsize Company Manager
You manage a team of 12 engineers at a midsize SaaS company. Historically, leadership has used OKRs. Every quarter, vague goals like “Improve onboarding experience” get written, and three months later you’re sifting through half-finished Jira tickets.
With CBC, you flip the script. Instead of “Improve onboarding experience,” you draft an agreement with one engineer:
- Objective: Reduce new-user onboarding time from 10 minutes to under 5.
- Deliverable: Working onboarding flow in production by end of Q2.
- Dependencies: Design team provides updated screens by May 1.
- Accountability: Engineer A owns delivery, Manager owns dependency with Design.
- Success Criteria: Production metrics show 50% drop in onboarding completion time.
Now, there’s no wiggle room. Either the contract is met, or it isn’t. Compare that to the OKR model, where you can still claim “progress” even if nothing meaningful shipped.
Takeaway
If you’re not prepared to live and breathe clarity, commitment, and accountability, don’t bother with CBC. But if you are, CBC gives you something OKRs and KPIs never will: execution discipline that can’t be gamed.
