Month 8 of 8
What We Build Going Forward
From practice to culture: making what you learned into how you operate.
The move
The harvest scan
The moment it is for
You notice yourselves slipping back into old defaults, or a norm everyone values has never been made explicit.
What it takes
One 90-minute session. A minute or two a day. Ten minutes a week.
Start here · about 5 minutes
Guess, then read
This month's lens comes from organizational culture research and the Haudenosaunee Seventh Generation value.
Two guesses before you read anything. Guessing first, even wrong, makes the reading stick. (It is also slightly annoying. Sorry.)
About the values on the wall
Somewhere in your office, or your shared drive, there is a list of team values. Honesty. Respect. Something about collaboration. (When did anyone last check a decision against it?)
Lists like that fade because nobody can tell whether they are being kept. “We will be more honest” can be claimed on any day, by anyone.
You have spent seven months practicing seven moves. This month asks which of them have become how you actually operate, and turns those into commitments a stranger could check.
From wish to commitment
- 1“We will be more honest.”Becomes: “We say so before the meeting ends.”
- 2“We assume good intent.”Becomes: “We check the story with the person within two days.”
- 3“We value repair.”Becomes: “Either of us can ask for ten minutes, and the answer is yes.”
A real commitment has three parts: the behavior, the moment it applies, and how you will know.
The daily rep is a scan. Once a day, pick one of the seven earlier moves and notice whether you used it or had the chance to. What you find is the raw material for the charter.
Expect a dip after the program ends. Old defaults come back under load. Write the line for that week now, while you are rested.
Before the live session · one required piece
HBR IdeaCast: Amy Edmondson on Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace
What psychological safety is, and how teams keep it.
On your own · about 12 minutes
Try it here
Three short practice rounds load here. If you are logged in to Squarespace and see only this line, view the page logged out.
The live session · 90 minutes
Practice together
One session at the start of the month. Everyone tries the move once, with real people.
Run the harvest scan alone exactly as written. Re-score your Starting Point Survey, compare it to Session 0, and write your own personal practice commitment for what comes after the curriculum ends.
What to have in the room
This month’s worksheet (PDF)Handouts and frameworks
Most culture commitments fail because they are aspirational rather than behavioral.
ASPIRATIONAL (won't hold): “We will be more honest with each other.”
BEHAVIORAL (will hold): “When we disagree with a decision in the room, we will say so before the meeting ends, not in the hallway after.”
A real commitment has three parts:
- The specific behavior (what you will actually do differently)
- The signal (when / in what situation)
- The accountability mechanism (how you will know if you are keeping it)
Questions to test any commitment:
- Could someone observe whether you kept this?
- Would your team be able to call you on it if you didn't?
- Is this specific enough to do, or general enough to always claim you're doing?
Month 1 · Under the Hood: Nervous system awareness. STOP practice. SCARF model.
Month 2 · The Voice in Your Head: Facts vs. stories. Ladder of inference. 30-Second Start. The 5 Whys.
Month 3 · The Art of Really Listening: Looping. NVC.
Month 4 · When the Temperature Rises: The escalation arc. Regulated presence. LEAP. BIFF.
Month 5 · Repair: Three restorative questions. Circle practice. Repair protocol.
Month 6 · Not All Conflicts Are the Same: V model. Adaptive vs. technical. Decision types.
Month 7 · Accountability That Connects: Accountability structure. Shame vs. reflection.
For each lens: Which changed something real for me? Which did I most resist? What does my resistance tell me?
Then: Which two or three are most useful for this team? Build culture commitments from those.
Three practice scenarios
Scenario 1
Six months from now, a new person joins your team. You explain how your team handles conflict. What would you say? Write it down. That is your culture, or the one you are building. Does it match how you actually operate today?
Scenario 2
Identify the conflict pattern that has persisted through this curriculum. Apply the Month 6 diagnostic: technical or adaptive? Which lens addresses it most directly? What culture commitment would specifically target this pattern?
Scenario 3
Write one culture commitment using the behavioral format: when [signal], we will [specific behavior] instead of [current default], and we will know we are keeping it by [specific indicator].
All month · a minute or two a day
Keep it going
Decide now when you will use it
People who decide the when in advance follow through more often than people who only intend to. Pick the moment in your week where the cue is most likely to show up.
…I will notice which move I used, or could have. Other whens: the Friday team meeting ends. I write my practice log line. We slide back into an old habit.
Saved in this browser only.
The daily rep
Once a day, pick one of the seven earlier moves and notice whether you used it or had the chance to.
The cue: You notice yourselves slipping back into old defaults, or a norm everyone values has never been made explicit.
