Every organization says they want accountability — until they actually get it. CBC doesn’t just ask people to “be clear” and “take ownership.” It forces them to put their name on the line. That’s threatening in cultures built on vague promises, distributed responsibility, and “alignment meetings” that never align anything. Resistance isn’t a bug of CBC; it’s proof that it’s working.
Common Sources of Resistance
- Leaders Who Love Wiggle Room
Executives who thrive on ambiguity hate CBC. OKRs let them posture with “big bets” and then quietly move the goalposts. CBC nails them down: “Here’s the deliverable, here’s the owner, here’s the due date.” Suddenly, leadership isn’t a TED Talk, it’s a contract. - Teams Addicted to Agile Theater
Some ICs hide behind endless sprints, Jira tickets, and “velocity” metrics. CBC cuts through the theater: no “story points,” just outcomes. If the contract says “API delivered by Q2,” you don’t get to call half-done endpoints “progress.” - Middle Managers in the Comfort Zone
Managers who’ve built careers on being interpreters between leadership and teams hate CBC because it makes their spin irrelevant. When everyone can read the agreement, there’s no room for “what they really meant was …” CBC exposes them as bureaucratic routers, not leaders.
Strategies for Overcoming Pushback
- Expose the Pain
Start with a pilot project that everyone knows is a trainwreck waiting to happen – say, a cross-functional integration at a midsize SaaS company. Under OKRs, everyone would have plausible deniability when it fails. With CBC, dependencies are named upfront. When Marketing misses their deliverable, it’s visible. Painful? Yes. Useful? Absolutely. - Name Names
CBC is not a team sport. It requires named ownership. Don’t let “Platform Team” sign an agreement, make it “Jane Smith, Staff Engineer, responsible for delivery.” This strips away the comfort blanket of collective accountability and forces real responsibility. - Make Leadership Sign Too
In an enterprise, resistance often starts at the top. Flip the script: require executives to sign agreements for resourcing, priorities, and approvals. If Legal or Security doesn’t deliver on time, the blocker isn’t invisible — it’s in writing, with a VP’s name attached. - Contrast With OKRs
OKRs are aspirational. CBC is operational. OKRs let you “explore possibilities.” CBC forces you to commit. That contrast alone flushes out the people who only want to look busy versus the ones who want to ship.
Example Scenarios
- Startup: The CEO insists OKRs are fine. But the product roadmap changes weekly, and nobody knows who’s on the hook for what. A CBC pilot forces the founders to lock in priorities before engineering starts building. Suddenly, “move fast and break things” looks less like speed and more like expensive chaos.
- Midsize Business: A growth-stage SaaS company runs a cross-team initiative to replatform their billing system. Under OKRs, Finance, Engineering, and Product all “own” it. Translation: nobody owns it. Under CBC, each department has explicit deliverables and timelines. When Engineering hits their milestone but Finance doesn’t update reporting, the failure isn’t a mystery — it’s documented.
- Enterprise: A Fortune 500 tech company needs GDPR compliance updates. With KPIs, everyone reports “progress” in PowerPoint slides until regulators show up. With CBC, every dependency – Legal, Data Engineering, IT – is named, signed, and tied to specific deliverables. When the deadline comes, there’s no “we thought they had it handled.”
The Takeaway
Resistance to CBC is predictable, and useful. It reveals who benefits from the old system of vague commitments and plausible deniability. OKRs and KPIs let people look aligned while staying slippery. CBC forces clarity, forces ownership, and forces results. If someone is fighting it, you’ve probably just found the accountability gap that needs closing.
