THE INTERACTION CANVAS

How to use it

One hour. Four to eight people. The canvas printed at A3, or drawn on a whiteboard. You do not need the book to run it. The book is there for the why: why each mechanism works, and where it fails.

1
Find your three
Take the free twelve-question quiz, or the full 48-question diagnostic in the Borrowed Instinct Playbook. Tick the two or three laws with the lowest scores. Leave the rest alone, even the interesting ones.
2
Write what you see
On each ticked tile, two lines on how the problem shows up in your team this month. What happened, not what anyone thinks of it.
3
Pick a number
Every mechanism in the book comes with a parameter. Choose one your team can actually count, not one that merely sounds good, and write it in the table.
4
Start with the first pillar of each chapter's playbook, and only that
Write down its instrument and the cost the chapter names. Every mechanism in the book sends a bill somewhere. Say who pays it.
5
Write what would prove you wrong
Every chapter of the book ends this way. Decide now, before anyone is invested, what result would stop you.
6
Rate your evidence, then set a date
Circle how sure you are before you act. Book the review. Then keep what the number supports and drop what it does not, however much you liked it.

THE FOUR LEVELS OF EVIDENCE

Anecdote. A story, often the company's own. Not independently verified.

Illustration. Somebody independent confirmed the practice existed. Nothing more.

Benchmark. Practice, persistence and outcomes all documented, with a plausible mechanism, but no counterfactual.

Causal evidence. Somebody constructed a real comparison.

10 min

Review quiz results

20 min

Fill the three tiles

25 min

Complete the table

5 min

Owners and review date

Borrow the mechanism, not the animal. The Interaction Canvas comes from Borrowed Instinct by Inji Borai, published by Coffee Press.