The four-week plan
Discover, map, build, multiply — the ladder from one person to ten teachers.
By the end of this lesson
- Name the four stages and what each week produces
- Match the stages to the rungs of the multiplier path
- Set your own dates
Watch
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The lesson
The practice has a shape when you are starting, and four weeks is enough to walk the whole ladder once at small scale.
The first week is discovery, and it is conversational rather than analytical. Talk to people. Collect the recurring frustrations you hear, and pick one person with a real problem to help this week. The instruction that matters is to listen rather than to solve — the temptation to arrive with an answer is strong and it produces solutions to problems nobody has.
The second week is mapping. Take one problem from that list and build the clearest picture you can of the system producing it: who holds what, where things stop, what duplicates what.
The third week is building, and the target changes from one person to ten. That change is what forces the work to become reusable, because ten people cannot each have your individual attention. Whatever you make has to work without you.
The fourth week is multiplication, and it has two halves. Partner with a group that already has reach — a library, a school, a congregation — to get to a hundred. Then train people to teach what you learned. The second half is the one that matters and the one that gets skipped, because it is slower and less visible than doing the work yourself.
The app tracks where a beacon sits on this ladder, and the rungs are the same ones the plan names. Your beacon also carries a stage you set yourself, which is how you say which week you are actually in.
Straight from the framework
Week 1
Discover
Help one person
Talk to people and collect what keeps coming up, without arriving with an answer.
Produces — A list of recurring frustrations, and one person you have actually helped.
Week 2
Map
Help one person
Take one problem from the list and work out the system producing it.
Produces — A picture concrete enough that someone inside the system could correct it.
Week 3
Build
Help ten
Move the target from one person to ten, which is what forces reuse.
Produces — Something ten people can use without you in the room.
Week 4
Multiply
Teach ten teachers
Partner with a group that already has reach, then train the people who will teach.
Produces — A hundred people reached, and ten who can run it themselves.
Do this in the app
Put the lesson down somewhere real
Set your beacon's stage to the week you are actually in.
Done when — The stage on your beacon matches your real position.
/dashboardPut four dates in your calendar, one per week, and name what each will produce.
Done when — You have four dates and four deliverables.
/dashboard
Go further
Check yourself