You're trying to tell whether a situation is still fixable, or whether the people in it have already stopped believing it can be fixed.

The inscription over Hell's gate lists what Hell is made of, then lands the point: "All hope abandon, ye who enter in." The horror of Hell is not the pain — it's that the pain no longer leads anywhere. Hope, the ability to picture a way out, is the first thing damned. The tell in life is the same: a team that stops proposing fixes isn't short on ideas. It has already abandoned the hope that fixes work.