The 72-Playbook Map: Choose the Mechanism That Matches the Failure

The library contains 72 playbooks. Installing all of them would be a mistake.

A playbook is useful when it repairs a specific operating failure. The right starting point is not the most interesting framework. It is the recurring decision, meeting, plan, handoff, or people process that currently produces an unreliable result.

The full Playbooks library is organized into nine modules.

Module 1: What to implement first

Use this module when the team lacks a stable weekly operating cadence.

1. Successful Meetings
2. The 3Ps Framework
3. Silent Meetings
4. 4 Blocker Business Reviews
5. Weekly Status Updates
6. Weekly Schedule of Meetings

These mechanisms make decisions, progress, commitments, blockers, and review time visible. They should reduce the amount of context the organization has to reconstruct every week.

Module 2: Planning exercises

Use this module when an idea cannot survive contact with priorities, customers, dependencies, or a delivery plan.

1. 10x Strategy Meeting
2. How to Plan New Products and Services
3. Prioritization Formula
4. Loglines
5. Business Goals
6. Value Propositions

The sequence moves from option generation to choice. A planning exercise should end with a decision, an owner, and an artifact that can be reviewed later.

Module 3: Writing

Use this module when the work depends on explanation, but the document does not carry its own meaning.

1. Business Writing
2. Writing with Artificial Intelligence

The standard is simple: the reader should be able to find the point, evidence, mechanism, and required action without a narrator. AI may shorten parts of the drafting workflow, but the human author remains responsible for facts, judgment, and approval.

Module 4: Process

Use this module when teams repeatedly lose decisions between planning, execution, launch, and review.

1. Done
2. Business Review Etiquette
3. Changelog
4. Correction of Errors
5. Voice of the Customer
6. New Release Mail Template
7. Battlecards
8. Go To Market
9. Testing Plans
10. Input From Stakeholders
11. Post Mortems
12. Project Reviews
13. Operations Reviews
14. Product Release Plans
15. Reviews with Leaders
16. Scaling Mechanisms
17. Single Threaded Owner
18. Standard Operating Procedures
19. Working Backwards
20. Business Review Guidelines
21. 10 Universal Business Objectives

This is the largest module because process failures appear at every handoff. Do not respond by applying all 21 mechanisms. Trace the failure first. A launch problem may be a missing owner, a weak test plan, an unresolved customer question, or a review that never closes actions.

Several concepts in this module have established origins, including Amazon's Working Backwards method and Single-Threaded Owner model. The library's value is in making these mechanisms usable and explicit, not claiming invention.

Module 5: Competencies

Use this module when a value is visible on the wall but not in decisions or behavior.

1. Values and Competencies
2. Act Like an Owner
3. Brand Tenets
4. Serve Customers
5. Ambition
6. Think Big

A competency should define observable behavior, the decision it improves, and the evidence used in feedback. Otherwise, it becomes a slogan that different managers interpret differently.

Module 6: Building your team

Use this module when the organization needs clearer team boundaries, manager standards, or career paths.

1. 2-Pizza Team
2. Manager Effectiveness Program
3. Effective Team
4. Organizing for Speed
5. Social Cohesion
6. Marketing Job Leveling Guides
7. Product Manager Job Leveling Guides
8. Program Manager Job Leveling Guides
9. Operations Job Leveling Guides
10. Technical Program Manager Job Leveling Guides

Team design should make ownership and dependencies easier to understand. Job-leveling guides should clarify scope and evidence. They should not become automated promotion or compensation decisions.

Module 7: Interviewing and hiring

Use this module when hiring depends too heavily on memory, unstructured opinion, or inconsistent candidate treatment.

1. Making Great Hiring Decisions
2. Interview Question Bank
3. Recruiting Update Template
4. Recruitment Selection Process
5. Recruitment Improved Process
6. Interview Loop
7. Headcount
8. New Hire Orientation Checklist
9. New Hire Orientation Process Agenda

These mechanisms can improve preparation and evidence collection. Authorized people must still own candidate selection, policy, privacy, accessibility, and legal decisions.

Module 8: Managing your team

Use this module when expectations, coaching, performance evidence, or planning are inconsistent across managers.

1. Annual Reviews
2. Coaching Models
3. Goals
4. Talent Review
5. Performance Improvement Plans
6. Performance Management Guide
7. Shuttle Diplomacy
8. Quarterly Bets Planning
9. SBI Format Feedback

The GROW coaching model and Situation-Behavior-Impact feedback format are established third-party frameworks. They should be attributed on first substantive use. Tools can prepare evidence and questions; authorized managers and HR partners remain responsible for consequential employment decisions.

Module 9: Keeping up the momentum

Use this module when recognition is inconsistent, generic, or disconnected from the behavior the team should repeat.

1. Employee of the Month
2. Employee Recognition
3. Praise and Recognition

Recognition should name the behavior, its effect, and why it matters. A mechanism can improve the quality of the evidence. It should not automate winner selection or turn appreciation into a hidden rating system.

How to choose

Use three questions:

1. What result is unreliable?
2. Which recurring decision or handoff produces that result?
3. What is the smallest mechanism that can make the owner, evidence, output, and review visible?

Choose one playbook. Define the baseline and the review date before implementation. Run it long enough to observe the mechanism, then keep, revise, or remove it.

The size of the library is not the outcome. A corrected operating loop is.