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I believe that some people (myself included, at first) feel that A.I. threatened the craftsmanship and hard-fought-and-won understanding that comes from engineering software over time, without A.I.

Exactly. I wrote in the article: "If a company stops paying you, you'll stop showing up. If you stop showing up, they'll stop paying you. That's the core exchange. Everything else, the speeches, the slogans, the faux loyalty, the theater, is dressing on top of a fundamentally transactional relationship."

A couple of things: The knee-jerk reaction is to think CBC and bi-directional accountability must be some movement or uprising led by subordinates in an attempt to check/curtail the control of their superiors, or to at least balance the scales a bit.

In reality, I see CBC being deployed by leadership (i.e., by leaders, top-down) as a way of holding subordinates accountable more objectively. As a means of enabling meritocracy. As a signaling device to show credibility and fairness. As a management system that reduces politics and favoritism by forcing clarity. And as a cultural foundation that says: what matters here is outcomes, not optics (or theater).

It just so happens to apply equally to leadership also, because every leader is also a subordinate to someone, whether it’s a board, investors, customers, or the market itself. Most leaders aren't a god-emperor.

In a post-CBC world, the successor would be asked to renegotiate the predecessor's open/pending agreements or propose replacements.

You're asking the right question: what enforces it?

Think about how societies enforce contracts in general. Governments could, in theory, just stop enforcing citizen/property rights or contracts. But they don't, because if they did, trust collapses, citizens revolt, and the system breaks down. Enforcement isn't about perfection; it's about enough stability that the system holds together.

CBC operates similarly. It doesn't create a new enforcement mechanism out of thin air, but it gives existing ones (boards, investors, regulators, peers, employees) something concrete to hold leaders to. Without CBC, there's no "thing" to point to when accountability is challenged. With it, there is.

And just like with governments, the possibility of negative consequences (talent attrition, investor pressure, loss of credibility) is what incentivizes leaders to treat the agreement seriously. CBC isn't pie in the sky; it's infrastructure for accountability. Enforcement comes from the same place it always has: the need for trust and legitimacy to keep the system functioning.

The point isn't that people in power will suddenly volunteer to be "checked." It's that CBC allows leaders to "put their money where their mouth is". Leaders who claim to want ownership cultures, meritocracy, and outcomes over optics (i.e., performance without the theater) cannot continue to hide behind vague goals once commitments are documented, falsifiable, and visible.

That's the incentive: CBC makes actual objective performance evaluation possible (i.e., performance evaluation for people and projects). And if a leader resists that? That's telling. It signals something about their leadership and the actual culture they're fostering. CBC is for leaders who claim to want meritocracy and are willing to prove it.

History gives us examples. Andy Grove at Intel famously institutionalized "constructive confrontation" and rigorous OKRs, explicitly binding executives, including himself, to objective measures of performance. It wasn't a loss of power; it was the foundation of Intel's execution culture and competitive edge.

CBC is cut from the same cloth. It doesn't magically enforce itself; it makes accountability legible, so leaders either live their stated values or reveal that they don't.

I understand the sentiment. That's the current status quo: keep things verbal, keep them fuzzy, keep an escape hatch handy (i.e., plausible deniability). The whole point of bi-directional accountability (via CBC) is to shut those doors up front. Once you (two or more parties, e.g., leader/report) agree to "do" CBC, you're immediately bound by the methodology, which essentially means a work contract you negotiate and sign off on. Escape hatch removed. The system makes deviations visible, costly, and merit-eroding.