11 minutes

The team case consultation

An hour with colleagues, a structure that keeps the inquiry on the work rather than on a person, and a written question that leaves the room with an owner and a date.

What you’ll be able to do

Run a team case consultation on a real internal issue using a written structure, and finish with a next step, a named owner, and a one-page record that contains no identifying detail about any individual.
Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should the person facilitating do?
Draft a team case consultation guide for your work, including the issue as a question, who is in the room, the five rounds and their timing.

What a consultation is, and what it is not

A team case consultation is an hour in which a small group helps one person think about an issue they are carrying. It is borrowed from long practice in human services, and the version here is adapted for internal public-administration work: the subject is a process, a decision or a pattern, not a named participant and not a colleague. Somebody brings a question. The group asks about it before advising on it. The lenses get run. One next step leaves the room with an owner and a date. The whole thing fits inside an hour and needs no budget.

It is worth being clear about what it is not, because every one of these drifts happens and each one ends the usefulness of the group. It is not a performance conversation: the moment a person who is not in the room becomes the subject, stop. It is not a case review: no participant's name, diagnosis, address or family detail needs to be spoken for the group to examine a handoff or a letter. It is not a decision-making body: the group has no authority it did not already have, and pretending otherwise sets up the person who does hold the decision to be surprised. It is not mandatory, and it cannot survive becoming so.

What makes it work is unglamorous. The question is written down before the session and stays visible. Advice is held until the questions are done, because a group that starts advising in minute three is solving whichever version of the problem it imagined first. Every lens gets a sentence, including the ones that come up empty, so the group can see how much of the issue it has actually touched. And the record is one page about the work, filed with the process — which is what makes it safe to bring something real next month.

A team case consultation guide

One page you can copy into a standing meeting. It holds an hour, examines the work, keeps individual people out of the record, and sends one next step out of the room with a name and a date attached.

The issue as a question Written before the session and kept visible: what was observed, where in the process, who is affected, and what would count as an answer. No cause and no fix in the sentence. Example: which households stop partway through the re-assessment packet, at which page, and what happens to them afterward?

Who is in the room The person bringing the issue; someone facilitating who is not their supervisor; three or four colleagues who touch the same process from different angles; one person keeping the page. Attendance is voluntary and nobody is sent. If the issue involves a partner organization or an advisory group, invite them as paid participants and say so when you invite them.

The five rounds and their timing Five minutes, the question as written. Fifteen minutes, questions only from the group, no advice. Fifteen minutes, one sentence under each of the four lenses. Ten minutes, whose expertise is missing and what it would cost. Ten minutes, one next step, one owner, one date, and where this goes next. Five minutes, what stays off the page.

Ground rules read aloud at the start Examine the work, not the person. No identifying detail about any participant, family or colleague. Questions before advice. Nothing said here goes into anyone's file. Nobody is asked to disclose their own identity, health, history or beliefs. The decision stays with whoever holds it.

What leaves the room One page: the question, the four lens sentences, the expertise named as missing and what it would cost, one next step with an owner and a date, and the office this inquiry is heading toward. Filed with the process, and sent to the people who came.

What is never written down Names or identifying details of participants, families or colleagues; who said what; anything about an individual staff member's practice; anything a person shared about their own life. If a genuine performance or safety concern surfaces, it leaves the room through the proper route and not through these notes.

Copy the six fields into a one-page document, write your issue into the first one, invite three or four colleagues who touch the same process, and hold the first session for an hour this month.

Browse and download only. Staff notes are not typed or saved on this page.

The five rounds, and what each one is for

Round one: the question, as written (five minutes)

The person bringing the issue reads the written question and gives only the context needed to understand it — the step, the decision, the pattern, what has already been tried. No solutions yet, and no identifying detail about anyone. Five minutes is deliberately short. If the question cannot be understood in five minutes it usually needs rewriting, and that is itself a useful finding.

Round two: questions only (fifteen minutes)

The group asks and does not advise. What was observed, what was assumed, who reported it, who could not, what happens after the step fails, what has already been tried and what happened. Advice disguised as a question — “have you thought about just shortening the form?” — gets named gently and turned back into a question. This round is where most of the value is, and it is the one groups most want to skip.

Round three: four lenses, one sentence each (fifteen minutes)

Go around the four in order: what does this require of a person; who absorbs the difference; what does it assume about ordinary life; what in the structure keeps producing it. Write a sentence under each, including the ones that come up empty — an empty lens is information about how far the inquiry has got. Name the owner of each sentence as you go, because that is what turns four observations into a plan.

