# Agreement-Certainty Matching Matrix

Participants map work challenges onto a two-axis grid comparing certainty of outcomes against agreement on methods. Small groups spot where standard checklists fail complex problems and agree on adjustments.

**Time:** 45 minutes. Directly matches the 45-minute structure from the source documentation.
**People:** 4 to 24. Individual reflection, pairs (or one trio for odd counts), small groups of 3 to 6, and whole-room review

## Choose this exercise

**Purpose:** Sort team challenges into simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic domains to detect mismatched management approaches.
**Use it when:** Use during project planning, team resets, or departmental reviews when teams feel stuck using standard recipes on unpredictable problems.
**Skip it when:** Skip when the team faces a single technical emergency requiring immediate predefined execution rather than portfolio assessment.

## Materials and tools

- One printed individual matrix sheet per person
- One printed visual glossary card explaining the four domains per person
- One large wall matrix poster drawn on butcher paper or whiteboard
- One pad of sticky notes per person
- One fine-tip marker per person
- Low-tack masking tape for wall mounting if needed

## Before participants arrive

1. Draw the large Agreement-Certainty Matrix on the wall poster: horizontal axis shows Degree of Agreement (Close to Agreement on left, Far from Agreement on right); vertical axis shows Degree of Certainty (Close to Certainty at bottom, Far from Certainty at top).
2. Label the four resulting zones: Simple (bottom-left), Complicated (mid-range zones with high certainty or high agreement), Complex (top-right transition zone), and Chaotic (far top-right).
3. Distribute one individual worksheet, one visual glossary card, sticky notes, and a marker to each seat.
4. For hybrid sessions, assign an in-person volunteer scribe before the session begins.

## Say this to open

We often waste time applying linear recipes to problems that require experimentation, or treating routine tasks like research projects. In this session, write down your current work challenges and plot them against two questions: how close are people to agreeing on the approach, and how certain are the results? Take five minutes to list your main challenges on paper.

## How to run it

### 1. List individual challenges (5 minutes)

Participants work silently alone. Each person writes down current work challenges and tasks taking up their time, aiming for 3 to 6 distinct items.

### 2. Map challenges individually (5 minutes)

Each participant copies their selected challenges onto separate sticky notes. They place each note on their personal matrix sheet based on certainty of results and agreement among people involved.

### 3. Compare in pairs (5 minutes)

Participants pair up with an adjacent colleague. If the room has an odd number of people, form one trio. Each person explains where they placed their items and checks whether they judged certainty and agreement similarly.

### 4. Discuss in small groups (10 minutes)

Combine pairs into groups of 3 to 6 people. Never leave a standalone pair of 2. Two pairs combine to form a group of 4. A preexisting trio can either stay as a group of 3 or merge with a pair to form 5. If a lone pair remains without another pair to combine with, that pair splits and joins existing groups to create groups of 5 or 6. Groups compare matrices, spot differences, and highlight mismatches where complex challenges face rigid checklists.

### 5. Post on shared wall matrix (5 minutes)

Participants bring sticky notes they choose to make public to the large wall matrix. Participants place these notes in the corresponding domains, clustering similar challenges together without debating placement.

### 6. Observe patterns in small groups (5 minutes)

The same small groups from step 4 step back from the wall. They review the distribution across simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic domains and identify which mismatches require urgent operational attention.

### 7. Debrief and align next actions (10 minutes)

Convene the full room. To strictly preserve the 10-minute cap, invite exactly 3 small groups to share for 1 minute each, stating one key pattern and one detected mismatch. Other groups contribute by show of hands if they saw the identical pattern. Spend the remaining 7 minutes agreeing on one or two concrete experimental adjustments for misplaced work.


## Debrief questions

- What patterns stand out in where our team's work clusters on the wall?
- Where are we trying to apply a standard checklist to a problem that actually needs small experiments?
- What is one concrete shift we will make this week on a misplaced challenge?

**Finished output:** A shared wall map of active challenges categorized into four domains, with recorded operational mismatches and agreed immediate adjustments.

## Remote

Use a shared online whiteboard with the two axes pre-drawn. Participants write digital notes privately during silent steps, discuss in breakout rooms of 2 then 4 to 6, then drag their chosen notes onto the shared canvas during the 5-minute posting step.

