Week 5 facilitator guide: the case clinic

The problem this session solves: five weeks of frameworks are worthless if people cannot use them when the laws point in different directions. Real leadership calls never come labeled with the right framework. Tonight sits at the top of the course: judge and defend a position you did not choose, then construct your own move under conflicting constraints. Two real cases, anonymized from real teams, are read live and argued by assigned camps. Every participant then writes the move they would actually make, in 3 lines, and names the laws that decided it. The session ends with the public capstone commitment that starts each person's 30-day clock.

Pre-work to send: none. This session needs zero preparation from participants, and that is by design: the cases are read live and nothing is pre-assigned. What you do send mid-week: a reminder that the capstone plan is due Wednesday, two days before the clinic (plans without a real named problem get sent back), and a confirmation ping to the final teach-back pair. Check the submitted plans on Thursday and message anyone who has not submitted, privately.

Materials: slides (week-5-case-clinic.md), activity-board.html (duplicated in Canva; tonight it is one shared board, with a zone per camp and a commitment wall, not a frame per pair), worksheets.md (the case decision sheet, my commitment line, the day-30 checklist), the two case one-pagers you read live (from your case bank), the teach-back rubric, Zoom with two breakout rooms pre-assigned: camp A and camp B, half the cohort each. Before the session: compute the day-30 reassessment date (30 days after the latest plausible start date) and replace every [date] placeholder in the deck and the board.

Run of show (120 min)

• 0:00 to 0:15, final teach-back (slides "Tonight is judgment, not content" and "Final teach-back"). One minute of framing from the first slide: nothing to prepare tonight, you will argue an assigned side (camps are assigned, not chosen, and you may get the side your instinct disagrees with; that is the point), then write your own call. Then the sixth and last teach-back slot: the pair presents 8 minutes, both speak, then 7 minutes of structured discussion with the challenger, connector, and summarizer roles, one last time. Mechanics below.
• 0:15 to 0:20, camps and the case 1 brief (slides "Camps are assigned, not chosen" and "Case 1: the migration two teams refuse to adopt"). The camp framing already ran in the 0:00 opening, so the camps slide gets one line only: assigned, not chosen, and you may get the side your instinct disagrees with. Then read the case live, one page, 5 minutes, out loud; the read fills this slot, so add nothing else. Tell them what to listen for as you start: what has already been tried.
• 0:20 to 0:30, activity 1, prepare your camp (slides "Case 1: the laws in tension", "One migration, both tracks", "Activity 1: prepare your camp"). Do not spend slot time on the two framing slides: open the breakout rooms as soon as the read ends, then talk through the slides (30 seconds each) while people are moving to their rooms: Influence, Buy-In, and Timing do not point to the same move, and this case belongs to both tracks. Camp A builds the escalation path (take it up the chain), camp B builds the coalition path (win the leads without escalating); the assignment is also written on the board zones, case 1 frame. Start the 10-minute room timer as soon as the rooms open, mechanics below.
• 0:30 to 0:45, the structured debate (slide "The debate: 15 minutes, moderated"). Main room, you moderate: opening position from each camp (2 minutes each), one rebuttal each (90 seconds), then your cross-examination for the rest. Two rules, said out loud: attack the argument, not the person, and name the law or framework behind every claim.
• 0:45 to 0:50, activity 2, your move in 3 lines (slide "Activity 2: your move in 3 lines"). 5 minutes, silent, solo, everyone muted. Forget your camp. Write the move you would actually make, in 3 lines, plus the laws and frameworks that decided it. Worksheet 1 plus one sticky on the case 1 decision zone.
• 0:50 to 1:00, debrief (slide "Debrief: there is no answer key"). 3 to 4 people read their 3 lines. Map where the room split on the board. The line that closes it: the frameworks narrow your options, they do not make the call for you.
• 1:00 to 1:05, break (slide "Break").
• 1:05 to 1:10, the case 2 brief (slide "Case 2: the lead who will not delegate"). Announce the reversal in one line as you show the slide: camps are reversed from case 1. Then read the case live, one page, 5 minutes; the read fills this slot. Same listen-for line: what has already been tried.
• 1:10 to 1:20, activity 3, prepare the opposite camp (slides "Case 2: the laws in tension", "One deadline, both tracks", "Activity 3: prepare the opposite camp"). Say the same-rooms line first, before you open the rooms: same rooms, opposite style of side. The escalation camp from case 1 (camp A) now argues the deadline side (protect the deadline, fix delegation after), the coalition camp (camp B) now argues the confrontation side (confront the EM and force the handover now). Then, same pattern as activity 1: open the rooms and talk through the two framing slides (30 seconds each) while people are moving: Empowerment, Priorities, and Sacrifice pull in different directions, and both tracks have held work they should have handed over. Case 2 frame on the board. Start the 10-minute room timer as soon as the rooms open.
• 1:20 to 1:35, the case 2 debate (slide "Case 2 debate: 15 minutes, moderated"). Same rules as case 1: openings, one rebuttal each, your cross-examination.
• 1:35 to 1:40, activity 4, your move in 3 lines, again (slide "Activity 4: your move in 3 lines, again"). 5 minutes, silent, solo. Actual move for case 2 in 3 lines, plus the laws that decided it. Worksheet 1 plus the case 2 decision zone.
• 1:40 to 1:45, debrief (slide "Debrief: did your method change, or only the case?"). The blueprint gives case 2 the same anatomy in 40 minutes, so this debrief runs 5 minutes, not 10. Two or three people read their 3 lines. The question that matters: what stayed constant in how you decided? That is your leadership style, on paper.
• 1:45 to 1:53, capstone commitments (slide "Capstone commitments"). One line each, about 30 seconds per person: the behavior they will run for 30 days and the start date, copied exactly from the plan they submitted Wednesday. Each person also posts it as a sticky on the commitment wall (board zone 3), which stays visible. Say it plainly: the 30-day clock starts on the date you state right now.
• 1:53 to 2:00, close (slides "The succession staircase" and "Before you go"). The staircase retro-summarizes the whole course, then the take-home brief, the counts-as-done rule, the mentorship reminder, and the day-30 reassessment date. Script in the close section. Hard stop at 2:00.

