Extract
People describe their espoused theory, not their theory in use. Extraction is the work of getting past the official story to what actually happened.
The distinction is Argyris's. What people say they do and what they actually do are different theories, and the gap between them is largest exactly where practice is most skilled, because skilled practice has gone tacit. Interview a practitioner about how they work and you get the espoused version: cleaner, more principled, and less true than the practice itself.
Play: extract from what happened, not what we say happens
When: a candidate has enough uses behind it that you are ready to write the play.
The move: before drafting anything, write the instances out raw. What actually happened, who did what, what resistance it hit, what memory wants to smooth over. Get the narrative down ugly and specific. Then extract the play from the narrative. Never draft the play first and reach back for instances as decoration.
Signals: the play contains at least one detail you would rather leave out. Plays extracted from real practice have grain. Plays extracted from the official story read smooth, and readers who know the territory can feel the difference.
When not to: when your only source is documentation or interviews. If you cannot observe or remember the actual runs, the candidate is not ready.
Play: keep the failure in
When: the raw narrative includes an attempt that did not land, a workaround, or a condition that made the move less impressive.
The move: the failure detail becomes a force or an entry condition in the play, not a cut. If the improvement took three attempts, or landed only because someone senior sponsored it, the reader's version will hit the same wall. A play that only works with air cover should say so.
Signals: readers stop asking "but what about" questions, because the play already answered them.
When not to: when the detail identifies people or clients who did not agree to appear. Anonymise the who, keep the what.
Antipattern: the espoused playbook
Codifying how work is supposed to happen rather than how it happens. The most common failure and the hardest to see from inside, because the official story is the one everyone already agrees on. The tell: nobody is embarrassed by anything in it.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.