Read the situation before you push on it.
Four moves for plans that meet people who answer back. Each is set out to run in a staff meeting or a planning afternoon, with the questions to ask, sheets to print and one school’s semester to show what comes out. Run them on a plan you already have. They work on its parts, not on a new framework.
The four
What each move is for
Move 1 · Decides which kind of thinking fits
Profiling the situation
Sort the plan into parts to plan and parts to probe
- Time
- 90 min
- You leave with
- The plan split into parts to plan and parts to probe, and a dated one-page profile on six dials
Move 2 · Finds what the situation is already inclined to do
Reading the disposition
Find out what the situation will do without you, then decide what to push
- Time
- 2 hours
- You leave with
- A map of the ties that matter, one or two named tendencies, the slow variables to watch, and where small moves would land
Move 3 · Learns by acting, without spending the future
Probing with options open
Try several small things at once, and decide in advance what would stop them
- Time
- 2 hours
- You leave with
- A direction statement, three to five probes with written criteria, and an option audit that names every one-way door
Move 4 · Keeps the analysis honest
Holding the frame lightly
Check what your model leaves out, and who pays if it is wrong
- Time
- 2 hours
- You leave with
- The conclusions that survive several models, a note on how each measure will be gamed, who is outside the frame, and a working frame with its revisit trigger
In sequence
How the four run together
Run them in order the first time. Profiling decides which parts of the plan need the other three at all. Reading the disposition tells you what those parts will do if left alone. Probing acts on what the reading found. Holding the frame lightly checks the whole thing before anyone reports it upward.
Start with profiling, even if you are short of time. It is the cheapest move, and it takes work away: most plans are part complicated, and those parts get a project plan and leave the room. If nothing passes the three-condition test, stop there. The other three moves are not needed.
Skip a move when its output already exists. A team that has just mapped its relationships for another reason can go straight to probing. A small decision that is easy to undo rarely needs the full fourth move; a premortem and one question about who pays will do. Never skip the fourth move on a target, a dashboard or anything reported outside the school.
The full set takes about seven and a half hours of meeting time, spread over a term: profiling in the first week, the reading before any intervention is designed, probing once the reading is done, and the fourth move whenever a number is about to travel. The probes themselves run for four to six weeks between the third move and the fourth.
Worksheets
Every sheet in this strand
Each one is on its move’s page, ready to print on A4.
- Profiling the situationThe three-condition testSorts each part of the plan into parts to plan properly and parts to probe.
- Profiling the situationThe six-dial profileSets the situation on six dials, with the evidence for each setting and the response it implies.
- Reading the dispositionThe ties that matterRecords the few relationships that could change the result, and what state each one is in.
- Reading the dispositionReading the dispositionTurns the map into a judgement about where to put effort and where to hold back.
- Probing with options openThe probe portfolioSets out three to five probes, each with what would spread it and what would stop it, agreed before any of them starts.
- Probing with options openThe option auditNames every commitment the plan cannot easily undo, what it gives up, and where it sits on the optionality grid.
- Holding the frame lightlyThree models, one situationShows which conclusions survive across several readings, and which rest on one.
- Holding the frame lightlyMeasure the measure, and who paysChecks one measure for what it will teach people to do, and names who carries the cost if the frame is wrong.
Across the toolkit