Before the session
- Read the overview yourself and note which areas the room is most likely to pick, so you can push the discussion toward neglected ones.
- If you run a classroom, check the dashboard for who finished the reading; ask two or three finishers beforehand to come with a chosen area.
- Have the crux exercise and the theory-of-change exercise open to structure the middle blocks.
Agenda
Times are a running clock for a 45-minute session.
Warm-up: the map (0:00–0:10)
List on the whiteboard every area of control work the room can recall from the reading, unaided. Then open the reading's contents on the shared screen and fill the gaps together; mark which areas nobody remembered.
Theory-of-change rounds (0:10–0:25)
Each participant picks one area — no two participants may pick the same one until every area has an owner. Ninety seconds per speaker, in the shape of the theory-of-change exercise: what does this work produce, who uses it, and what failure does it prevent?
Prompts:
- "What failure happens in the world where nobody does this work?"
- If a speaker describes activity instead of impact: "That's what the work is — what does it change?"
Crux hunt (0:25–0:40)
Vote by hand count for the three areas the room found most compelling. For each of the three, the group names the crux — as in the crux exercise — that would most raise or lower that area's priority if it resolved; write each crux next to its area. Close by asking which crux could actually be resolved within a year, and by whom.
Prompts:
- "If this crux resolved against the area, would anyone here still work on it?"
Wrap-up (0:40–0:45)
Ask each participant: "If you had three months to contribute to one area on this board, which one, and what is the first thing you would build?" One sentence each; collect the answers — they are good seeds for project matching later in the track.
After the session
- Post the whiteboard photo (areas + cruxes) to your group's channel.
- On the classroom dashboard, check that participants moved on to the next module during the week; this short module is where cohorts most often stall.