Workshops
Bring it to your team
Mental models stick when a team uses them on its own work. These formats need no preparation beyond this site: from ten minutes in a stand-up to a full session on a real decision.
Model of the week
The Autonomy SliderGive AI as much autonomy as you can verify quickly — and let people move the slider up as trust grows.
- 1
Model of the week
10 minutes, in any team meeting
- Open this week's model and read the one-line versions for executives and engineers aloud.
- Ask one person where they have seen it at work, for better or worse.
- Put the first question to something the team is working on now.
Post the link in your team channel every Monday; the model of the week changes then.
- 2
One-model workshop
45 minutes
- Five minutes: show the diagram (download it as PNG for a slide) and explain the idea.
- Ten minutes: read the example scenario together. Where would it have played out differently here?
- Fifteen minutes: apply the three questions to one real system or decision.
- Ten minutes: read "How it misleads you". Where could we misuse it?
- Five minutes: agree one action or experiment, and who owns it.
One model per session. Depth beats breadth.
- 3
Playbook session for a real decision
60 to 90 minutes
- Pick the playbook that fits the moment and switch on worksheet mode.
- Write the decision in a sentence at the top, so everyone answers the same question.
- Work through the steps, about ten minutes each. A scribe types the answers into the worksheet.
- Download the Markdown and turn it into an ADR or a decision paper.
Invite at least one person who disagrees with the leading option.
- 4
Symptom clinic
30 minutes, for an architecture community of practice
- Everyone brings one problem they are seeing, in a sentence.
- Match each to the symptoms page, or to the nearest one.
- For the two most common, discuss the first model listed and what it suggests.
- Each person leaves with one experiment to try before the next clinic.
Collect the problems that matched nothing. They are candidates for new models.
- 5
Design review warm-up
5 minutes before a review
- Choose three models from the "Reviewing a solution design" playbook that fit the design.
- Copy their questions into the review invitation, so the author can prepare.
- Open the review by agreeing which of the questions matter most.
Reviews go better when the author has seen the questions first.