Minnesota Department of Human ServicesDisability Services DivisionOne DSD People, Access and Culture
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Curriculum I · Intercultural

Teams in Minimization

How a group hears equity as an attack — and how a supervisor keeps the process as the object.

30–40 minutes · 5 lessons · Voluntary learning

A government team sits around a conference table.

Course outline

  1. A team can do this together

    Minimization is often a group product, not a villain.

    6 minutes

  2. When naming impact sounds like an attack

    A Minimization-default room hears “who” as “you are bad.”

    6 minutes

  3. The blank toolkit as a team product

    After-the-vote is how a group Minimizes together.

    6 minutes

  4. Lines that keep the process as the object

    Say these. Do not convert. Do not score.

    7 minutes

  5. Your next meeting

    One agenda item: who, data, date. No scores.

    6 minutes
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What you’ll be able to do

Explore and practice

  • Identify how teams in minimization affects a DHS decision, service, or workplace process.
  • Use the course concepts and evidence to examine one live policy, form, meeting, service, hire, budget, or engagement plan.
  • Choose and document one defensible change, the person who owns it, and the date the team will review it.

What you can take into your work

  • Make and reconsider scenario decisions without being assigned a score.
  • Complete the practical activities and record a one-minute transfer commitment.
  • Apply the learning to a live work object in the Equity Analysis Toolkit.

Bring one live work object into the application workspace. Name who it was built for, who may carry the burden, and one change or formal escalation.

Listen to the introduction

Read the introduction

A team can default to sameness-as-fairness together. We do not see race. We attach the blank toolkit. We call naming impact an attack. Polarization is the trap on the other side: ranking who is evolved. This title is for supervisors and chairs. Keep the process as the object. Do not convert colleagues. Do not score anyone.

Teams in Minimization Job Aid

For the chair. Process as the object. No scores.
We are not scoring anyone. What will we change by Friday.

Use this aid while applying Teams in Minimization to a live DHS work object.

  • We are not scoring anyone. What will we change by Friday.
  • Use the relevant formal door when a right, complaint, labor process, safety duty, or Tribal consultation is involved.

Bring one live work object into the application workspace. Name who it was built for, who may carry the burden, and one change or formal escalation.

Say

  • The object is the process, not a person.
  • Who is this built for. Who pays.
  • Change by Friday, or identical on purpose with the who written.

Do not say

  • Who doesn’t get it.
  • We don’t see race.
  • Let’s not make this political.

Doors

  • Equal Opportunity and Access if it is a complaint.
  • HR / labor if it is the workforce process.
  • Consultation if a Nation is affected.

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.

Sources and further reading

All research and sources across the program