Teaching talking points

• Tonight is judgment, not content. They have already learned all the frameworks; tonight tests how they use them. There is nothing new to teach, so resist the urge to teach.
• Camps are assigned, not chosen. Defending a position you did not pick shows you the strongest case against your own. Expect and welcome the discomfort of arguing against your instinct.
• Case 1, the laws in tension: Influence (no title will make these two leads move), Buy-In (they heard the migration; did they ever buy the engineer?), Timing (a right move at the wrong moment still fails). Three laws, and they do not point to the same move. That tension is the design, not a flaw in the case.
• Case 1 bridge line, spoken out loud: whether you lead a team of reports or lead technical direction without reports, this case is yours. The IC track runs on exactly this: scope grows through influence, not headcount. An EM's failed reorg fails the same way as this migration: people heard the idea, but they did not buy the person.
• Case 2, the laws in tension: Empowerment ("I can do it faster myself" is the anti-law, and this EM is doing exactly that), Priorities (absorbing everything means deciding nothing), Sacrifice (working every night for the deadline feels like dedication; is it leadership?).
• Case 2 bridge line, spoken out loud: ICs hoard the component only they understand, EMs hoard decisions. Same fear, same audit. Everyone in the room has held work they should have handed over.
• There is no answer key tonight, only defensible judgment. The frameworks narrow the options; they do not make the call. A 3-line move with no named law behind it is instinct, not judgment; a named law with no move is theory.
• After case 2: the interesting result is not the two answers, it is the constant method. Same room, opposite camps, different call; what stayed the same in how each person decided is their leadership style, on paper.
• The succession staircase (Maxwell, the law of legacy): achievement (you do great things yourself), success (you empower people to do great things with you), significance (you develop leaders who do great things), legacy (you put leaders in place who keep doing great things without you). Four weeks, four arcs, one staircase, and tonight's commitment is the next step on it.

