Edit, Exit, and Review

Precommit when the goal gets reviewed, revised, rolled back, or abandoned, and by whom.

Your product has been "about to turn the corner" for 11 months. Retention sits below the line quarter after quarter, and every review ends the same way: one more iteration. Without a precommitted rule for when the goal itself goes on trial, sunk costs chair every meeting.

Edit, Exit, and Review precommits when a destination gets reviewed, revised, rolled back, or abandoned, and who holds the authority to do it. The cue: a goal with no scheduled reexamination, or one where quitting criteria are being invented in the moment by the people most invested in continuing. Run it in three steps at goal-setting time, not in the crisis. First, ask the move question: what signal reopens the goal, and who has authority to change it? Second, set the trigger and date: pivot if retention stays below the floor after two validated iterations. Third, name the decision-holder so review day isn't a negotiation about who decides. What changes when it works: persistence becomes a choice renewed on evidence rather than a default renewed by inertia, and stopping loses its stigma because the exit was designed in advance. The spec's crucial distinction: don't revise just because progress is uncomfortable; disconfirmation reopens a goal, mere difficulty does not.