Beige Flags Pink Flags Red Flags

Up on yer must-know terms for 2023?

One such phrase new to me is the beige flag.

I reckon we're familiar with the red flag.

The alarm that shouts, "stop!"

Yet now spreading from the often hazardous world of dating into all other fields of relationships are flags of colour beige, and pink.

Here's one such definition of these pair currently given google prominence;

"While pink flags make us uncertain about a person as we piece them together, beige flags essentially stop us from piecing anything at all."

Interesting that the colours chosen don't feature amber. Perhaps this proves a useful alternative traffic light panel?

Although I do wonder whether rather than the traditional ladder of a sequence, this treatment is maybe more hierarchical. A simple triangle. With beige and pink at the base level, with red apex atop.

Let's take each in turn. In terms of deal qualification and forecastability.

Red flags are showstoppers. Such a key element that is required for us to prevail as per our ongoing process - that pattern of events I bang on about that when in train practically guarantee our success - is missing, has been rebuffed and unlikely to magically appear that we must not continue. For all that can happen at best is for us to finish second. Which is nowhere.

Pink flags feel like warning signs that could morph into showstoppers fairly easily. When hazy white noise evaporates leaving only the shock of red block. Prospect-side proponents do not readily put themselves forward as our or project Champions. Nailing down either issue resolution urgency, core ownership or wider legacy of fix proves somewhat elusive, woolly or delayable. Any pace of moving stances from the dull, ordinary or generic feels glacial.

Beige flags involve undercurrents of the unsure. Stemming from equating the tone to being boring, bland and having little to get excited about. Gaps in our case that we still have chance to plug. Prospects claim interest. Yet do they really feign it? Commitment feels fragile, listless, ephemeral. Communication blows hot then cold, mainly chilled. Agreed actions go uncomplete, hard data revealed as soft, oscillating divergent opinions surround us.

This nuance may at first feel strained in our space. Being more explicit, a key bid standing difference between the pair for me can perhaps chime from the discordant rhymes;

pink is vague, beige don't sync.