Building norms that welcome constructive challenge
To create a team culture where questioning and challenging ideas is expected and valued. Deliberately cultivate norms: • Explicitly discuss and agree that constructive challenge…
Thinking T1
Critical Thinking
Ability to reflect on the validity of ideas, evidence, assumptions and plans.
Tools for this skill (15)
Click Bang you`re dead
A guessing game with a hidden rule: the leader points around the circle saying 'click' or 'bang' in a way that suggests a pattern, then declares someone dead. The secret is that…
Congregation of Believers
One person testifies for five minutes to an 'article of faith' they used to hold and have begun to doubt — unconditional love, hard work pays, the goodness of government — while…
Critical Thinking Deep Dive
Sustainability challenges often come with strong opinions and pressure to act fast. Critical thinking helps teams slow down, examine assumptions, and make more responsible decis…
Designated challenger role
To ensure important proposals receive genuine critical examination. When discussing significant decisions or plans, assign one team member the role of designated challenger. Thi…
Five Minutes With Structure
Improvise a short performance of about five minutes with at least three people in it. One person sits out with paper and pen, watches particularly closely, analyses and takes no…
Ladder of Inference
Argyris's classic made practical: walk a charged conclusion back down the ladder — from the action taken, through beliefs, interpretations, and selected data, to the observable…
Navigating Uncertainty
A structured critical-thinking approach for deciding under uncertainty, built on evidence-based practice: groups work a complex decision through explicit steps — what is known,…
Pre-Mortem Analysis
Before finalizing a significant plan, the team imagines it is months later and the initiative has failed completely — then everyone writes down why. Causes are clustered and the…
Progressive assumption testing
To test critical assumptions before committing fully to a plan. When facing a significant decision: 1. Identify the 2-3 most critical assumptions (15 min). What has to be true f…
Self Guided Assessment
Learners co-create the assessment criteria for an unconventional assignment: negotiating what quality means, defending judgments, and owning the standards they will be measured…
The Assumption Surface
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Critical Thinking (VCoL collection): When examining a plan or proposal, ask: 'What has to be true for this to work?' Identify 2-3 key as…
The Evidence Question
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Critical Thinking (VCoL collection): When you hear a claim or notice yourself accepting something as true, pause and ask silently or alo…
The Source Consideration
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Critical Thinking (VCoL collection): When information comes to you, pause briefly and ask: 'Where does this come from? What perspective…
What, So What, Now What? (W³)
A debrief ladder in three deliberate rungs: first only facts and observations (What?), then meaning, patterns and implications (So What?), and only then action (Now What?). Smal…
Also develops it (32)
After-action reviews
To extract learning from completed projects while experience is still fresh. Following completion of a project or significant event, gather involved team members. Address four q…
Agreement & Certainty Matrix
Groups sort their challenges onto a 2×2: how much do we agree about what to do, and how certain are we about cause and effect? Simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic work eac…
Analyzing and addressing power dynamics in collaboration
Power dynamics inevitably shape collaboration. Unexamined dynamics can make 'collaboration' into disguised hierarchy. Before significant collaborative work (especially with exte…
Calculated risk-taking practices
Significant achievement requires risk. Collective courage involves calculated risk-taking—risks that are proportionate to potential benefits, informed by analysis, and bounded.…
Clothes Check
A two-session investigation of one's own wardrobe: count what you own and how often it's worn; take your most- and least-worn pieces and research their materials, brands, and co…
Collaborative mapping of interconnections
To make visible the connections between factors relevant to a challenge. When facing a complex challenge, dedicate time to mapping the system together. Start by identifying key…
Constructive disagreement practices
Disagreement is inevitable and can be productive or destructive. Establish norms that make disagreement safe and productive: • Focus on issues rather than people—critique ideas,…
Creating New Metaphors
Groups examine the entrenched metaphors framing a complex issue (war on drugs, race to the top, footprint) and invent new metaphors that open different perspectives and options…
