I also often say "this is the scope right now but we can cut portions of this if we need more time. These are the critical elements that we need before the deadline. But the rest of this stuff is us using this opportunity to not ship a pile of garbage we can't support. If we have to do that, we'll fix it as soon as the deadline passes." But also I actually have the mandate to do that.

The crisis is orchestrated around someone in the middle layer who thinks they get fired if they don't deliver anything this quarter.

> I've told my direct reports something similar. "Don't stress out about this."

I too do that often to my direct reports. Not worth the stress. But of course it helps to pretend that one is working hard and stressed :) .