Two ways to start
Two openings for the same piece.
A. In today’s world, everybody has to make difficult career decisions which they sometimes regret afterwards.
B. For five years I did a job that I told everybody was temporary, and it is the only part of my working life anybody now asks me about.
Four questions.
1. How many people are in opening A?
2. What does B give you in one sentence?
3. What is the function of I told everybody was temporary?
4. Is A wrong?
The model · 338 words
What the first five years were actually for
For five years I did a job that I told everybody was temporary, and it is the only part of my working life anybody now asks me about.
I took it in 2013 because I needed to be earning something by the September and it was the only offer I had. At the time that made sense. What I could not have known was that the department would be dismantled in 2016, and that the four people I sat with would end up running three of the organisations I now deal with every week. Which makes the decision look shrewd. It was not shrewd; it was an emergency, and I keep those two words apart deliberately, because luck mistaken for judgement is judgement I will use again.
There is one thing I got wrong, and I am not going to reach for a softer version of it. I should have asked, in the second year, to be moved onto the analysis side. I knew I wanted it. Nobody hid the process from me, there was no form I was not shown and no conversation I was kept out of. I did not ask because I did not want to be told no by somebody I liked. That is a verdict and it is earned.
The other thing I have blamed a person for, for years, turns out not to be a verdict at all. My manager did not put me forward for the internal scheme, and I have said more than once that she should have. What would have made a difference is a line in the appraisal template asking which schemes each person had been told about. There was no such line. There is one now, in two organisations, because I wrote it.
So: one piece of luck, one failure of nerve, and one missing sentence in a document. That is a smaller and considerably more useful account than the one I gave at interviews for a decade, in which the whole thing had been a plan.
Four questions about the model.
1. Why does the writer refuse the word shrewd?
2. Why does paragraph three keep its verdict?
3. What replaces the verdict in paragraph four?
4. What is the last paragraph doing?
Repair a weaker one
The five moves: the story you used to tell · what made sense at the time, and what you could not have known · the one earned verdict, defended before it is delivered · the refused verdict, converted into a missing thing · the three categories, named.
Below, a second retrospective with four sentences removed.
Four sentences have been removed. Put each one back where it belongs.
I resigned twice from the same company, eight years apart, and only the second one counted. [1]
The first time I wrote four pages. I explained the workload, the rota, the two people who had left before me and exactly why, and I gave the whole thing to a director who thanked me for my candour. [2]
[3] The second time I wrote three lines and asked for a meeting, and the meeting changed the rota for everybody who came after me.
I used to say that they should have acted on the four pages. [4]
And I have never once written four pages again.
From spoken to written
Rewrite each line for a written retrospective. Fix the form, lose the speech, and decide about the grade. The words in the avoid list must not appear.
Spoken → written retrospective
Basically the whole thing was a nightmare and my manager should of done way more.
Spoken → written retrospective
I mean I knew, like, by the second year, I just didn’t say anything.
Spoken → written retrospective
Honestly it turned out great but that was total luck tbh.
Form repair
They must of known the department was getting shut.
Verdict → observation
She should have put me forward for it, 100%.
Spoken → written retrospective
At the end of the day you can’t change what happened so there’s no point going on about it.
Three questions.
1. How many earned verdicts should a 340-word retrospective contain?
2. What has to happen to the decision that turned out well?
3. When you refuse a verdict, what replaces it?
The piece
How the twenty-three minutes run. Five to plan, fourteen to write, four to exchange. The plan is where the test gets run; running it while you are making sentences does not work.
Stage 1 · Alone · 5 minutes · Plan
Three things from your working or studying life: one that turned out well, one you got wrong, and one you have blamed somebody else for.
Five lines. The test gets run on lines three and four, in writing, before you start.
- 1 · The story you used to tell about this period, in one sentence.
- 2 · The one that turned out well — and, honestly, whether it was luck or judgement.
- 3 · The one you got wrong. Run the test in writing: process, document, unasked question? If all three are no, this is your earned verdict.
- 4 · The one you have blamed somebody for. Run the test again — and name the missing thing exactly.
- 5 · The three categories in one line: luck, nerve, document — or whatever yours turn out to be.
Stage 2 · Alone · 14 minutes · Write
Three hundred and forty words, five or six paragraphs, one per move.
Fourteen minutes. Banned throughout: in today’s world · everybody has to · should of · must had · at the end of the day, and any would have outside a result clause.
- Open with the story you used to tell. A person and a span of time, and no general statement about careers.
- Use what I could not have known was… at least once, and mean it — ignorance is not error.
- Keep exactly one earned verdict and defend it in the sentence before you deliver it.
- Convert the other one, and name the missing thing so precisely that somebody could add it tomorrow.
- Close on the categories. No summary, no lesson-for-life.
Stage 3 · Pairs · 4 minutes · Exchange
Swap. Three jobs, in this order, and none of them is proofreading.
Four minutes. Count the grades, audit the deductions, check the missing thing.
- Underline every modal perfect and mark each one D (deduction), R (regret) or V (verdict on somebody else). Write the three totals at the top.
- For each V, ask one question: was the test run? If the piece does not show the answer, the verdict is not earned yet.
- Find the missing thing in the converted paragraph and say whether you could add it to a real document on Monday. If not, it is still a quality in disguise.
- Say which sentence you would keep if the piece had to be cut to one.
What your partner counted
Two questions.
1. What were your three totals?
2. Could your partner add your missing thing to a real document?
One verdict, one document
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What does a good retrospective do with a decision that turned out well?
2. A verdict is earned when…
Next. The unit task: the finished retrospective and a spoken one, assessed on whether your listeners can tell a deduction from a regret from a verdict in everything you say.