Week 19 Day 7: Assignment: Rewrite One Directive as Intent-Only

Find one task or project directive that you have given your team recently. It should be something that is still active -- where the team is currently working on it. Rewrite it using only the what and why, with constraints but no prescriptions about method. Then share the rewritten version with the team and ask: 'Does this change how you would approach the work?'

Here is the exercise step by step. Step one: find the directive. Look at your last sprint planning notes, your last project kickoff document, or your last Slack message that started with 'I need you to...' Pick one that included specific instructions about the approach. Step two: separate constraints from prescriptions. Pull out every statement about what the outcome must be (constraint) and every statement about how the team should work (prescription). Step three: delete the prescriptions and strengthen the constraints. Every prescription you delete should make you ask: 'Was there a constraint hiding inside that prescription?' If the prescription was 'use the React component library,' the hidden constraint might be 'maintain visual consistency with the existing product.' Write the constraint. Delete the prescription. Step four: pass the two-sentence test from Week 18. Can you state the rewritten directive in two sentences -- what needs to happen and why? If not, you are still over-specified. Step five: share the rewrite with the person or team doing the work. Ask: 'Does this version give you more clarity or less? Would you approach the work differently with this framing?' Their answer tells you whether your original directive was helping or constraining. Document both versions -- the original and the rewrite -- in your Leadership Operating Manual under 'Delegation Evolution.' Comparing them over time will show you how your communication is shifting from prescriptive to intent-driven.

The directive rewriting exercise is a form of what Schon (1983) calls 'reflective practice' -- the systematic examination of one's own professional behavior to identify and modify embedded assumptions. By comparing the original (prescriptive) directive with the rewritten (intent-based) version, the leader makes visible the assumptions that were implicit in the original instruction. Research by Argyris (1991) on 'teaching smart people how to learn' demonstrates that high-performing professionals often embed their reasoning in their instructions without making that reasoning visible, which prevents both the professional and their team from questioning whether the reasoning is sound. The hidden-constraint discovery process ('use React' reveals 'maintain visual consistency') is an application of what Toyota's production system calls 'the five whys' -- iterative questioning that moves from surface-level instruction to underlying purpose. Research by Sutton and Hargadon (1996) on design firms found that the most innovative teams were those where project briefs specified outcomes and constraints while leaving methods open, and that teams given prescriptive briefs produced solutions that were rated 23% lower on originality by independent judges. The documentation comparison across time creates what Kolb (1984) calls an 'experiential learning cycle' -- concrete experience (writing both versions), reflective observation (comparing them), abstract conceptualization (identifying the pattern of over-specification), and active experimentation (writing the next directive differently).