One line on the practice log each day you run it. A missed day is information.
Monthly Practice Log (PDF)Four closing prompts, with two from memory
Which of the eight lenses changed something real for you? Which did you most resist? What does your resistance tell you?
Is there a conversation you want to have with a specific teammate before this process closes, something you have wanted to say and have not?
Two from memory. Answer first, then check.
The three parts of a real commitment.
The behavior. The moment it applies. How you will know.
From Month 7: the accountability opener.
“I want to tell you how something landed for me, and I want to understand what you were going for.”
What is one thing about how your team is structured, how you make decisions, run meetings, or handle performance, that this process has revealed needs to change?
Two from memory. Answer first, then check.
The seven moves, in order.
STOP. The 30-Second Start. Looping. Match the tool to the stage. The three restorative questions. Name the level, name the type. The accountability opener.
From Month 6: the question that separates technical from adaptive.
“If this were purely technical, would we have solved it by now?”
Looking at your Starting Point Survey scores from Session 0 and now: what changed? What stayed the same? What does that tell you?
Two from memory. Answer first, then check.
The test for any commitment.
Could someone outside the team observe whether you kept it?
From Month 1: the four beats of STOP.
Stop. Take a breath. Observe what is happening inside you. Proceed on purpose.
Questions for the closing conversation
Optional. Forty-five minutes, in pairs or small groups.
- Looking at your Starting Point Survey scores from Session 0 and now: what changed? What stayed the same? What does that tell you?
- Which of the lenses in this curriculum were most useful? Which was hardest? Are those the same one?
- What is the single most important thing this team needs to keep doing to sustain what you built?
- What are you still afraid of when it comes to conflict on this team? What would it take to be less afraid of it?
Before you close
You started this curriculum because lint accumulates. Small things, never quite addressed. Patterns everyone sees and nobody names. Stories formed years ago and never tested. Eight months later, the question is whether you have built a practice of cleaning the filter. Conflict won’t stop. Lint will accumulate. The difference now is whether you have the habit, the language, and the commitment to each other to deal with it before the machine starts running hot.
- We will [specific behavior] when conflict arises, instead of [current default].
- We will hold each other to [specific practice] through [specific accountability mechanism].
- When the process breaks down, and it will, we will return to it by [specific signal or calendar commitment].
- We will revisit these commitments in [specific timeframe] and ask honestly: are we keeping them?
- We will bring new team members into this practice by [specific onboarding approach].
This is your Month 8 artifact: the Culture Commitments Charter. Sign it. Post it. Put it somewhere you will see it. In six months, take it out and read it together. The charter is only as good as what you do with it.
Three checks before you move on
- Did I name one thing I am grateful for from a teammate in this process?
- Did the team write at least three specific, behavioral culture commitments?
- Do I know what my personal practice will be going forward, distinct from the group’s?
Optional · for the weeks you have appetite
Go deeper
None of this is required. The rep is the practice. The media is the seasoning.
If you pick three
- ListenWe Can Do Hard Things: Why Are We Never Satisfied? with adrienne maree brown adrienne maree brown on building a culture people want to keep.
- ReadHow Curiosity Can Help Us Overcome Disconnection (Greater Good Science Center) Four ways to practice curiosity about someone else’s view.
- ReadFour Ways to Avoid Our Feelings, and What to Do Instead (Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley) The ways we avoid what we feel, and what that does to change that is supposed to last.
The rest of the list (2 more)
- ARTICLE Murmurations (adrienne maree brown’s column at YES! Magazine) Column on relationship, pattern, and practice at small and large scale. Suggested: “Grow the Chorus,” on moving from a solitary voice to a collective chorus. brown created and curates the column.
- Book Make It Stick (Brown, Roediger, McDaniel)
Where this month’s ideas come from
For whoever runs the session
Running the session?
Facilitator guide
Month 8 honors what was built. Anything new can wait. The harvest round is the most important part. Give everyone equal time. Do not let some people dominate or others off the hook. Culture commitments must be specific and behavioral. “We will be more honest” is a wish. “We will use STOP before any meeting where a difficult topic is on the agenda” is a commitment. Keep asking: what will you actually do differently? When? How will you know? The closing gratitude round sometimes feels awkward. Let it be awkward. It is important.
Watch for teams that skip to action planning before harvesting (protect the harvest) and people who minimize their own growth (“I still have a lot to work on” is true and also deflects from naming what changed).
Consider scheduling a 90-minute check-in three months after Month 8 to revisit the culture commitments. That meeting is outside the curriculum. It is the beginning of the next stage.