The Kill Criteria

Name what would reject the idea before AI makes it look inevitable

AI is excellent at making a weak plan look finished. Clean prose, neat slides, confident next steps. The danger is not that the model is wrong. The danger is that the draft arrives looking so complete that nobody wants to be the person who kills it.

Next-gen leadership needs a pre-commitment: before anyone prompts, write the Kill Criteria — the conditions under which this idea dies, no matter how polished the output looks.

Why polished AI work resists challenge

When a recommendation is messy, dissent is cheap. When it is formatted, cited, and time-boxed, dissent feels like obstruction. Teams then defend the artifact instead of testing the idea.

Three patterns show up fast:

The sunk-cost of the draft

Someone spent an hour prompting. The deck looks ready for the board. Rejecting it feels like wasting work — even when the work only produced words.

The courtesy trap

Challenging AI output can feel like challenging the colleague who brought it. Without shared kill rules, people soften their questions to stay polite.

The missing stop-line

Decision Half-Life tells you when to reopen a call after you make it. Kill Criteria tell you when never to make the call at all. Different moment. Same discipline: judgment before momentum.

How to write Kill Criteria

Keep the list short. Three criteria beat twelve. Write them in plain language a new teammate could apply without a meeting.

1. Name the hard fails

Start with non-negotiables: budget ceiling, legal or compliance line, customer promise you will not break, capacity you do not have this quarter. If the AI plan crosses any of these, it is dead on arrival — revise the brief, do not negotiate the fence.

2. Name the soft fails that still kill

Soft fails are strategic, not absolute: “If this needs more than two teams coordinating for six weeks, we will not start.” “If the upside depends on a partner we have not spoken to, we pause.” Soft fails prevent beautiful plans that your operating system cannot absorb.

3. Name the evidence fail

Require one proof standard before green light. Example: “No customer quote, no build.” Or: “If the model cannot show the data source for the key claim, we treat the claim as unknown.” This blocks confident fiction.

Write the three lines in a shared note before the first prompt. Paste them into the prompt itself: “Here are our kill criteria. If your recommendation violates any, say so first and propose a narrower option.”

A 10-minute practice for Monday meetings

Use this when a team is about to ask AI for a plan, a hire brief, a product bet, or a process redesign.

  1. **Two minutes — owner states the ask** One sentence: what decision we want help framing.
  1. **Five minutes — group writes Kill Criteria** Each person adds one hard, soft, or evidence fail. Merge to three. No debate theater; clarify wording only.
  1. **Three minutes — lock and prompt** Save the three lines. Only then open the model. The first instruction is: honor these kills; if you cannot, say what would have to change.

After the AI returns, the review question is not “Do we like this?” It is “Did any kill criterion fire?” If yes, you do not polish past it. You either change the constraint with eyes open or you stop.

What this protects

Kill Criteria protect speed and stewardship at once. You move faster because the team is not pretending every shiny draft deserves a second hour. You lead better because rejection is a rule you set in calm, not a mood you invent under pressure.

AI can draft. Leaders still decide what is allowed to live.

AImpactNI | Next Gen Leadership Thinking using AI

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