Getting CBC up and running is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it alive once the novelty wears off and people start trying to sneak back into their old comfort zones — vague promises, shifting priorities, and accountability hiding under “team effort.” Sustaining CBC matters because execution discipline dies the moment agreements stop being enforced. Without vigilance, CBC becomes yet another dead framework gathering dust next to last year’s OKR spreadsheet.

Keep Agreements Alive

• CBC isn’t “set and forget.” Every agreement has to be reviewed, renewed, or retired.
• OKRs love to “roll over” into the next quarter like forgotten gym memberships. CBC says: renegotiate or shut it down.
• Example: A midsize SaaS company uses CBC for quarterly feature releases. At the end of Q2, instead of quietly sliding unfinished work into Q3, they hold a renegotiation meeting. Some items get cut, some re-scoped, and everyone signs again. That’s discipline.

Make the Ledger Visible

• CBC only works if agreements are treated as a living public record.
• Keep them in a repository everyone can see, not hidden in some exec’s Notion folder. Visibility kills excuses.
• In a startup, this could be a shared doc pinned in Slack. In an enterprise, it might be a formal database of agreements with escalation rules. Scale the tool, not the opacity.
• Contrast: KPIs disappear into dashboards nobody reads, giving leaders cover to pretend “things are on track.” CBC’s ledger is a scoreboard with names attached.

Reward Execution, Not Theater

• CBC isn’t about who looked busiest, who “showed commitment,” or who crafted the prettiest status slide. It’s about who delivered on their agreement.
• Leaders should recognize and promote the people who consistently honor agreements — not the ones who charm in meetings.
• Enterprise example: At a Fortune 500, a director builds their entire performance evaluation system on CBC agreements. Instead of reviewing “leadership competencies” or “collaboration skills,” they ask: Did you keep your contracts? If yes, you grow. If no, you don’t. Brutally simple.

Build a Renegotiation Culture

• Agreements are not prisons. Things change, but changes have to be explicit and signed.
• Startups love to “pivot” mid-sprint and call it agility. That’s just chaos in a hoodie. CBC forces you to stop, renegotiate, and recommit. It feels slower but actually saves time because you don’t spend weeks chasing phantom goals.
• Example: A VC-funded startup is burning cash fast. They pause a major integration mid-build. Instead of letting engineers drift, leadership renegotiates the contract: drop integrations B and C, double down on A, and lock scope. Cash burn slows, morale improves, and execution stabilizes.

Audit Without Apologies

• Sustaining CBC means you can always answer: Who promised what, and did they deliver?
• OKRs can’t answer that because they’re designed to be “aspirational.” Translation: optional. CBC leaves no such wiggle room.
• Enterprises with compliance needs (think healthcare, fintech) can plug CBC into audits. The regulator asks, “How do you track commitments?” You hand them the ledger. Done.

Takeaway: Sustaining CBC isn’t about rituals or cheerleading — it’s about relentless clarity, visible commitments, and enforced renegotiation. OKRs and KPIs fade into noise; CBC survives because it refuses to let work drift into the shadows.