Same Plan, Ten Times
Find the two kinds of work your organisation plans as one.
What is made possible
A group puts its own work on a wall and sorts it by one question: would the same plan give the same result twice? Then it marks which of those pieces were planned as though it would. The finding is in the group’s own handwriting, so nobody has to make the case out loud. The wall does the arguing.
Five structural elements
Structuring invitation.
“Think of the actual work your organisation does. All of it, from fixing servers to merging teams. We’re going to sort it, twice, and see what the wall says.”
Space and materials.
A wall with two zones marked in tape. Sticky notes, pens, red dot stickers. Room for everyone to stand at the wall together.
Participation distribution.
Everyone writes, everyone sorts, everyone dots, and nobody’s stickies carry more weight than anybody else’s. The facilitator asks two questions and otherwise stays out of it. Eight people up; below that the wall is too quiet to argue.
Group configuration.
Alone, then pairs, then foursomes, then everyone.
Steps and time allocation
- 2 min
Intro. Give the invitation. Point at the two zones without explaining them; the sort question comes later. Say once, plainly, that some of the work going on this wall was planned by people standing at it, and that this isn’t that kind of exercise.
- 4 min
Write alone. Real pieces of work, one per sticky. Fix a server, launch a product, restructure a department, merge two teams. Specific, not hypothetical.
- 5 min
Pairs. Combine, cut duplicates, keep the best eight.
- 15 min
The sort. Foursomes at the wall, on the question this one is named after: if you did this ten times with the same plan, would you get the same result every time? Left zone, yes. Right zone, no, it depends how people respond. Two minutes of argument for the borderline ones, then they go where the foursome lands. Draw a line under any sticky that used the full two minutes; the wall should remember what was fought over.
- 8 min
Second pass. Nothing moves. A different question: when your organisation last did this, was there a plan with a promised end point and a date? If yes, red dot.
- 12 min
Stand back. Everyone. Ask “what do you notice about where the dots are?”, then say nothing and let it get uncomfortable. Before anybody answers out loud, everyone writes one noticing on a slip. Then round the room, read them out, no commentary.
- 9 min
Live inside it. Foursomes. Take a dotted sticky from the right zone that you’re currently living inside. What does its plan pretend that everyone at this wall knows isn’t true? Then look at the right zone again: is anything there working without a plan, and who is making that happen? Before you leave, tell one person outside this room what you named.
Call it an hour once people have moved about.
Practice insights
- Tips
The sort question has to stay that concrete. “Is this predictable?” lets people answer with their self-image instead of their experience. The argument is half the point; the timebox stops it becoming all of it. Dots in the left zone are fine, dots belong there; the finding is the right zone collecting just as many. The silence after the stand-back question is yours to hold, and you’re the one most likely to fill it. If the right zone comes back clean, let it stand: either an honest organisation or a sort that went wrong, and either way the wall wins.
Someone will ask why there is no middle zone for work that’s hard but knowable. Because the question doesn’t need one: a rocket launch is about as hard as work gets and it still lands on the cross. Simple and complicated both give you the same result twice, which is all the sort is asking. The other reason is that a middle zone is where the argument goes to die, since hard-but-knowable is the flattering answer and given the option the wall fills up with it.
- Riffs and variations
For a group that has read the book, name the zones at the end. Left is the catapult and the ball. Right is the pigeon.
- Practical applications
Before annual planning, or at the kick-off of anything with transformation in the title. Retrospectives that keep concluding the plan was fine and the people weren’t.
- Optional string
Carry each foursome’s chosen sticky into 15% Solutions (opens in a new tab), or into Creative Destruction (TRIZ) (opens in a new tab): how would we guarantee this fails, and which of those are we already doing?
Where it came from
The official repertoire already sorts work this way in Agreement-and-Certainty Matrix (opens in a new tab), which maps challenges by how much people agree and how much is known. This one asks a blunter question and puts the answer on a wall.