01Weeks 1–2 · FOUNDATION™ · Face Reality
Make it safe to be wrong in the room
Tier 1 · Absence of Trust → Vulnerability-based trust
Vulnerability-based trust is the base tier and the one thing a team cannot fake. The work is not a trust exercise; it is the leader going first, repeatedly, with real exposure.
Runs alongside: Individual phase 01 — noticing the pattern while it is happening.
What the team does
- Open one standing meeting with a two-minute settling track, phones down, before the hardest item.
- One round, one sentence each: what I am protecting in this conversation. The leader answers first and answers honestly.
- Each member names their DISC style and the one thing about their style that is hardest for the others to work with — style as a way into vulnerability, never as an excuse.
System change that ships
A standing five-minute slot in one recurring meeting where risk, error and bad news are reported without consequence — owned by the leader, minuted, kept even in a good week.
Read the room's pattern, not the person's: which habitual response the meeting rewards. A team that punishes exposure is a system finding, not a character finding.
Evidence the phase is closed
Four consecutive weeks the slot was used, and one instance of a mistake surfaced early that would previously have surfaced late.
Practice, exercises and reading for this phase
02Weeks 3–4 · LEAD™ · decision quality and accountability
Have the argument in the room
Tier 2 · Fear of Conflict → Unfiltered, productive debate
Artificial harmony is the expensive kind. The team practises unfiltered debate on the issue while keeping the relationship intact — which is only possible once tier one holds.
Runs alongside: Individual phase 02 — interrupting the practised response.
What the team does
- Name the one topic the team has been avoiding, and schedule it as a working item with a stated decision date.
- Before each debate, one person argues the strongest version of the view they disagree with.
- Rule for the session: argue the idea, name the interest, no history. The facilitator stops history, not heat.
System change that ships
Written decision rights for the contested area: who decides, who is consulted, who is informed — circulated, not implied.
Under load, teams either escalate or go quiet. Note which way this room goes and design the format against it.
Evidence the phase is closed
One avoided topic closed with a dated decision, and a decision-rights line any member can quote back the same way.
Practice, exercises and reading for this phase
03Weeks 5–6 · SIMPLIFY™ · capacity and standards
Leave with one version of the decision
Tier 3 · Lack of Commitment → Clarity and buy-in
Ambiguity is where commitment and accountability both fail. The team practises stating the decision out loud, in the room, in the words each member will repeat to their own team.
Runs alongside: Individual phase 03 — taking the cost out of the operating rhythm.
What the team does
- Last ten minutes of every meeting: one person states the decision as they will repeat it. Anyone who would say it differently says so then.
- Every decision leaves with an owner, a date and who is informed by Friday.
- Peer-to-peer accountability, once: each member asks one colleague for one behaviour they want continued and one they want stopped.
System change that ships
One published standard and one cadence for the work the team keeps re-litigating — what good looks like, and when it is reviewed, by someone other than the leader.
Silence at the close is not agreement unless the team has agreed it is. Make that contract explicit.
Evidence the phase is closed
Three consecutive meetings closed with a stated decision, owner and date, and no decision reopened without new information.
Practice, exercises and reading for this phase
04Weeks 7–8 · ARC™ · Analyze · Refine · Commit
Hold each other to the result
Tier 5 · Inattention to Results → Collective focus on outcomes
The apex tier: collective results ahead of individual status and functional turf. This phase converts eight weeks of behaviour into something the operating cadence keeps doing — ARC™: Analyze, Refine, Commit.
Runs alongside: Individual phase 04 — making the practice renewable.
What the team does
- Re-take the team read and compare movement tier by tier. Never average the tiers.
- Review the scoreboard against what the team actually did, not what it intended.
- Name one collective result the whole team is accountable for, with one shared measure.
System change that ships
The team's practice and its measure live on the existing renewal board with a review date inside a meeting that already exists — never a new meeting.
A team that reverts under the next quarter's load has an architecture finding, not a discipline problem. Log it and re-run the read.
Evidence the phase is closed
A before-and-after tier read, one collective measure on the scoreboard, and a dated review owned by name.
Practice, exercises and reading for this phase
