Understand first, choose only then. Eight steps, always in the same order.
Issue-Focused Working (VGW) is not a team-building day and not a training you attend once. It is a rhythm: look, choose, act, learn, and then look again. That rhythm repeats, session after session, issue after issue. It is precisely that repetition that makes it a method rather than an intervention.
Two words everything rests on
In the book: chapter 2
Issue
What a team wonders about. Open: it invites inquiry, and nobody has to be right yet.
Problem
The difference between where the team is now and where it wants to be. Sharp: it names a distance that has to be bridged.
Teams almost always start with something that looks like neither: a complaint, a sigh, a loose concern. The eight steps do exactly this. From what is on people’s minds to an issue. From the issue through picture-forming to the real problem. And only then to a decision. Whoever treats an issue as a problem that is already settled skips picture-forming without noticing.
The eight steps
In the book: chapter 3 and appendix A. In the workbook: one worksheet per step, for every issue.
- 1Team Pulse
- 2Issue
- 3Picture-forming
- 4Opinion-forming
- 5Judgment-forming
- 6Decision-making
- 7Action
- 8Team Pitstop
Picture-forming comes before opinion-forming, opinion-forming before judgment-forming, judgment-forming before decision-making. The order is fixed on purpose, because the order itself makes the difference. Every issue goes through all eight steps; the duration changes, the chain does not. Where it says alone, in silence, everyone first writes for themselves before anything is shared.
| 1. Team Pulse alone, in silence | Each team member contributes individually what is going on in their own work: problems, opportunities, concerns, and challenges. Everything gets attention and is kept on the issue list, including what comes up later. That way the loudest voice does not set the agenda. The team then decides together where to begin and who sits at the table for it: the issue team, preferably four to six people. In a larger team, that is a delegation. |
| 2. Issue | The presenter explains why this matters and why it matters now. The team listens, without judgment or opinion, and asks no questions yet. |
| 3. Picture-forming | Judgment-free, curious questions to understand the issue, with the standing question “why is this a problem?” No solutions yet, no judgments. When the overview gets lost, clustering and the interrelationship diagram (chapter 7) help to tell apart the complaint, the driver (the real problem), and the bottleneck (the constraining factor). |
| 4. Opinion-forming alone, in silence | Each team member first fills in the HPID individually (current situation, problem, ideal situation, goal) and then shares it, without discussing it yet. |
| 5. Judgment-forming | The team checks whether it is thinking along the same lines and formulates one problem statement together: “The problem is that …, while …”. That statement is tested against three questions: is there no solution hidden in it, no cause, and is there a tangible tension between now and desired? Only then do the solution directions follow. |
| 6. Decision-making | Which solution direction now, which later, which not at all. Result: a deliberate decision with buy-in. |
| 7. Action | Ownership: the action is pared down to something someone can actually do, shaped together with its owner, with an agreed moment of reporting back. |
| 8. Team Pitstop | Reflection on result, process, and collaboration. Not an assessment of people; a learning moment. Every three to four weeks, as often as needed. |
The words
The method uses a few words of its own. Here they are, one line each. On the other pages they are also briefly explained at first use.
| Team Pulse | Step 1: each team member first writes down, alone, what is going on in their work; then the team chooses. The word is used in three ways: the step itself, the worksheet you use for that step, and Metis Team Pulse, the Metis role that facilitates this step. |
| Issue and problem | An issue is what a team wonders about; a problem is the distance between where the team is now and where it wants to be. The method moves from the first to the second. |
| Issue team | The four to six people who work out a chosen issue. In a larger team a delegation, or brought together for this one issue across teams or organizations (teaming). |
| Picture, opinion, judgment, decision | The four steps at the core of the method, always in this order: first the complete picture, then everyone’s opinion, then one shared judgment, and only then a decision. |
| Interrelationship diagram | The drawing from step 3 that shows how the complaint, the driver (the real problem), and the bottleneck (the constraining factor) are connected. |
| HPID | The worksheet of step 4, four questions named after their Dutch initials: current situation, problem, ideal situation, goal. Everyone fills it in alone first. |
| Close out | Record what has been said and test whether everyone can move on. After every step, and where needed within a step as well, for instance a few times during a long picture-forming. |
| Consent | The test when closing out: everyone is asked “can you move on with this?” Only a serious, argued objection holds the team back. Something other than consensus, and never inferred from silence. |
| Current Shared Picture (CSP) | The one overview of where an issue stands: key points, action list, and discussion record. Updated after every session. |
| Team Pitstop | Step 8: every three to four weeks, looking back on result, process, collaboration, and team norms, with two learning questions: what have I learned about myself, and what about this team? A learning moment, not an assessment of people. |
| The four dials | Resistance, norms, motivation, and ease: the four places where behavior can be adjusted. Built into the eight steps, not as loose tricks; also useful when an action keeps slipping (book, chapter 14). |
| Single-loop, double-loop, triple-loop | Three levels of learning: adjusting what you do within the rules, examining the rules themselves, and shifting the yardstick by which you decide what is good (book, chapter 13). |
Closing out and consent
In the book: chapter 3. In the workbook: the ground rules, p. 6
Every step is closed out before the next begins: jointly establishing that the step is done. At the end of every step except step 2, the team tests that by consent. Everyone in turn is asked: can you move on with this?
