What a Playbook Is
A playbook is a set of plays. A play is a situated action: when you see these conditions, this action tends to work, and here is how you would know.
That definition rules a lot out. A checklist is not a playbook. A methodology is not a playbook. A values statement is not a playbook. If a document cannot be decomposed into plays with entry conditions and signals, it is something else wearing the label. The Is It a Playbook test in the Artefacts section makes this operational.
Something else is fine. Mislabelling it is not. The label sets the reader's contract, and a reader who runs your essay as a play will fail with it.
The anatomy of a play
A play has four parts, and none of them is optional:
- Entry conditions. The situation a reader would be standing in, not the topic the play covers. If a reader cannot match their situation to the play in under a minute, the situating has failed.
- The action. What to actually do. Short. The action is usually the smallest part of a well-written play.
- Signals. How you would know it is working. Observable within weeks, not aspirational. "Alignment" is not a signal.
- When not to. The conditions under which the play does not apply. A play without a when-not-to is an instruction, and instructions do not transfer.
What a playbook is not
A playbook is not your culture. "This is how we do things around here" is the definition of culture, and culture lives in underlying assumptions that no document reaches. The playbook codifies current best-known practice, which is the visible layer. The culture is what people do when the playbook and reality disagree.
Keep those separate, or you end up writing down the story the organisation tells about itself. The purpose of the playbook system is what it does in practice. If what it does is provide compliance cover, that is its purpose, regardless of what the preface claims.
A playbook also assumes a capable reader exercising judgement. If a document can be followed by someone without judgement, it is a runbook. Runbooks are the right tool when the domain is stable, and the steps are deterministic. Playbooks are for domains where the reader must first understand the situation.
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