Module 4 · quiz

Designing the Agenda

10 questions. Low stakes, unlimited retries, marked as soon as you submit. Every wrong answer comes back with a written explanation rather than a score. 7 of 10 to pass.

Covers: Backward design, activities that earn their slot, the 3x rule, buffer and the Rule of Thirds, breaks, remote arithmetic, the two diamonds, and the run of show.

Question 1 of 10

You design an agenda from the top down: a strong opening, a good warm-up, a rich discussion, a break. Then you look up and there are eleven minutes left for the outcome. What actually went wrong?

The break was in the wrong place and cost you the momentum. You designed forwards, so the beginning was already written and good, and the only thing left to compress was the end — where all the value was. The session needed to be longer than you had. The opening was too long; tighten it and the rest fits.

Question 2 of 10

Row two of your agenda reads: “Icebreaker — go round and share a fun fact about your weekend (10 min)”. You run the one-question test on it. What happens?

It survives. Psychological safety is necessary, and module 6 depends on it. It survives, because a session that opens cold will underperform for the rest of the day. It gets moved later, where the energy dip is, rather than cut. It gets cut or replaced, because the group has nothing at the end of it that it did not have at the start — warmth is not an output.

Question 3 of 10

Your agenda has “Introductions round (2 min)” for twelve people and “Quick discussion (5 min)”. What should those numbers actually be, and why?

Four and ten. Doubling is the reliable correction. Two and five are fine if you timebox them out loud and hold the group to it. It depends entirely on the group; there is no useful rule of thumb. Twelve and fifteen. Activities take roughly three times longer with a group, and a round takes about a minute a head.

Question 4 of 10

You have added ten percent buffer to a half-day session — about twenty minutes. Where does it go on the agenda, and why there?

Early, right after the frame, so a late start does not cascade. It is not placed at all; buffer is the slack you keep in reserve mentally. Late, just before the close — because without buffer the close gets cut first, and the commit block sitting next to it goes second. Spread evenly across the blocks, so no single overrun can eat it all.

Question 5 of 10

A three-hour session under the Rule of Thirds: sixty minutes divergent, sixty convergent, sixty for the frame, transitions, commit and close. A colleague says the last hour is a third of the day on admin. What is the answer?

The proportions are a formal finding, so the objection does not stand. It is not admin — it is where the session is set up and landed, and the commit block alone needs about twenty-five minutes because people negotiate dates out loud with each other. They are right for a short session; the thirds only hold from a half day upwards. They are right; trim it to twenty minutes and give the time to convergence, which is the block people underplan.

Question 6 of 10

Your two-hour agenda puts a ten-minute break halfway through the convergence, because that is the midpoint of the session. What is wrong, and what would you change?

Nothing, as long as you tell people the break is coming so they can finish their thought. The break is too short for a two-hour session; make it twenty minutes and leave it where it is. Two hours does not need a scheduled break at all; let people step out as they need to. A break should land on a seam, not inside a block — move it to the diverge-converge join, plan fifteen minutes rather than ten, and say the return time out loud.

Question 7 of 10

You are converting an in-person agenda to run on a call. Which set of adjustments is right?

Keep the block lengths, cut the written work, and add more discussion so the room does not go silent. Closer to 4x on anything involving discussion, shorter blocks and more of them, more silent written work, and about a third fewer agenda rows. Halve every timing, because remote sessions move faster without the room logistics. Run it unchanged and add a longer break; remote is the same design with more fatigue.

Question 8 of 10

A sponsor asks for “a workshop to plan the new onboarding flow”. What have they already decided, and what is the one question worth asking?

They have decided nothing yet; the request is neutral and the objective conversation comes next. They have decided the format. Ask how long they want the session to be. They have decided that onboarding is the problem and a new flow is the answer — they have skipped the first diamond. Ask, once and politely, what makes them sure that is the problem. They have decided who should attend. Ask who could unwind the decision afterwards.

Question 9 of 10

Your run of show has time, what happens, the opening words, and the transition line. What is the fifth column, and why does it matter more than it looks?

What you cut if you are behind — because at three o’clock, forty minutes down and tired, you will make a much worse decision than the one you can make calmly now. Materials needed — so nothing is missing on the day. The energy level you expect, so you can plan the break around it. Who is leading each row, if you are co-facilitating.

Question 10 of 10

An experienced facilitator argues that planning to the minute makes you serve your agenda instead of the room, and that you will miss the moment where something real happens because it was not on the sheet. What is the honest response?

Half-right — a facilitator who will not deviate is worse than one with no plan. But you can only deviate from a plan you have. Plan tightly, hold loosely. They are describing improvisation, which is a different skill and not something this path teaches. They are wrong: the plan is the product of the design work, and deviating from it wastes that work. They are right, and the checklist is best treated as a first-session scaffold you drop once you have run twenty sessions.

0 of 10 answered

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A letter for facilitators who give a damn.