Method guide · Work with a structured grid
Plan Your Trip
Use contrasting trips to judge how much checking and approval a real decision requires.
- People
- 3–12
- Base procedure time
- 60 minutes
- Recording
- Shared record
Purpose: Make a decision; Reflect and learn.
English guide
Text acceptance is not approval of this rendered page, its media, or publication.
How this method works
A method for deciding how rigorous the checks and approvals for a project need to be. Compare cost as the money or time that could be lost, consequences as the impact of failure, uncertainty as the extent of missing information, and reversibility as the degree to which a decision can be undone. Increase the number of checkers, the evidence, and the approval stages as cost and impact grow, information becomes scarcer, and reversal becomes harder. Try the four perspectives using preparations for a day walk and winter mountaineering, then apply them to a real project. The outputs are checks and approval levels for each project. Do not use this for emergency response or projects whose approval procedure is set by law.
Phase schedule
Minutes are cumulative from the start of the base plan, not a live timer. Read scaling for any additional time. Phase controls do not advance automatically.
Use the arrow keys, Home or End while these controls have focus. The complete phase schedule remains below, including without JavaScript.
- Identify the scales0–7 minutes from the start (7 minutes)
Action: Identify. Participation: Everyone.
Recording not separately specified for this phase
- List what to bring7–22 minutes from the start (15 minutes)
Action: List. Participation: Individually → groups of 3–5.
Individual record
- Apply four perspectives22–40 minutes from the start (18 minutes)
Action: Apply. Participation: Groups of 3–5.
Shared record
- Decide the rigour40–60 minutes from the start (20 minutes)
Action: Decide. Participation: Everyone.
Shared record
Facilitation steps
- For 7 minutes, use a day walk and winter mountaineering as examples, identifying four perspectives from differences in preparation.
- For 15 minutes, individually list what to bring and what to check for each of the 2 contrasting situations on sticky notes.
- For 18 minutes, choose a real project in groups of 3–5 and apply cost, consequences, context, and choices.
- For 20 minutes, everyone discusses the amount of checking to devote to this project and decides the level to adopt.
If something changes
If
After 5 minutes of listing what to bring, the numbers written for the 2 situations are the same.
Then
Ask one person on the winter-mountain side what would happen if something were missing, and have them add the difference.
If
During application of the four perspectives, 10 minutes pass with the chosen project's consequences still unclear.
Then
Have participants write one sentence saying what would be lost if it did not happen, fill the consequences field, and then move on.
If
When deciding the level, opinions only about cost are voiced 3 times consecutively.
Then
Point only to the consequences and context fields and ask each person to speak in turn.
Preparation
Materials
- One A4 trip-plan sheet per group of 3–5, with four fields: cost, consequences, context, and choices
- About 10 sticky notes per person
- One dark writing implement per person
Room and setup
- One island table per group of 3–5, with a size difference of no more than 1 person
- One display surface where everyone can see the four-perspective sheet
Adjust for people and time
With fewer than 3 people, consideration from different roles does not work. With 3–12, divide the participant count by 5 and round up to determine the number of groups, then distribute people evenly into groups of 3–5. When there are 3 groups, first show the work to neighbouring groups two at a time, then have only one representative group share with everyone.
Safety and non-applicable situations
Do not use this for emergency response or where law determines approval procedures. Increase checking and approval rigour for greater cost, consequences, uncertainty, and difficulty of reversal rather than treating all projects alike.
Historical translation and source notes
These original notes are retained verbatim with their fixed source versions. This historical label does not resolve a source-specific concern or establish current acceptance.
- The guide calls the third and fourth perspectives uncertainty and reversibility, while materials and steps label them context and choices. Both sets of terms are retained without claiming they are formally equivalent.
- The first branch says to ask one person on the winter-mountain side what happens if something is missing, but leaves the missing object unspecified. The translation does not supply one.
- With three groups, scaling asks neighbouring groups to share two at a time, without specifying how the remaining group is handled or how the representative group is selected. No pairing or selection procedure has been added.
Manuscript's recorded references
These translate the original manuscript's source and rights claims. They remain separate from any current-page notice below; they do not establish new verification.
- Dave Esra: Plan Your Trip
https://openpracticelibrary.com/practice/plan-your-trip/
Adaptation under CC BY 4.0; changes made
- CC BY 4.0
Current-page licence notice
A Taiwa no Fumen adaptation based on the Open Practice Library practice identified below. The manuscript's recorded references and the source page checked for this notice are shown separately.
Changes: explanations, timings, instructions, materials and branches were edited for this site. The English edition translates that Japanese manuscript; it is not a verbatim translation of the original practice.
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Credits on the checked source page
- Named contributors on the source page: Dave Esra
- Contributors listed in the official practice source (repository handles): @daveesra
Source page checked on 2026-10-17: Plan Your Trip.
Source lineage
CC BY-SA 4.0 — this site's adaptation and translation contributions · Legal code · Official source policy
This material-specific notice does not itself establish publication clearance. Preserved manuscript references above remain separate from the current page's credits and licence evidence.
Diagram, print, and video language
Original Japanese guide, diagram, and print view. Their labels and print text have not been translated; an English print edition is not provided here.
English video-library navigation. Original Japanese audio, subtitles and transcripts remain labelled Japanese resources. Their translations are separate later work. No remote player is embedded here.
The manual English phase controls are a navigation aid, not a live facilitation timer. Interactive diagram motion remains pending.
Editorial provenance
Japanese source status and logs are provenance only. They do not mean this English text or interface was field-tested. Historical fixed-text acceptance and hold records remain specific to their recorded versions; displaying them neither asserts current acceptance nor resolves source-specific restrictions.