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Debrief Protocol

The 20 minute debrief: reveal, process replay, own-company transfer and close, with lines to read and tactics for difficult moments.
ImportantIM only

Only the Incident Master reads this page before the session.

The debrief is where the session turns into learning. It takes 20 minutes and nothing replaces it. DEFAULT The structure: reveal 4, process replay 6, own-company transfer 6, close 4. The closing script reads out the ending before this starts and handles thanks after it.

WarningProtect the time

If you are behind, use the 10 minutes of slack. The clock rule at minute 40 already dropped a round 2 if needed. Never cut the debrief. If you must shorten it, shorten the reveal and the replay, and keep the transfer and the close whole. PROPOSED

Rules for this room

  • Out of character. Say it: “We are out of character. The persona, the cell and the Company are cards again.”
  • Judge the process, not the person. Say it before the replay.
  • Facts before opinions. “What happened?” before “what went wrong?”
  • Speak once before twice. Everyone speaks once before anyone speaks again.
  • Say “persona”, never a nationality. Tells are behaviour, process and money, never accent, face or origin.

1. Reveal (4 minutes)

Do these three in order, quickly, no discussion yet.

Unseal the persona. Company-only play: break the seal. Comrades’ chair or both chairs: the cell shows its hire card and the two tells it chose.

Hire [No. 00x] was the operator’s persona. [Read the anomalies on the card: process facts and money facts.]

Read the hop log. You wrote it on the run sheet as events happened. The Ground Crew’s Hops moved a device or an address, never an identity. Read each in order.

Here is what moved, and when: [read the log, one line per hop].

Say what moved each clue tier. Read your tier log, the cause column on the run sheet, one line each. A rise from a costed lookup was the Company’s own act; say so. Then read each Exposure source (passivity, extra closing, calls, wrongful offboarding), and the control the table named after each scoring success.

At [round], the tier went from [x] to [y] because [cause].

If a hire was cut wrongly, say once, flat: “Hire [No.] was a real hire. The oddity on their card had an ordinary reason.” Then move on.

NoteIf someone asks about real cases

Answer from the sources, name who says what, and use “assessed” or “suspected” for attribution. The person doing the work may be a subcontracted freelancer, or involvement may be hidden from them. Do not say workers are coerced: there is no source for it. Do not quote figures from memory.

2. Process replay (6 minutes)

Walk every stop-the-line call in order. Keep the key question exactly:

Which accusation rested on looks, and which on a named control?

For each call:

  1. Who called it, and who got picked? (Facts.)
  2. What did the accusation rest on? Looks, a named control, or a human cost.
  3. Did the cut, or the choice not to cut, cite a control? Was the cut gate met?
  4. What would the table have needed to check first?

Use the process condition: process held is judged on cuts and on accusations that ended in a cut. Each cited a named control or a human cost, none rested on looks alone, and there was no wrongful offboarding. An accusation with no cut does not by itself break it. Winning and judging well are different things.

Questions to pick from (two or three, not all):

  • “What did you see on that hire card that made you point?”
  • “Was that a behaviour, a process fact, a money fact, or a feeling?”
  • “Which control would have stopped it, and did anyone name it before the vote?”
  • “Where did the table have enough to act, but waited?”
  • “Where did it act, and what had it actually checked?”
TipOptional lens: calibration PROPOSED

Adapted from the M&M calibration matrix. Before a vote, ask each player for a thumb up (confident) or a thumb sideways (unsure). In the replay, place each call: confident and right, confident and wrong, unsure and right, unsure and wrong. Confident and wrong is the expensive quadrant. Praise a table that said “unsure” and kept looking. This is a debrief tool only. It changes no rule and no track.

3. Own-company transfer (6 minutes)

Privately, on paper: write one control your real organisation lacks, that would have stopped this hire. Do not discuss. On three, turn it over.

Suggested split: write for two minutes, reveal at once, cluster and discuss for the rest. PROPOSED

After the reveal:

  • Group the cards: identity checking, devices, payee and bank changes, other.
  • “Which of these would you fix first, and who owns it?”
  • “Which would the business push back on?”
  • Everyone speaks once before anyone speaks twice.

4. Close (4 minutes)

Each player says one commitment, in the form “When [situation], I will [action].” Ask them to write it down first. A written plan outperforms a spoken one.

One commitment each. When [situation], I will [action]. Write it down, then say it. [Name], start us.

Finish with the sentence, word for word:

Looks prove nothing either way: an appearance tell expires, so before anyone is trusted, check the ID, the device and the payee.

Then go to the thanks in the closing script.

Difficult moments

Signal Do this
Quiet table Pair and share: “Turn to your neighbour, one minute each, what surprised you?” Use the paper transfer step silently.
One voice dominates Enforce speak once before twice. “[Name], we have not heard your role yet.”
“That would not happen at our company.” “You may be right. Which of the three checks would you stand behind there: ID, device, payee?”
Someone argues the real world says to trust looks, voice or accent “Looks, voice and accent prove nothing in this game, and a real process cannot rest on them. What would you check instead?”
A player feels bad about a wrong cut “The process failed, not you. Which control was missing?”
Out of time Keep the transfer and the close. Cut the replay questions to one.
Someone is upset Pause. Offer the X-card route. Move on if they ask.

What next