The ten documents used across the course's case work and the Alignment Lab, as plain text you can copy and fill in.
Templates#
These are working documents, not marking checklists. Copy the relevant one, fill it in as you go, and submit it as part of the assessment that calls for it. Each is also available as a plain-text file you can download and edit directly. Six are used across general case work; the other four — initial judgment, continuity memo, Alignment Lab individual autopsy and partial rerun — belong specifically to the Alignment Lab’s own sequence of submissions.
Initial judgment#
Used before role cards are distributed for the Alignment Lab — a dated record of what you think should happen, based only on the public materials, before you have a stake in any role.
INITIAL JUDGMENT — [your name] — [date]
What I think should happen, based only on the public materials, before any role
has been assigned:
How confident I am in this, and what specific new information would
change my mind:Strategy memo#
Used before the Alignment Lab’s pre-meeting contact window opens.
STRATEGY MEMO — [your role]
My responsibilities:
My evidence:
What I don't know:
Who I plan to contact, and why:
Ethical boundaries I won't cross:Continuity memo#
Kept up to date by each role-holder through the pre-meeting contact window, so that if the person holding a role is unexpectedly absent, the group still has what they knew — see the Alignment Lab page’s ground rules for when this gets read.
CONTINUITY MEMO — [role] — last updated [date and time]
My current position, as of this update:
Commitments made or received so far, and with whom:
Evidence I have surfaced so far that the others may not have:
What I have not yet found out or resolved:
If I am absent when this is next needed, the single most important thing
for whoever covers this role to know first:Negotiation log#
A running record of pre-meeting contact — used or explicitly declined.
NEGOTIATION LOG — [your role]
One entry per contact — self-initiated, or a reply to someone else's
request. You may make at most two self-initiated contacts by default;
replies you make to requests from others are not capped, and belong in this
log too.
Contact — [who] — [when] — [self-initiated / reply to their request]:
Purpose:
New information exchanged:
Any commitment made, by either side:
Did either person's judgment change, and how:
(Copy the block above for every contact you make or receive. If you chose
not to make a self-initiated contact at all: say so, and why.)Agenda#
Used for any exercise that asks you to write or rewrite a meeting agenda.
AGENDA — [meeting name] — [date]
Item: [title — does it name an open question or a foregone conclusion?]
Purpose: [what the room is actually being asked to do]
Time allocated: [minutes, and what that signals]Decision record#
The one document a live Alignment Lab group produces together. The same ten fields below are also what an async make-up’s corrected/reconstructed record and an alternative-pathway’s independently-produced record are scored against — see the Alignment Lab page’s “What you submit” section for which pathway supplies which version. Final decision, spending and implementation authority are named as three separate fields on purpose — see that page’s “Consequences, from stated rules” section for why treating any two of them as the same thing is exactly the mistake the worked example is built to catch.
DECISION RECORD — [scenario name] — [date]
The decision (or a reasoned deferral):
Evidence relied on:
Unverified assumptions:
Who agreed:
Who dissented, and on what grounds (including conditional or partial support):
Action owner(s) — who carries out what follows from this:
Final decision authority — who actually had the authority to make this call:
Spending authority — who can actually authorise the money moving, and
whether that authorisation has actually been obtained (a final decision
authority's sign-off is not the same thing as this):
Implementation authority — who can act on this decision in the world (build
it, buy it, announce it), and whether that authorisation has actually been
obtained:
What would reopen this record:Alignment Lab individual autopsy#
Distinct from the Decision Autopsy assessment’s own template below — this one is submitted after the Alignment Lab’s reveal, about your own decision record (your live group’s, an audited correction of it, or one you produced individually, depending on your pathway), not the Engagement Signal Pilot case.
ALIGNMENT LAB INDIVIDUAL AUTOPSY — [your role] — [date]
What the decision record says decided the outcome:
Your conclusion — one of three, argued from the record and log, not
assumed:
(a) a specific distortion the record and log support, or
(b) the process held up, with no significant distortion evident, or
(c) indeterminate on what you have: name the specific evidence that's
missing, the alternative explanation you could not rule out
without it, and what would change your judgement if it turned up
The specific contact, evidence or moment in the meeting that supports
that conclusion:
Where my own claims in the room went further than my evidence actually
supported, if anywhere:
How this compares with my initial judgment, submitted before I held a
role — what changed, and what specifically changed it:Download lab-decision-autopsy.txt
Partial rerun#
Used after the Alignment Lab’s reveal, to test whether one named process change to your own group’s negotiation or meeting would have produced a different outcome.
PARTIAL RERUN — [the juncture being tested] — [your name]
Changed variable — the one thing done differently, named precisely:
Held constant — everything else, named explicitly, not just implied:
Resulting difference — the concrete outcome that follows from the change,
reasoned step by step:
Unverified assumption — the one thing this rerun's conclusion still
depends on, that the record does not confirm either way:Decision autopsy#
The structure the Decision Autopsy assessment asks you to follow.
DECISION AUTOPSY — [decision] — [your name]
The decision, in one sentence, with a link to where it was announced:
The timeline (every dated document, in order, with a one-line note):
The seam, or why there isn't one — one of three conclusions:
(a) a seam: a specific point where the outcome looks settled before the
forum that announced it, with an alternative explanation you
considered and could rule out, or
(b) a genuinely open process: a reasoned case, from the timeline, that
no such point exists, or
(c) indeterminate: the specific evidence that's missing, the
alternative explanation you could not rule out without it, and
what would change your judgement if it turned up
What you cannot show (the gap between evidence and suspicion):Decision system redesign#
The structure the Decision System Redesign assessment asks you to follow.
DECISION SYSTEM REDESIGN — [process being redesigned]
Who currently decides, and how:
What is wrong with it today, with evidence (hard to challenge, trace, or
attribute — not "it involves talking before the meeting"):
The replacement: who is invited, when, on what information, with what
record, and what channel (if any) still exists for informal pre-meeting
coordination:
Who loses influence under the new design:
Tested against one concrete scenario — what would the new design actually
produce, step by step: