What to do
What to say when you cannot sort it
Some claims will not sort in four seconds. Three that come up constantly, and what to do with each instead of guessing.
Claims this part is about, and what each was answered with
Showing up for each other is part of what a team is
Value→A statement of what mattersAnswered in its own kind, which is why it went somewhere
People should be free to choose where they live
Value→A principleNew starters take longer to become productive remotely
Empirical→Evidencethree claims · one empirical and two value · every one of them was answered in its own kind
The three claims on this record that were answered in their own kind.
Most claims sort immediately. A minority do not, and guessing at those is worse than not sorting at all, because a confidently wrong sorting produces a confidently wrong reply.
Three cases, and the move for each.
One: you cannot tell which kind they mean
"We need to think about the junior people." Empirical — they learn slower remotely? Or value — we owe them something? Both readings are live and the replies are completely different.
The move is to ask, in a form that does not require them to classify anything:
Do you mean they actually do worse, or that we owe them the experience? I think both might be true and they are different conversations.
This works because it offers both readings as legitimate. Nobody is being asked to admit their claim is soft, and in practice people usually answer "both, but mainly the second", which is exactly what you needed.
Two: the claim is compound
"People work better together and that is what a company is." Two claims, two kinds, one breath. Answer either and the other survives.
The move is to split them without ceremony:
There are two things there. On the first, is there anything we could look at? On the second, I think we may just differ, and I would rather say so than pretend a study settles it.
The split has to be done out loud or the exchange stays tangled. Done briskly, it reads as organising rather than as a manoeuvre.
Three: it is a definition wearing a prediction
"Culture is built in person." There is nothing to check, because the sentence says what culture means.
Do not say that. The move is to ask for the output:
What would we see less of, if that were going wrong?
If an answer comes — people not knowing each other's names, new people asking the same questions twice, nobody arguing in meetings any more — the claim has become empirical and specific, and sometimes checkable. If no answer comes, both of you now know, without anybody having said the word "unfalsifiable".
The general shape
| The difficulty | The move |
|---|---|
| Ambiguous kind | Offer both readings as legitimate |
| Two claims in one | Split them out loud, briskly |
| Definition posing as prediction | Ask what it would produce |
All three are questions, all three can be asked without an edge, and all three leave the other person somewhere to go.
When to let it go
Sometimes the answer is to not sort it and move on.
If a claim is incidental, if the person is upset, or if the discussion has already reached the stage where everything is read as a tactic, stopping to classify something will not help and may be read as pedantry.
The sorting is worth doing on claims that are doing work — the ones being repeated, the ones in the proposal document, the ones everything else hangs off. There are usually three or four of those in any of these discussions, and getting those right is most of the available return.
The fourth difficult case
One more, and it is the hardest: a claim that is doing emotional work rather than argumentative work.
"I have given this company eleven years." Sorted literally it is a fact. In the exchange it is not functioning as a premise for anything; it is a statement about what the person feels is owed, and treating it as an interest claim or a value claim both miss.
There is no sorting move for this. The move is to respond to what it is doing:
I know. And I think that is part of why this one has been difficult.
Then let the discussion resume. Attempting to sort a claim like that, however gently, is heard as deflection, and it will be remembered longer than anything else said in the meeting.
Knowing which discussions to do this in
The method suits a formal consultation, a proposal document, a decision meeting. It does not suit a conversation with somebody who is upset, a corridor exchange, or any discussion where the actual subject is a relationship rather than a policy.
That sounds obvious written down and is not obvious at the time, because the words are the same. The distinguishing question is whether the person is trying to establish something or trying to be heard. If it is the second, sorting is the wrong tool and warmth is the right one.