Consent is not the same as agreement. You do not have to think it is the best option, and you may have doubts. Only a serious, argued objection holds the team back. Agreement is never inferred from silence.
The Current Shared Picture
In the book: chapters 3 and 8. In the workbook: at the front of every issue
The CSP is one overview of where the issue stands right now: key points, action list, and discussion record. The team updates it together at the end of every session, wherever it is in the steps, even when a session is cut short.
Everyone knows what has been agreed, including whoever missed a session. And a manager reads in the key points where the team stands and why, without a separate report. Across teams, this creates executive grip, as a signal and never as a judgment.
What it delivers for a team
In the book: chapter 9
Decisions that still stand months later, because the whole team formed and endorsed them. Actions with an owner. Team members who know they have been heard, because everyone’s picture was drawn out before anyone judged. A team that closes its issues instead of letting them drag on.
Retaining people, less absenteeism, and better output are not goals here; they come as a bonus. The book describes it as a direction, not as a proven result: what has been measured so far is self-report without a comparison group, and a numerical link has not yet been demonstrated (chapters 9 and 12). Within each organization, that direction can be followed with the measurement instruments.
What changes is speed and consistency. What does not change is who does the work.From Stop Solving, chapter 11
What the method rests on, and what it does not
In the book: introduction, chapter 12, and appendix B
The method was not invented but grown: three and a half years of practice-based research in long-term care, in more than five hundred team sessions in the Dutch long-term care sector (VVT). The eight-step model, with picture-forming, opinion-forming, judgment-forming, and decision-making at its core, is Frank Campman’s own practice-based research and has not been tested in controlled studies. The book says so plainly.
Five traditions shaped the method: the action learning of Revans and Marquardt, Schein’s process consultation, Kahneman’s work on fast and slow thinking, the sociocratic circle method, and the BOB model from Dutch meeting practice. The book sets its own claims beside the research literature, including where the literature argues against them, and for most of those traditions the evidence is thinner than their popularity suggests.
So what is the difference from Action Learning, process consultation, and sociocracy?
In the book: chapter 10 (figure 10), chapter 12, and appendix C
- Action Learning (Revans, Marquardt). There the problem is the given: a designated problem exists and a group is organized around it; once the solution is chosen and the first action named, the cycle is complete. In Issue-Focused Working the team is the given: it gathers for itself what is on people’s minds, chooses, works it out, and returns to the same list. The difference lies not in the weight of the issue or in who sits at the table, but in what is fixed before you begin, and whether the process continues with the same team. That is why opinion-forming has its own, individual step here: in a team that still has to discover what the issue is, differences in picture would otherwise go undiscussed.
- Process consultation (Schein). The stance is the same: the facilitator helps the team see and solve its own problem, and the knowledge stays with the team. Issue-Focused Working adds a fixed structure to that: eight named steps, closing out and consent, and the Current Shared Picture. Schein’s humble, genuinely curious questions are the basis under picture-forming.
- Sociocracy (Endenburg). The method borrows the consent principle, not the full circle structure and not the circle organization. Consent is used only to close out steps and test decisions, with the question whether an objection touches the shared goal or is a preference.
The core claim. Psychological safety does not have to be built with a separate intervention. It emerges as a result of the process structure itself: drawing out everyone’s picture with judgment-free questions before opinions are voiced, everyone’s own opinion before the team judges, and explicit consent at every transition. That claim is tested with the measurement instruments.
Do it yourself, or with a trainer-coach?
In the book: chapter 15
For a team that still has to get used to the method, facilitating it yourself as the manager is unwise: you then risk the durability of the change. The manager should be part of the team process, not its facilitator. Only when both team and manager are experienced can the manager take over that role. You need the certificate only to facilitate others.
The method is identical on paper and digitally: the same eight steps, with or without AI. Metis is not a separate method but a consequence of it.
When is this not a fit?
In the book: chapters 2 and 10
- Not at the moment of an acute crisis itself. Where the task calls for action, slowing down adds nothing. Afterward it does, in the Team Pitstop.
- Not for a decision that legally rests with one person. The team can still do the picture-forming together, but the decision stays with that person.
- Not as a replacement for every team moment. Not every moment calls for the full eight steps; a single intervention may then fit better. And in a team where nothing is broken, the method is not needed.
A step gets the time the team needs: a team that is just starting often takes a full day for an issue, an experienced team does it in an hour. Tailoring is not in the steps but in what a trainer-coach adds around them, such as Lencioni’s team dysfunctions model as a conversation frame for one session, or the micro-habits from Samen safe to build safety in small steps.
Three team characteristics decide whether it takes: size (four to six people around an issue), interdependence, and a shared task. Does this fit our team? For a designated, heavy case, Action Learning by the Marquardt protocol was built; for teams that learn to discover and solve their own issues, Issue-Focused Working. Appendix C of the book sets seventeen adjacent methods beside Issue-Focused Working, from Kepner-Tregoe and Lean to peer supervision, Deep Democracy, and meeting AIs.