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Make this yours. Duplicate this page into your own Notion workspace, fill in the five decisions at the top, then adjust the timings to your session. Use the Duplicate option in the page menu, top right. Tick the blocks off as you run them.
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A half-day shape for ten to sixteen people, roughly three and a half hours. Built to be run from a phone or a printout, not read in advance. Adjust the numbers freely. Keep the order.
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The thing that decides whether this works. Not the activities. The first fifteen minutes, and whether you were honest in them about what is actually open.
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The one question this session answers
Write it on a wall. If you cannot write it, the session is not ready.
What is genuinely open
What is fixed, and why
Who is in the room, and why each one is here
Frontline staff, people who use the service, operations, and somebody who can make a decision.
What happens to the output
Who sees it, by when, and what they will do with it.
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A room of managers is a workshop about a service, not a co-design of one. If you cannot get frontline staff and real users in, say so and call it something else.
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Use the board at the bottom of this page to work through it live. The summary is here so you can see the shape at a glance.
0:00 Open honestly
0:15 Ground everyone in the same reality
0:35 Where it hurts
1:05 Share back and cluster
1:25 Break, a real one
1:40 Design into the gap
2:20 Second share back
2:45 Test it against reality
3:10 Close with commitments
The highest-value twenty minutes of the day is almost always the one where the room corrects your map of the service.
Somebody dominates
Move to written first, spoken second, for the next activity. Costs nothing, changes who gets heard.
Nobody talks
The question is too big. Narrow it to one step, or ask about the last time it went wrong.
Somebody attacks the premise
Let them, briefly, in front of everyone. Write the objection on the wall as an open item.
Staff are performing for their manager
Split them. If you cannot, go anonymous for the difficult activity and say plainly why.
It is going too well
Be suspicious. Consensus this fast usually means the hard constraint has not been named. Name it yourself.
You are running late
Cut the second share back, never the reality test.