The trails in Switzer­land don’t rush you. They invite you — past cow­bells, into fir shade, up where the air turns glassy. Some­where between a ridge­line and a moun­tain hut, a small yel­low sign rewired how I think about work.

In Switzer­land the moun­tains are hum­ble and the signs are hon­est. You don’t get »7.3 km to sum­mit.« You get »Faul­horn 2 hours.« It’s a tiny design choice with a big opin­ion baked in: what mat­ters to a hik­er (or a run­ner) isn’t abstract dis­tance — it’s the expe­ri­ence ahead. Grade, ter­rain, alti­tude, weath­er, your calves. Time is a proxy for all that complexity.

Some­where between a steep descent and a cof­fee at a moun­tain hut, I real­ized: we rarely give our teams signs like these. In the office we still love dis­tances — tick­et counts, points, lines of scope — or we love sin­gle crisp ETAs carved into meet­ing notes. And then we won­der why peo­ple under- or over-shoot, why promis­es feel brit­tle, and why every­one nego­ti­ates real­i­ty from under a pile of »quick« tasks that weren’t quick.

The map is not the mountain

Dis­tance is clean. Work is not. A »quick press-release tweak« that threads through Legal, Brand, and the VP’s office is a switch­back, not a side­walk. The plan­ning fal­la­cy tells us our brains are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly opti­mistic, espe­cial­ly when we pic­ture the road we want to take rather than the mess we’ll actu­al­ly hike. Goodhart’s Law adds a sting: once a met­ric becomes a tar­get, it stops being a good met­ric. Tell a team to hit 30 sto­ry points and watch esti­ma­tion morph into points theater.

Swiss signs cheat in a healthy way: »2 hours« already assumes ele­va­tion, ground con­di­tions, and a typ­i­cal human. It’s a range dis­guised as a point. You look at the sky, look at your shoes, and trans­late: »For me today, it’s prob­a­bly 2:15 hours.« The sign invites judg­ment rather than sup­press­ing it.

At work, we often do the oppo­site. We turn a range into a point, then treat it as a com­mit­ment. Peo­ple respond like hik­ers rac­ing day­light: speed up, cut cor­ners, ban­ish curios­i­ty. That isn’t just oper­a­tional­ly risky; it’s psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly expen­sive. Self-Deter­mi­na­tion The­o­ry says moti­va­tion thrives on auton­o­my, com­pe­tence, and relat­ed­ness. Sin­gle-num­ber edicts throt­tle auton­o­my, threat­en com­pe­tence (»If I slip, I’m fail­ing«), and iso­late peo­ple (»I can’t ask for help; we promised Friday«).

What are we estimating, exactly?

When we say »How long will this take?«, we might mean at least four dif­fer­ent things:

• Effort: hours of focused work.
• Cal­en­dar time: when it will be done giv­en inter­rupts, depen­den­cies, approvals.
• Risk: how much uncer­tain­ty hides in the fog.
• Out­come con­fi­dence: the odds the result actu­al­ly moves the needle.

We mash those into one date, and then we’re shocked when real­i­ty peels them apart. Swiss sig­nage keeps them con­cep­tu­al­ly sep­a­rate: the route (scope), the ter­rain (risk), the weath­er (con­text), and the time win­dow (cal­en­dar). The sign shows a fore­cast, not a promise; hik­ers still choose their pace and path.

Trans­lat­ing that to teams means treat­ing time as a dis­tri­b­u­tion, risk as a first-class cit­i­zen, and out­comes as the unit of truth.

Methods that feel more like trail signs

I don’t have a reli­gion about esti­ma­tion, but some prac­tices behave like good sig­nage: they make uncer­tain­ty vis­i­ble with­out turn­ing it into dra­ma, and they let peo­ple decide how to move.

• Ranges with con­fi­dence: Offer »2–4 days at 80% con­fi­dence« rather than »3 days.« The num­ber is hum­bler, but the plan is stronger. It invites a con­ver­sa­tion about what push­es us toward the edges of the range — like rain on granite.
• Three-point esti­mates (PERT): Name the opti­mistic, most like­ly, and pes­simistic times. Even just say­ing them out loud forces ter­rain scan­ning: »What would make this take 5 days?» — »Legal/compliance review. Brand sign-off. Spokesper­son sched­ul­ing. Trans­la­tion and local­iza­tion.« Now you’ve dis­cov­ered switch­backs before you’re on them.
• Ref­er­ence-class fore­cast­ing: Don’t ask »How long should this take?« Ask »How long did things like this actu­al­ly take?« Look back over sim­i­lar sto­ries or projects, then cal­i­brate. This is how hik­ers learn that »2 hoursm« on loose scree is not »2 hoursm« on packed dirt.
• Through­put → fore­cast: In flow-based teams, esti­mate less and mea­sure more. Use actu­al cycle time his­to­ries to run a sim­ple Monte Car­lo fore­cast: »Giv­en our past 90 days, there’s a 70% chance we fin­ish between Oct 28 and Nov 3.« It’s bor­ing, which is secret­ly the point. Bor­ing beats bluff.
• Size the climb, not the clock: If the work is fuzzy, try T‑shirt sizes or sto­ry points to com­pare rel­a­tive effort, but don’t con­vert them to cal­en­dar dates in secret. When veloc­i­ty becomes cur­ren­cy, peo­ple mint inflation.