Evidence round (weeks 2 to 4) and what replaces it tonight

The standard opening line from weeks 2 to 4: "Evidence round. Four to five of you share last week's artifact, 60 seconds each. Show the artifact itself, not a story about it. No artifact means not done." Tonight that round does not run: the week 4 artifact is the capstone plan, and it was submitted async on Wednesday, so the session opens with the final teach-back instead. The check still happens, just outside the live session: verify every plan is in before the call, send plans without a real named problem back before Friday, and message anyone missing privately. The public-commitment effect the round used to carry moves to the capstone commitments segment at 1:45: the plan on file plus the commitment stated out loud is the contract.

Final teach-back mechanics (one slot tonight)

The pair presents for 8 minutes, both speak: the framework or industry standard first, then an owned story, then where the law breaks or gets misused. Then 7 minutes of structured discussion with the three audience roles you assign at the top of the slot: one challenger (must push back on something), one connector (must link it to a previously covered law), one summarizer (closes with a 30-second synthesis). It is the last slot, so give the roles to three people who have not held them recently. Score the pair on the rubric during the discussion, not after the session.

Debate and breakout mechanics (you are solo)

• Two rooms only, camp A and camp B, pre-assigned in Zoom before the session, half the cohort each. With only two rooms you can visit both during each prep window.
• The same people stay in the same rooms for both cases; the positions flip, not the people. Say this explicitly at 1:10, it confuses people otherwise.
• Each camp posts argument stickies in its own zone on the shared board (case 1 frame for activity 1, case 2 frame for activity 3). The instruction is written on every zone, so a camp that missed the spoken brief can still act, and you can watch both rooms' progress from the board without entering.
• Camp prep: set the room timer to 10 minutes and start it as soon as the rooms open; the framing slides run while people move to their rooms, not before. Broadcast at 5 minutes ("your opening should exist by now, build your best evidence from the case text") and at 8 minutes ("pick your opening speaker and your rebuttal speaker").
• The debates run in the main room, moderated by you, with a strict visible timer: 2-minute openings, 90-second rebuttals, cross-examination for what remains. Cut speakers who run over; the timer is part of the exercise.
• The individual decisions (activities 2 and 4) happen in the main room, everyone muted, 5 minutes, silent. No breakout needed. One sticky per person on the decision zone plus worksheet 1.
• Send tangents to the parking-lot zone on the board (the gold zone under the case cards); the debates generate them. They get answered in the WhatsApp group this week, so actually follow up.

Debrief questions

• After activity 2: where did the room split, and on which law? Once the camps were removed, who still chose escalation and who chose coalition? Would your 3 lines survive the cross-examination you just watched?
• After activity 4: did your method change, or only the case? What stayed constant in how you decided? Could you defend this move face to face with the EM in the case?
• During the teach-back discussion, hold the roles to their jobs one last time: the challenger must actually push back, the connector must name a specific earlier law, the summarizer gets the last 30 seconds.

Close

1:53 to 2:00, hard stop. Read the staircase from the slide, bottom step to top, and place the course on it: four weeks, four arcs, one staircase, and the commitment each person just made is their next step. Then assign the take-home, run the 30-day experiment (worksheets 2 and 3 are the templates): run the experiment on your real team, collect the evidence you committed to, and use the 1:1 mentorship session to pressure-test the plan during the run. No revision cycle and no presentation: the plan submitted Wednesday plus the commitment stated tonight is the contract. State the counts-as-done rule exactly: the day-30 reassessment plus a short written retro completed at the end of the run, due 30 days from your stated start date. Reflection without the artifact counts as not done. Announce the day-30 reassessment date, [date]: the same 24 items, the form comes to the group. Last reminder from the "Before you go" slide: book the 60-minute 1:1 through the Zcal link in the group if you have not, the window closes at day 30. Then the forward line, and it is the last line of the course: your experiment starts on the date you just said out loud. What will your evidence show at day 30?

Slides Facilitator guide Activity board Worksheets