Commitment and Consistency
Once people commit to something small, they act to stay consistent with it; use early, honest yeses.
So it's fair to say this is worth solving this quarter?
People want to act consistently with what they have already said or done. Robert Cialdini describes commitment and consistency as a core influence principle in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984): a small initial commitment makes a later, larger one more likely, because backing out would feel inconsistent.
To use it, get real, voluntary micro-commitments along the way: agreement that the problem matters, a small first step, a stated intention. “So it’s fair to say this is worth solving this quarter?” A yes there makes the later “shall we start?” line up with what they already committed to.
It works when the commitments are genuine and freely given, and strongest when stated out loud or in writing. The mistake is engineering a fake or coerced commitment; people feel manipulated and the consistency pull reverses into resistance.