Relay Brief
A five-constraint brief, down a line of four
Every hop drops a constraint, compresses a number and adds a guess — and everyone felt certain they passed it on fine.
WorkshopSkill · Relay Brief — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0How much of a brief survives
one honest telling down a line of four?
WorkshopSkill · Relay Brief — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0What one hop does
- It drops a constraint — the least vivid one usually goes first.
- It compresses a number — “by Friday the 12th” becomes “soon”.
- It injects a guess — every hole gets filled with what seems obvious.
The setup
| Hop | What happens… | The observer marks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Read the brief once, then it is gone | five constraints in play |
| 2 | Whisper it on, once, no notes | how many of the five survived |
| 3 | Rebuild from memory, out loud | the number that fell, hop by hop |
The tally: what survived
- The observer marks, at each hop, how many of the five constraints survived — a count out of five, not a verdict on a person.
- The number falling hop to hop is the whole finding.
- Nobody may repeat a hop, and nobody may write notes.
The reveal is not a joke.
Line the rebuild up against the original.
Every loss has a hop where it went missing.
WorkshopSkill · Relay Brief — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0Three ways it fails, three rescues
- People write notes → the leak is the point; hold the rule.
- The room hunts a culprit → every hop was confident and still lost data.
- A confident memory beats a written brief → the reveal is what corrects it.
The measure
- Before the line: five short items about your own last week of handovers.
- After the reveal: the same five, now about the relay you just ran.
- Score each person’s shift, never rank a culprit — the relay leaks at every hop.
Three questions in the debrief
1. Where does your real work go down a four-hop line like this one?
2. Which hop felt most certain it passed it on clearly?
3. What one written form would have stopped the biggest loss you saw?
WorkshopSkill · Relay Brief — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0What actually transfers
- The dropped constraint is the one that quietly falls out of real handovers.
- One written-handover habit, chosen from the biggest positive delta.
- A restated brief beats a confident memory — that is the repair.
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Run it standing · keep it twenty minutes · report the leak, not a culprit
A handover culture is working when someone restates the brief before acting on it.
WorkshopSkill · Relay Brief — Slide Deck · CC BY 4.0Take this folder with you
Scan for the digital edition — the printable kit, the live measure and the agent file. Swap this href for your own QRCode-AI code or FormLM link.