In your professional life, you may encounter decision blocks where two managers shift responsibility from one person to another. As a normal employee, you feel lost because you just need one decision to avoid guessing expectations.
While reading about Google's Spanner database technology, I came across the wound-wait algorithm.
The application is simple: if one transaction waits for another, the solution is to cancel (wound) the younger transaction and allow the older one to finish first.
Perhaps such an algorithm could also be applied as a principle to avoid lost conversations in endless meetings.
"Please, Manager A, my request came first. Solve this before shifting it to Manager B."
Of course, logical simplifications don't encompass the whole suite of human interactions. However, the wound-wait algorithm could at least address the prioritization issue.
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