None of this works if you weaponize it. A range is not a loop­hole. A fore­cast is not a promise you pun­ish peo­ple for miss­ing. Signs guide; they don’t scold.

What it does to people when we change the signs

Swap hard sin­gle dates for hon­est fore­casts and two things hap­pen. First, peo­ple breathe. Auton­o­my goes up because teams can decide how to tra­verse the ter­rain; com­pe­tence ris­es because the work includes think­ing about the path; relat­ed­ness improves because risk is shared in day­light rather than dis­cov­ered in blame.

Sec­ond, behav­ior changes. When ranges and risks are explic­it, teams pre-empt snarls: they line up approvals ear­li­er, spike unknowns, or reduce scope inten­tion­al­ly. You don’t get few­er sur­pris­es because you guessed bet­ter; you get few­er sur­pris­es because you looked better.

There’s also a norm shift. An »80% con­fi­dence« cul­ture nor­mal­izes small rene­go­ti­a­tions (»Weath­er turned; we’re tak­ing the ridge route«), which pre­vents big rene­go­ti­a­tions (»We’re lost«). That kind of micro-hon­esty is the dif­fer­ence between a hike and a rescue.

How we might put up better signs at work

On the trail, you scan a yel­low board and imme­di­ate­ly plan your snack stops. At work, we can do the same with­out turn­ing into a process cult.

Start by rephras­ing goals in out­come lan­guage. Instead of »Imple­ment export but­ton by Fri­day,« try »By Fri­day, a man­ag­er can export a CSV with­out ask­ing IT.« Now the sign points to a view, not a piece of wood. It also soft­ens the weird moral­ism around dead­lines; the aim is val­ue, not a checkbox.

Then talk like a trail guide about the route. Say out loud: »We’re at 2–4 days with ~80% con­fi­dence. Biggest risks: plat­form ad approval and trans­la­tions. If approvals lag, we launch EN-only with exist­ing cre­atives, then roll out local­ized ver­sions next week.« You’ve just cre­at­ed a time range, named the ter­rain, and offered a bailout path. Every­one knows what ›rain‹ looks like and where the hut is.

Hold short dai­ly map checks that are actu­al­ly about the map: »Did the ter­rain match the sign? What changed?» No sta­tus the­ater — just recal­i­bra­tion. After deliv­ery, do a micro-retro focused on esti­ma­tion: Were we inside our range? If not, what did we miss in the ter­rain? That’s ref­er­ence-class data for future signs, not ammo for future scolds.

Final­ly, align incen­tives with hon­esty. Reward ear­ly risk sur­fac­ing, not hero­ics at 23:58. If lead­ers only cel­e­brate the sprint that »slammed it by Fri­day,« the orga­ni­za­tion will learn to run down­hill in wet sneakers.

What to retire (gently)

Two pat­terns rarely sur­vive the moun­tains. The first is pre­tend­ing that a sto­ry-point veloc­i­ty, held con­stant like a heart­beat, can car­ry cal­en­dar com­mit­ments on its back. It feels pre­cise and becomes per­for­ma­tive. The sec­ond is the exec­u­tive date writ­ten in per­ma­nent mark­er before any­one has looked at a topo map. If you must set a date ear­ly, pair it with an explic­it scope-flex plan, not just a pep talk.

This doesn’t mean nev­er decid­ing. Hik­ers com­mit all the time — to a trail­head time, to a turn­around time, to a path. The trick is com­mit­ting with uncer­tain­ty rather than against it. »We turn back at 14:00 even if the sum­mit is close« is a bet­ter promise than »We will be at the sum­mit by 14:00.«

The quiet audacity of a yellow sign

What I love about those Swiss boards is their mix of con­fi­dence and humil­i­ty. They say, »Rough­ly this long, giv­en what we know. You’ll add your judg­ment.« That’s the pos­ture I want in teams. Less the­ater, more ter­rain. Less »trust me,« more »walk with me.«

If the work­place had bet­ter signs — time ranges, vis­i­ble risks, out­comes over out­puts — peo­ple would still hus­tle. But it would be the kind of hus­tle that gets you to a view you can actu­al­ly stand in, with enough breath left to enjoy it. And that, in the end, is why we go to the moun­tains — and why we go to work.