Creative Destruction (aka TRIZ)
Serious fun with a subversive question: "what could we do to reliably achieve the WORST possible result?" Groups list that anti-recipe, then — the uncomfortable step — mark ever…
Design StoryBoards
Meeting design as explicit craft: before an important session, sketch its arc frame by frame — purpose, participants, and which structure fills each block of time — the way film…
Ensuring diverse perspectives shape decisions
Inclusion is not merely about participation but about influence. Diverse perspectives must actually shape decisions. Examine how decisions actually get made. Who has voice in si…
Headline
Each person draws a newspaper headline the leader has cut out and pasted up, and invents the event they think lies behind it, telling it to the group. Once everyone has, they pa…
I Say
Instructions are only to be followed when they begin with 'I say…'. 'I say sit down' means sit down; a bare 'sit down' means stay put, and anyone who moves is out. The game itse…
Iceberg Model
The systems-thinking staple: start from a visible event and dig down through the layers beneath it — patterns and trends, systemic structures, and the mental models and paradigm…
Integrating resource consciousness into the team's work outputs
The team's greatest environmental impact may not be its own consumption but the consequences of what it produces, recommends, or decides. Build habits of asking about resource a…
Intentional pauses
To slow down habitual autopilot responses and create space for more considered engagement. Introduce intentional pauses at key moments: • Before an important discussion, take 30…
Learning from setbacks rather than being defeated by them
Setbacks are inevitable. The question is whether they defeat the team or become opportunities for learning. When setbacks occur, create structured opportunities to learn from th…
Listing Exercise
Worked alone with paper and pen: the leader asks a question and each person lists every answer they have to it. The sheet's examples are what it means to be a good friend, and a…
Min Specs
Groups draft the maximum list of dos and don'ts for a purpose, then ruthlessly test each item: "if we broke this rule, could we still achieve the purpose?" Everything that survi…
Multiple Perspectives Round
Effective sustainability work requires understanding diverse stakeholder perspectives. This helps teams consider how decisions affect different groups and find approaches that w…
Pattern identification discussions
To build the team's ability to notice recurring patterns across situations. Periodically hold a discussion specifically focused on patterns: Internal patterns: What situations k…
Perspective contrast exercises
To sharpen awareness of how different perspectives frame the same issue. When facing a dilemma with different legitimate perspectives, assign small groups to deliberately adopt…
Principles Walk-Around
The ten Liberating Structures principles — or a group's own espoused principles — are posted around the room; people walk, stand by one, and examine honestly where daily habits…
Process-focused debriefs
To build the habit of reflecting not just on outcomes but on processes. After significant meetings, decisions, or interactions, take 5-10 minutes to debrief not just what was de…
Ranking Exercise
Participants are given a theme or question and rank options — freely or from a given set — by which is most important, most common, most dangerous. The sheet's own example build…
Second-order effects questioning
To build the habit of considering not just direct effects but downstream consequences. When discussing proposed actions, regularly ask: 'And then what?' If we do this, what happ…
The Behaviour Researcher
The group agrees a setting and each person invents a character who belongs in it. One person leaves; the rest agree on a behaviour they will all share. The improvisation runs wi…
The Emotional Meeting
Four people hold a meeting on a question: numbers one and three are for it, two and four against, and each speaks for a few minutes in turn. Then the same meeting is run again w…
The Humble Mindset
Epistemic Recontextualisation in practice: confronted with new or challenging information (a video, a text), participants slow down and notice the emotions, beliefs, and assumpt…
The Reframe Game
One person outlines a problem — ideally a difficult conversation they face — and asks for reframes; the others offer different ways of seeing it, each speaking once before anyon…
Values emergence through decision-making
Discover actual values through examining decisions and patterns. Try monthly reviews of recent significant decisions, asking: What did we actually prioritize in this decision? W…
Wicked Questions
Groups articulate the paradoxes they must live with rather than solve, in the template "How is it that we are ___ and we are ___ simultaneously?" Naming both poles as true at on…