## Hybrid

In-person participants place sticky notes on the wall while remote participants add them to a shared digital whiteboard. During step 5, the pre-assigned in-person volunteer scribe copies remote notes onto physical sticky notes for the wall, grouping duplicates and briefly reading aloud the title of each unique remote challenge so both rooms share a complete picture.

## Access and participation choices

- Participants may choose which challenges to post publicly and may keep sensitive or personal items private on their personal sheet.
- Provide a printed visual glossary card explaining the four domains for participants who benefit from reference text.
- Offer seated observation of the wall poster for participants with limited mobility.

## If the session gets stuck

**Participants argue over whether a challenge is strictly complicated or complex.**

Remind the room that problems can have simple and complex parts simultaneously. Encourage them to split the note into two specific components or place it on the boundary line.

**One or two participants dominate the pair and small group sharing.**

Remind groups to use timed turns of two minutes per person so each voice is heard before opening free discussion.

**The hybrid scribe is overwhelmed by too many incoming digital sticky notes during step 5.**

Instruct remote participants to limit their public submissions to their top 2 most urgent challenges and cluster related digital notes together so the scribe can copy consolidated themes.


## Terms used here

- Simple: Challenges with high certainty and high agreement that can be solved reliably with standardized best practices or recipes.
- Complicated: Challenges requiring specialized expertise and analysis, where cause and effect can be determined reliably.
- Complex: Challenges with multiple valid pathways and emergent outcomes that cannot be predicted in advance, requiring small probes and experiments.
- Chaotic: High-turbulent situations with no clear cause-and-effect relationship, requiring immediate stabilization before analysis.

## Participant material: Individual Agreement-Certainty Matrix Sheet

AGREEMENT-CERTAINTY MATRIX

Vertical Axis (Degree of Certainty):
- Top: Far from Certainty (Outcomes unpredictable)
- Bottom: Close to Certainty (Outcomes predictable)

Horizontal Axis (Degree of Agreement):
- Left: Close to Agreement (People agree on goals and methods)
- Right: Far from Agreement (People disagree on goals and methods)

Quadrants and Domains:
1. Bottom-Left: SIMPLE (High certainty, high agreement; use checklists and clear procedures)
2. Center/Intermediate: COMPLICATED (Expert analysis needed; good practice applies)
3. Top-Right: COMPLEX (Low certainty, low agreement; run small pilot experiments)
4. Far Edge: CHAOTIC (High turbulence; take immediate action to stabilize)

Prompt:
1. List 3-5 challenges that take up your time.
2. Place each challenge on this grid based on how predictable it is and how much agreement exists.

## Participant material: Visual Glossary Card

DOMAIN GLOSSARY REFERENCE

SIMPLE:
- Cause and effect are clear and repeatable.
- Best approach: standard operating procedures, checklists, and known recipes.
- Example: processing routine monthly invoices.

COMPLICATED:
- Cause and effect require expert analysis or technical diagnosis.
- Best approach: expert analysis, trade-off studies, good practice.
- Example: migrating a database schema to a new engine.

COMPLEX:
- Cause and effect can only be understood in retrospect; multiple competing factors.
- Best approach: safe-to-fail probes, small experiments, iterative feedback.
- Example: improving cross-team collaboration across conflicting departments.

CHAOTIC:
- High turbulence with no perceptible cause-and-effect patterns.
- Best approach: immediate stabilization, clear command actions, triage.
- Example: unexpected full-system infrastructure outage during product launch.

## Sources and adaptation

Liberating Structures attributes this method to Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless, adapted from the work of Ralph Stacey and Brenda Zimmerman.

Retained the 45-minute progression and core two-axis mechanics from Liberating Structures. Added explicit group-merging arithmetic for all numbers between 4 and 24 to prevent orphan pairs, a pre-session volunteer scribe assignment in setup, concise speaking limits during the debrief, visual glossary cards to the inventory, and selective posting rights to safeguard privacy.

[Liberating Structures](https://www.liberatingstructures.com/27-agreement-certainty-matrix/)

[Liberating Structures Menu](http://www.liberatingstructures.com/27-agreement-certainty-matrix/)

Current run sheet: https://unitedwetransform.com/exercises/agreement-certainty-matching-matrix/