Round four: the missing expertise (ten minutes)

Who would know the answer to this and is not here? A community organization, an advisory group, the staff at the counter, the people who stopped responding, another division, a Tribal Nation's human services staff. For each one, name what it would take to include them properly — the invitation, the notice, the compensation, and the point in the timeline where their answer could still change something.

Round five: one step, one owner, one date (ten minutes)

Not a plan. One next step, small enough to happen, with a named owner and a date. Then say where this is heading: which office holds the decision this inquiry is pointing at, and what they will need from you when it arrives. Close by agreeing what stays off the page. The person who brought the issue speaks last, and is free to disagree with all of it.

Ground rules, read aloud at the start of every session

We examine the work — a step, a decision, a pattern — not a person.
No names or identifying details about any participant, family or colleague, present or absent.
Questions before advice. Advice starts in round three and not before.
Nothing said in this room goes into anyone's file, and nobody is evaluated here.
Nobody is asked to describe their own identity, health, history or beliefs to make a point.
The decision belongs to whoever holds it. We produce a sharper question and one next step.
Attendance is voluntary, and anyone may pass on any round.
A genuine performance or safety concern leaves this room through the proper route, not through these notes.

Keep the decision where it lives

What you can change

You control whether the consultation hands the real decision-maker a usable question or an accomplished fact. Both take the same hour.

What to watch for

Do not let a good session turn into a shadow decision. A group that leaves believing it has settled something it has no authority to settle sets up the office that does hold the authority to be surprised, and surprised offices say no.

Your next step

At the end of every session, write one line naming the office that holds the decision this inquiry is pointing toward and what it will need from you. If an issue touches Tribal Nations or tribal human services, that line goes first to the DHS offices that handle tribal matters and to the Minnesota Office of Indian Affairs before the inquiry goes further.

A consultation has finished. Which one-page record is the right one to keep?

A summary of the discussion including who said what, so the group can follow up on each person's commitments next month.

The question the group started with, one sentence under each lens, the expertise named as missing and what it would cost, one next step with an owner and a date, and the office this is heading toward — with no individual named.

The case details the presenter described, so that the next consultation can pick up exactly where this one left off.

No record at all. The consultation is voluntary, and anything written down could be used against someone later.

Try a situation

A supervisor offers to host a monthly case consultation for her unit, opening it to anyone who wants to bring something. At the first session a staff member brings a recurring breakdown in a referral handoff between two units. Twenty minutes in, the conversation has moved to how one colleague in the other unit handles her share of those referrals, two people have begun describing her decisions in detail, and the supervisor is taking notes.

What should the person facilitating do?

Let it run. The group has found the real cause, the description is accurate, and naming it plainly is more useful than protecting one person from an accurate account of her own work.

Stop the round, restate the ground rule out loud, move the discussion back to the step in the handoff rather than the person taking it, and strike the individual detail from the notes before going on.

End the session and refer the concern to the other unit's supervisor, since a performance issue has surfaced and a consultation is not the place for it.

Carry this forward

A case consultation examines a process, a decision or a pattern. It is not a performance conversation, not a review of a named participant, and not the place to settle who was at fault.
The structure does the work. Questions before advice, all four lenses before any fix, and the written question kept visible at the top of the page are what stop a capable group solving the wrong problem in the first ten minutes.
Nothing identifying about a specific individual — a participant, a family, a colleague — needs to be in the room or in the notes for the consultation to work. Describe the step, the decision and the effect.
The consultation does not hold the decision. Whoever holds the authority still decides. What the group produces is a sharper question, the missing expertise named, and one next step with an owner and a date.
It is voluntary, and it only works while it stays that way. A consultation people are sent to, or that produces a record about their practice, stops producing anything honest within about two sessions.

A scenario about a consultation that drifts into a performance conversation, a copy-ready consultation guide with the rounds, roles and ground rules, a set of ground rules to read aloud, and a knowledge check on what belongs in the written record.

Book one hour with three or four colleagues who touch the same process. Bring the inquiry question you wrote, run the five rounds, and file the one-page record with the process rather than with any person.

Your next step

Who are the three or four colleagues who touch the process you are examining?

Name them, and the hour in the month you would all actually protect

Name the ground rule you expect to be hardest to hold, and the words you will use to restate it

Name where the one-page record will live, and what it will never contain

Name the person who holds the decision this inquiry is heading toward, and what they will need from you

Browse and download only. Course notes are not typed or saved on this page.

Mark this lesson complete

Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.