Formats›A handover, in six lines

A handover, in six lines

A reusable format for giving somebody a working method. Take it, fill it, use it again — once per handover, whenever you are teaching by giving a procedure rather than by giving advice.

Download handover-format.md The file you fill in. Plain text — open it in any editor, or hand it to an agent.

What this is for

This is for handing one working method to one person, and then going quiet. The method is a real procedure from a real field, with steps, sharp enough that following it exactly breaks one of their habits. They work only under it for a fixed span. Nothing is owed back.

The alternative it replaces is the mentoring relationship as continuous supply: a weekly meeting, a running commentary, a curriculum built for one person out of one body. That arrangement makes the mentor the pace-setter and the student the respondent, and it fails in a way that looks like success until the mentor runs out.

Scarcity is the mechanism. An input received once in two months is carried, argued with, re-read. The same content delivered weekly is a subscription, and nobody re-reads a subscription. The interval is not a shortage of contact; it is the thing that makes the contact land.

Where this comes from: an outline of mine for a minimal mentoring pathway, written after taking apart a much heavier one. There is no public source for it.

What it protects against is the mentor's own appetite. Handing over one procedure and stopping is uncomfortable in a precise way: it gives you nothing to do for two months, and the urge to add something — a reading, a check-in, a note explaining what the method is for — is the apparatus growing back. Each addition is defensible on its own and their sum is the thing this was written to leave behind.

The format

HANDED
  THE METHOD    one procedure, named, with its steps, from a field
                that is not yours to invent
  THE SPAN      how long they make only under it, and the date it ends
  WHAT IS OWED  nothing — written in those words, not implied

KEPT
  THE READING   what in their finished work chose this method
  THE DEFAULT   the habit it will amputate

NOT THIS        what it looks like when the handover has become a
                curriculum

Three lines go to them. Two never leave your desk. The sixth is the failure named in advance.

What each line is asking

THE METHOD. One procedure, named, with its steps. Borrowed rather than invented — a real practice from engineering, research management, decision science, theatre, medicine, anywhere that is not the field you are teaching. It must be executable: someone can read it and do it tomorrow without asking you what you meant. A provocation is not a method. If it cannot be followed exactly, it will be interpreted, and an interpreted constraint constrains nothing.

THE SPAN. How long they work only under it, and the date it ends. Long enough that the method stops being novel and becomes an obstruction, which is where it starts doing its work. Weeks, not days. The end date is stated at the start so that the silence in between is legible as design rather than as neglect.

WHAT IS OWED. Nothing — and it is written in those words. No deliverable, no check-in, nothing to send me. An unstated absence of obligation is not read as freedom; it is read as an obligation whose terms have not yet been given, which is worse than a deadline. If something does arrive unprompted, it is read once, properly, and it informs what you hand over next. It is not marked and not replied to point by point.

THE READING. What in their finished work chose this method. Taken from what they have already made, never from what they say they want. Asked what they want, people want everything, and the want-list is evidence of scatter rather than a specification. Look at three finished things and name what their energy does unforced — that is the crutch, and the method is chosen against it.

THE DEFAULT. The habit it will amputate, in one line. This is the line that makes the choice arguable later, including by you. It is kept and not sent, because the method is handed over without explanation of what it is for. An explained constraint is negotiable; the person begins working on your reason rather than under the procedure.

NOT THIS. What it looks like when the handover has become a curriculum. Written once and kept in front of you. It is usually visible in the calendar before it is visible in the content: a second contact appears inside the span, then a small thing owed, then a sequence planned in advance rather than chosen from what came back.

A worked one

HANDED
  THE METHOD    The pre-mortem. Before starting, imagine the project
                has already failed completely, and write the history
                of how it died, in past tense, in detail.
  THE SPAN      Two months. Everything you make until 4 November is
                made under it.
  WHAT IS OWED  Nothing. No deliverable, no check-in, nothing to send
                me. If you want to show me something, show me.

KEPT
  THE READING   Three finished projects, all of them scoped upward
                once the work was going well, and all three late for
                the same reason.
  THE DEFAULT   Optimism that hides the fatal flaw. The habit is not
                over-ambition; it is never writing down what could
                end it.

NOT THIS        A message in week three asking how it is going. That
                is the span collapsing, and it converts the silence
                from a design into an oversight.

THE READING is the line the whole handover rests on, and notice that it names a pattern across three finished things rather than a quality of the person. A reading of the person is a judgement they cannot check. A reading of the work is a claim they can go and look at.

How to use it

  1. Write THE READING before you choose the method. Reversing the order is the commonest error: a method you already like goes looking for evidence, and it finds some, because three finished projects will support almost any reading.
  2. Say the end date when you hand it over. Silence with a date is a span. Silence without one is being dropped.
  3. Hand over the method and nothing else. No reading list, no example of it done well, no note about why you chose it. What you add here is what they will work on instead of the method.
  4. Keep THE DEFAULT written down and unsent. You will want it at the end, when you choose the next one, and you will not reconstruct it honestly from memory once you have seen what they made.
  5. Read what arrives once, properly, and let it choose the next method. That is the only feedback loop in the arrangement and it is enough. If nothing arrives, choose from the finished work again.

Three ways it goes wrong

The method gets explained. Almost always in the same message as the handover, in one sentence beginning the idea is that. From that point the person is working on your idea, and whether the procedure would have surprised them is no longer discoverable.

The span acquires a middle. A check-in, a nudge, an any questions. It is offered as support and it is the mentor's discomfort finding an outlet. If the span is too long for you to tolerate, shorten the span rather than filling it.

The reading comes from the conversation. They say what they are interested in, it is more articulate than anything visible in the work, and it becomes the basis for the choice. Stated interests describe who somebody would like to be. The finished work describes what they actually do when nobody is watching, which is what a method has to act on.

Prayas Abhinav. Licensed CC BY 4.0 — copy it, change it, build on it, including commercially. Say where it came from, and if you changed it.

Take a copy: handover-format.md. Yours to alter.