Kinds
Both sides make all three
The sorting is not a weapon for one side. On this record each side made claims of every kind, and each side answered the other in the wrong one.
Claims this part is about, and what each was answered with
Teams that sit together ship faster
Empirical→A studyWork should be something you go to
Value≠A studyA statement about what work is, answered with a productivity paper
The lease runs to 2031 and the rent review falls next year
Interest→A statement about who paysSaid once, in a finance update
three claims · one empirical, one value and one interest · one was answered with the wrong kind of answer
One claim of each kind, from the twenty-four counted here.
Four claims from each direction, by kind
A company is a place, not a login
Value≠A studyTeams that sit together ship faster
Empirical→A studyThe lease runs to 2031 and the rent review falls next year
Interest→A statement about who paysSaid once, in a finance update
Young people are owed the experience of working near others
Value≠A studyPeople should be free to choose where they live
Value→A principleRemote workers put in longer hours than office workers
Empirical·Nothing; it was never answeredThe travel time and fares fall entirely on the employee
Interest·Nothing; it was never said out loudFlexibility is what the last five years were for
Value≠A studyeight claims · two empirical, four value and two interest · three were answered with the wrong kind of answer · two were never answered at all
Eight of the twenty-four, four from each side of the argument.
There is a way of reading this site that is wrong and tempting: that sorting claims is a technique for showing that one side is arguing badly.
It is not, and the record does not support it. Each side made claims of all three kinds, each side reached for the empirical register when it suited, and each side answered the other in the wrong kind at about the same rate.
The same four moves, in both directions
| Move | From the office side | From the other side |
|---|---|---|
| A value stated as a value | "Showing up for each other is part of what a team is" | "People should be free to choose where they live" |
| A value dressed as a finding | "Offices are more productive" | "Nobody is less productive at home" |
| An empirical claim with no evidence behind it | "Hybrid teams make worse decisions" | "Remote workers put in longer hours" |
| A cost left unsaid | The lease | The childcare arrangements |
Four rows, two columns, the same behaviour in each. Nothing in this distribution is about which position anybody holds; it is about what an argument does to the people in it.
The symmetry that is real, and the one that is not
Real: both sides make all three kinds, both reach for the empirical register beyond what they can support, and both leave their costs unstated.
Not real: the costs are not symmetrical in size or in visibility. On this record four of five costs fell mostly on individuals, and the one that fell on the organisation was the only one anybody mentioned. That asymmetry is a fact about where costs are recorded, not about anybody's conduct, and noticing it is not taking a side.
Holding both of those at once is the whole difficulty of writing about this. The argument is conducted symmetrically badly and the stakes in it are not symmetric. Either half on its own gives a false picture.
What follows for how to use the sorting
Three rules, and the third matters most.
- Sort your own first. If you have not found a claim of your own that is of the wrong kind, you have not been sorting, you have been scoring.
- Concede the sorting out loud when it goes against you. "You are right that this is a view and not a finding" costs almost nothing and changes the register of a whole meeting.
- Never use the sorting to dismiss a claim. A value claim sorted correctly is not thereby defeated. It is placed. The reply to it is still owed, and the reply is another value or a trade, not a dismissal.
The third rule is the one most often broken by people who have just learned this. "That is just a value claim" is the sentence to avoid, and the word doing the damage is just.
Where the symmetry breaks usefully
There is one asymmetry worth acting on, and it is about who can afford to go first.
Conceding that your own strongest-sounding claim is a value costs more if you have less standing. A senior person who does it is being candid. A junior person who does it has, in the room's reading, given up their argument.
So the person who should sort out loud first is whoever has the most room to lose a point. On this record nobody did, in either direction, and the eleven weeks that followed contained no moment at which the discussion could have changed shape.
What a one-sided reading produces
It is worth describing the failure mode, because this material is easy to use as ammunition and the result is worse than not having it.
A person who has learned the three kinds and applies them only outwards produces a particular kind of contribution: every claim from the other side is reclassified and set aside, every claim of their own goes unexamined, and the taxonomy becomes a machine for not listening.
It is also immediately legible to everybody else in the room. Within two meetings the response is predictable — people stop making claims in front of that person and start making them elsewhere.
The exercise that prevents it
Before using any of this in a discussion, write down your own three strongest claims and sort them honestly.
Nearly everybody finds that at least one is a value they have been stating as a finding. That is the useful discovery, and having made it about yourself first changes how the whole thing is used: you arrive knowing that the sorting is not an accusation, because it has already been applied to you, by you.
On this record the one participant who did anything like this was also the only one whose exchanges reached a trade. It is a small sample and the mechanism is not mysterious.