# The Reliability Ledger — Facilitator Guide

> Folder: `the-reliability-ledger` · Category: trust · 4–10 people · 25 min · offline + online · print props · tool pack
> License: CC BY 4.0

A 25-minute, 4–10 person trust tool. A team makes its implicit contract explicit: what each person will reliably do, what each quietly needs from the others, and the one broken-but-unspoken expectation everyone has been tiptoeing around — then commits to one repair with an owner and a check-in date. Trust here is treated as a record of kept promises, not a feeling you manufacture with games.

**How this relates to the other trust folders:** The Reliability Ledger writes down what The Safety Check only measures and what The Trust Timeline only maps. Step In If… shows shared experience without leaving a record; the ledger deliberately does — commitments, needs, one surfaced expectation, one owned repair. Run it when the trust leak smells like "I thought you had that."

## Objectives

By the end of the activity, participants will have:

1. Written and read aloud two operational commitments ("I'll reliably…") and one honest need ("I quietly need…") — the implicit contract made explicit.
2. Surfaced, as a group, one expectation everyone quietly held but nobody ever said — and named what actually happened instead.
3. Committed to one concrete repair for that expectation, with a named owner and a check-in date, plus one personal commitment each that keeps it real.

## When to use this activity

- A team with enough history that expectations have quietly formed — and quietly started disappointing.
- Recurring low-grade friction nobody raises because "it's not that serious": missed handovers, silent resentments, assumed coverage.
- Two people who keep hitting "I thought you were handling that" — the peer-pair version fits over one table.

## Setup

**Clock:** twenty-five minutes end to end. Give it thirty on a first run with a team that has real history — naming the unspoken one takes longer the honest it is.

**Space:** one wall or shared board with two columns — **Commitments · Needs** — plus a spot for **The unspoken one**. Online, the columns live on a shared board.

**Materials per person:**

| Item | Source |
|---|---|
| 2 × commitment faces — "I'll reliably…" | `the-reliability-ledger-prop-cards.pdf` |
| 1 × need face — "I quietly need…" | `the-reliability-ledger-prop-cards.pdf` |
| 1 × "The unspoken one" face + 1 × "Repair action" face + blank (the team's, not each person's) | `the-reliability-ledger-prop-cards.pdf` |
| 1 × pen; wall tape or board pins | your own |
| Optional: the poster with the two rules in view | `the-reliability-ledger-activity-poster.pdf` (A3) on the wall |

**Grouping:** 4–10 people who work together and share obligations; run the whole group against one wall. A peer pair of 2 works as the table version.

**Roles:** everyone writes and reads their own cards; you keep phrasing honest (requests, not grievances), guard the no-debating rule during the read, and force the close — one repair, one owner, one date. No projector, no account, no online form required.

## How to run it

| Time | Phase | Facilitator does | Participants do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–7 | Write | Hand out the faces. "Commitments are operational, not confessions: things you will actually do. Needs are requests: 'I need X by Y.'" | Write two commitments ("I'll reliably…") and one need ("I quietly need…") |
| 7–13 | Read & post | Read each card aloud and post it under Commitments or Needs. No debate, no defending — just hearing. | Listen to what colleagues have been carrying and waiting for; post without explaining |
| 13–19 | Surface the unspoken | Ask: what did everyone quietly expect but nobody ever said? Write it on **The unspoken one** and say what actually happened instead | Name it as a shared pattern ("we've all started assuming…"), not one person's failure |
| 19–25 | Repair | Force the close: one concrete repair, an owner who takes it (not one assigned), a check-in date. "What will 'this got fixed' look like on that day?" | Agree the repair action; each person adds one commitment they'll personally keep to make it real |

Then run the debrief — see `the-reliability-ledger-debrief.md`.

## The card

The faces mirror the ledger's double entry: two commitment faces because reliability is a record of kept promises, not one grand vow; one need face because what you quietly wait for is the leak's other half. **The unspoken one** and **Repair action** exist so the conversation can't end at awareness — a ledger with no repair action is a complaint box, and the check-in date is what makes it a book.

## Failure modes

1. **Needs come out as complaints.** Rescue: rewrite each one as "I need X by Y" before it goes on the wall. A grievance posted is a grievance re-lived; a request posted is a promise someone can keep.
2. **The unspoken one names a person.** Rescue: reframe it as a pattern — "we've all started assuming…" — and move on. The moment it becomes one person's failure, the room closes.
3. **No one wants to write a commitment.** Rescue: start with boring, operational ones: "respond within a day", "flag blockers early", "say when I'm swamped". Safety is built by kept small promises, not by confessions.

## Variations

- **New team, week one:** write only commitments and needs; skip the unspoken one until there's history to surface.
- **After a specific rupture:** go straight to the unspoken one, then work backwards to the commitments that would have prevented it.
- **Peer pair:** two people run it across a table; the two columns make "I thought you had that" visible fast.
- **Standing ritual:** re-run quarterly against the previous wall — kept promises earn a tick, broken ones earn a repair.

## Facilitation notes

- The unspoken one is named as a shared pattern, never a culprit — that single rule is what keeps the room open.
- A ledger with no repair action is a complaint box: no date, no owner, no deal.
- Don't average or merge needs away; two people needing the same thing is free trust, and you'll find those overlaps in the read-aloud if you let it breathe.

## Put it on the wall

Print `the-reliability-ledger-activity-poster.pdf` (A3) to keep the two rules — "needs are requests, not grievances" and "no repair action = a complaint box" — in view through the whole run.

## Props in this folder

- `the-reliability-ledger-prop-cards.pdf` — poker-spec print sheet (63.5 × 88.9 mm, bleed and cut guides): two commitment faces, one need face, the unspoken one, repair action, blank card, branded backs
- `the-reliability-ledger-guide.md` — this run sheet
- `the-reliability-ledger-debrief.md` — the debrief questions and the failure modes of the debrief
- `the-reliability-ledger-run-sheet.pdf` — the print edition: this run sheet + the debrief, bound as one A4 document with bookmarks
- `the-reliability-ledger-activity-poster.pdf` — the whole tool on one A3 wall sheet: the two columns, the flow, the watch-outs
- `the-reliability-ledger-start-here.md` — one page, thirty seconds, then print and go
- `SKILL.md` — machine-readable manifest for AI agents
- `*-Letter.pdf` — US Letter editions of the print documents

## Agent version

Every file in this folder has a stable public URL — an AI agent can fetch the cards, the debrief and this run sheet with three curl commands (see `SKILL.md`). The paper version needs nothing but a wall, a deck of faces and pens.