Making it routine

A move that worked once in a workshop will not be used again unless something makes it happen. This move turns the most useful one into a short, named question, written into a meeting or a form that already exists. It takes forty minutes to set up and two minutes each time after that.

Ways of thinking: the four moves

Move 4 of 4 · Makes the move repeatable

Shrink the move that worked to one question, and give it a home.

Time: 40 min
People: 3–8, including whoever chairs the meeting or owns the template
You need: The worksheets from earlier moves, the current agenda and proposal template, the routine card, the six-week log
You leave with: A named routine with one question, a home, an owner for one term and a review date

Needs some practice

The idea

What the move is, and why it works

What the move is

Making it routine means taking a move that changed a decision and shrinking it to something a team does every time, without a facilitator. In practice that is one question, with a name, asked at a fixed point: the second item of the planning meeting, or a box on the proposal form.

It is the least glamorous move in the strand and the one that decides whether the other three last. Without it, frames get named once, in a good session, and the next proposal arrives written the old way.

The idea behind it

Ritchhart, Church and Morrison built Making Thinking Visible on the idea that thinking becomes teachable when it becomes routine: a short structure with a name, used again and again on different content until it is how the class thinks. Ritchhart’s later work on cultures of thinking applies the same idea to staff.

Atul Gawande’s account of checklists in surgery and aviation adds the design rules. A good routine is short, used at a natural pause, worded precisely, and tested in real use. It does not try to capture everything. It catches the one error experts make when they are busy.

Why it works

Routines survive staff turnover and workshops do not. A question written into the agenda gets asked by whoever chairs the meeting, whether or not they were at the training. A name helps more than you would expect. People ask for routines by name: “has anyone done a frame check on this?”

It also fails in a known way, which helps. Routines outlive the thinking behind them. The answer goes into the box every time and stops meaning anything. So the routine needs an owner, a review date and a written rule for spotting when it has gone hollow.

When

When to reach for it, and when not to

Use it when

A move worked once and nobody has used it since.
The same kind of proposal keeps arriving in the same frame.
The person who ran the earlier sessions is leaving, or about to be busy.
There is a meeting or form that every proposal already passes through.

Skip it when

None of the earlier moves has changed a decision yet. Making a move routine before it has worked spreads a ritual.
The team already has more standing items than it can do properly. Drop one first.
There is no regular meeting or form to attach it to. A routine with no home will not happen.
The routine would be imposed on a team that was not in the earlier sessions. Run naming with them first.

Before

Before anyone is in the room

Collect the worksheets from the earlier moves, and mark the one that changed a decision.
Get the current agenda of the meeting and the current proposal template.
Talk to whoever chairs the meeting and agree that a two-minute item can be added.
Print the routine card and the six-week log.
Put the review date in the diary, six weeks out, before the session starts.

Steps

How to run it

7 steps, about 40 min in all. The questions in quotation marks are meant to be read out as they are.

01
Pick the move that changed a decision
5 min
Look back at the earlier sessions and ask which move changed what the group actually did. That is the one to make routine. If none did, stop and run the earlier moves again. A move that never worked will not start working because it is on the agenda.
Ask the room
- Which of the moves changed a decision, not just a discussion?
- What exactly was the moment it changed?
Watch for Picking the move people enjoyed most. Enjoyment is a poor guide.
02
Shrink it to one question
10 min
Write the move as a single question someone can ask and answer in under two minutes. Draft three versions and read each one aloud. Choose the one a new member of staff could ask without explanation.
Ask the room
- If we could ask only one question every time, what would it be?
- Could someone who was not at the earlier sessions ask this?
- Can it be answered in two minutes?
Watch for Questions that grow clauses. If it needs “and” twice, it is two questions.
03
Give it a name
5 min
Give the routine a short, plain name people can ask for. Two or three words. Avoid terms from the earlier sessions that only the people in the room will know.
Ask the room
- What would we call this in a corridor?
- Would someone new know what it means from the name alone?
Watch for Clever names. The best ones are dull and descriptive.
04
Attach it to something that already happens
8 min
Decide where the question lives. The best home is a point every relevant proposal already passes: a standing agenda item, a box on the proposal template, the first slide of a planning presentation. Write the wording in exactly as it will appear.
Ask the room
- Where does every proposal like this already pass through?
- Who will see the question there, and when?
- What happens if a proposal arrives with the box empty?
Watch for Creating a new meeting for the routine. A new meeting is the first thing cut when the term gets busy.
05
Write down how it will go hollow
5 min
Agree what a hollow answer looks like for this routine, and write it on the card. For a frame check it is usually the same frame named every time, or a one-word answer with no second frame tried. Whoever owns the routine checks for it.
Ask the room
- What would a lazy answer to this question look like?
- How would we know, by week six, that it had become paperwork?
Watch for Skipping this step because it feels pessimistic. It is the step that keeps the routine alive.
06
Give it an owner and a review date
5 min
Name one person who owns the routine for one term. They make sure it is asked, keep the log and bring it to the review. At six weeks the group decides to keep it, change it or drop it. Then ownership rotates.
Ask the room
- Who owns this until the end of term?
- When do we review it, and who will be there?
- What would make us drop it?
Watch for The keenest person always owning it. Rotate, or the routine becomes theirs and leaves with them.
07
Run it once, now
2 min
Before the session ends, ask the question of a real proposal that is coming up. Time it. If it takes much more than two minutes, or nobody can answer it, rewrite it now.
Ask the room
- Let us try it on the next proposal we have. What is the answer?
- Did that take two minutes, and did it tell us anything?
Watch for Everyone on their best behaviour because the facilitator is watching. The real test is week four.

