February 9, 2026
Ping, panic, and plan
How I've run major projects (2025)
Anthropic’s crisis playbook sparks cheers, skepticism, and “make it an AI” jokes
TLDR: Anthropic’s project guide says: clear your schedule, track a detailed plan, and escalate early for better results. Commenters praised the no-buzzword advice, but argued it assumes superstar teams, while others want it packaged as an AI assistant—highlighting a split between practical playbook and automation dreams.
Anthropic just dropped a hands-on guide to running big, messy projects under pressure: clear your calendar, spend serious hours herding updates, keep a concrete “plan for victory,” and escalate fast when the plan slips. The crowd loved the no-nonsense vibe—leoedin praised it as “pragmatic, sensible, and refreshingly free of buzzwords.” But not everyone’s buying the hero narrative. 7402 fired a spicy shot: the advice assumes teams full of superstars who can autonomously pick the most important next thing—“maybe everyone at Anthropic is a ‘10’,” they quipped. Meanwhile, tibbar brought receipts on how megaprojects implode—vague goals, bloated plans, wrong bottlenecks, and cancellations—turning the thread into a group therapy session for past project pain. The biggest twist? fabmilo wants to turn the whole playbook into an AI “agent skill,” sparking the question: will future project managers be bots with calendars and caffeine? OODA-loop fans (a military decision model: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) showed up too—HolyLampshade cheered the framework as a clean way to tighten organizational reflexes. The memes wrote themselves: endless “pinging for updates” jokes, “plan for victory” sounding like a battle speech, and the eternal debate—focus and freak-out early vs reality where most teams are… not Anthropic. Read the playbook here: link.
Key Points
- •The author’s most productive periods involved intensive crisis project management at Anthropic.
- •High‑context, trusted decisionmakers directly managing execution can outperform lower‑context delegation on critical projects.
- •Clearing schedules and dedicating 6+ hours daily to organizing improves focus and proactive management.
- •Maintaining a detailed, concrete “plan for victory” enables objective progress tracking and early escalation when needed.
- •A task‑level accounting during a model implementation sprint revealed tight timelines months ahead, guiding risk management.