Worksheets

Two sheets to print and fill in

Each one prints on its own sheet of A4. The grey line under each is an example from the worked situation.

Ways of thinking · Making it routine · Worksheet

Routine card

Writes the routine down once, with its question, home, owner and failure rule, so it outlasts the people who designed it.

Team

Owner this term

Start date

Review on

Name

Two or three plain words

The question, word for word

Where it lives

Agenda item, template box, first slide

What a good answer sounds like

What a hollow answer looks like

At review: keep, change or drop, and why

Example Name: the frame check. Question: “Which way of thinking wrote this proposal, and what would one other way ask first?” Lives: item 2 of the curriculum planning meeting, and a box on the proposal form.

geraldajam.com/work/toolkit

Ways of thinking · Making it routine · Worksheet

Six-week log

Records each time the routine is used, so the review rests on what happened and not on memory.

Routine

Owner

Weeks covered

Date	Proposal	Frame named	Other frame and its question	Did it change anything?What, or no

Example Week 3. Secondary 2 Science practicals on a carousel. Named: timetabling again. Other: critical, asking what the carousel is meant to improve. Changed: the proposal now states its success measure.

geraldajam.com/work/toolkit

Worked example

The frame check in curriculum planning

One afternoon a week for Secondary 1

After the two trial afternoons, the curriculum group agreed that naming the frame had done the most work. It had changed the first line of the proposal and everything that followed from it. Ms Chen and Mr Hafiz met the chair of the fortnightly curriculum planning meeting for 40 minutes to make it routine.

The move They picked naming the frame, with one restatement from switching attached. Naming had produced the line about purpose. A single restatement had produced the trial afternoon.
The question Three drafts. The first had four clauses. The second asked people to restate the proposal in all four ways, which takes ten minutes. The third stuck: “Which way of thinking wrote this proposal, and what would one other way ask first?” Dr Ong, asked by email, said she would like to see the answer on proposals that schools bring to her.
The name and the home They called it the frame check. It went in as item 2 on the agenda of every curriculum planning meeting, for any new proposal, and as a box on the proposal form, so the author answers it before the meeting instead of during it.
The hollow answer They wrote: “The same frame named three meetings running, or the second half left as ‘n/a’.” Mr Hafiz pointed out that most proposals reaching that meeting are about time, so “timetabling” would come up often. They agreed that was fine as long as the other frame was real.
Owner and review Ms Chen owns it for Term 2, then it passes to an HOD. Review at six weeks, with the log on the table.
The awkward part At the third meeting, a proposal to move Secondary 2 Science practicals onto a carousel arrived with the box filled in as “timetabling / critical” and nothing else. The chair asked for the critical question itself. It turned out to be what the carousel was meant to improve, which nobody had written down. The check took four minutes, not two, and changed the proposal.

What came out of it

Six weeks in, the log had seven entries. Four were real frame checks, two were one-word answers, and one changed a proposal. The group kept the routine and changed the form, so the second box now asks for a question instead of the name of a way of thinking. Ownership passes after the June holidays.

Signs

How to tell it is working, and when it has gone hollow

Working

The question gets asked when the person who designed it is absent.
People ask for it by name, including people who were not at the earlier sessions.
The log shows at least one proposal changed in the first six weeks.
Answers vary. Different proposals get different frames.

Gone hollow

The same frame is named every time and nobody comments.
The box on the form is filled in with one word.
The item drifts to the end of the agenda, then into any other business.
Nobody remembers who owns it, and the review date passes.

Variations

Other ways to run it

In one line

If you cannot get a slot on an agenda, add the question as a single line at the top of the proposal template. It is weaker, because nobody discusses the answer, but it makes the author think before the meeting.

On your own

Write the question inside the cover of your planning notebook and ask it of your own plans before you share them. Keep your own six-week log. It is surprising how often your answer is the same.

With students

Turn it into a classroom routine. Before a project starts, students write which way of thinking their plan uses and what one other way would ask. Arjun’s class could open each project afternoon with it. Project Zero routines are built for exactly this kind of reuse.

What to do with what you made

Run the review at six weeks with the log on the table, and decide to keep, change or drop. If the routine is working, consider a second one for large decisions, built from holding two at once. Rotate ownership at the end of term, whatever happens.

Naming the frame The move most routines start from. Rerun it in full when the routine has gone hollow.The four ways compared A reference for whoever has to answer the second half of the question.

Tools

Tools, templates and guides worth having

Published elsewhere, and worth the time.

Routine
Project Zero thinking routines
From Ritchhart, Church and Morrison’s Making Thinking Visible (2011). The model for short, named routines that work on any content. Several transfer straight to staff meetings.
Guide
The checklist method
From Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto (2009). How to write a short routine people will use: keep it brief, put it at a natural pause, test it in real conditions.
Toolkit
Liberating Structures
Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2013) collect thirty-odd meeting formats. Many work as standing items in under twenty minutes.
Method
WRAP
Heath and Heath’s four-step process from Decisive (2013): widen your options, reality-test your assumptions, attain distance, prepare to be wrong. Its first step asks much the same question as the frame check.

Reading

Where it comes from

Start with the first on the list.

Ritchhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. (2011). Making Thinking Visible. Jossey-Bass.
The model for short, named, repeatable thinking routines.
Ritchhart, R. (2015). Creating Cultures of Thinking. Jossey-Bass.
How routines spread among staff, not only among students.
Gawande, A. (2009). The Checklist Manifesto. Metropolitan Books.
Why short routines beat expertise under pressure, and how to write one people will use.
City, E. A., Elmore, R. F., Fiarman, S. E., & Teitel, L. (2009). Instructional Rounds in Education. Harvard Education Press.
A worked example of a staff routine that has lasted.

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