Wild Dogs Curriculum — The Complete Course Map

This is the complete curriculum map for both Wild Dogs courses: what each session teaches, which exercises slot in, and what the research basis is. Run sessions directly from this map. Two companion facilitation guides go deeper where a single session needs a full script: the Immunity Map Exercise doc (Session 4) and the Gathering Design doc (how the room itself is run).

Why this works

Jer's claim — leaders today know leadership ("the head is there") but their automatic behavior isn't formed, and only slow formation changes that — is Kahneman's central finding wearing wild-dog fur. Leadership knowledge lives in System 2 (slow, deliberate — the head); leadership behavior under pressure comes from System 1 (fast, automatic — the soul), and System 1 is formed only by prolonged practice ("skilled intuitions, after adequate training"). Knowing doesn't change the automatic: you can't un-see the Müller-Lyer illusion, and Kahneman himself confesses that after a Nobel's worth of bias research, "my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence… as it was before I made a study of these issues. System 1 is not readily educable." That is the crock-pot thesis with a Nobel attached — the rebuttal to "can't I just read the books?" The Kahneman–Klein expert-intuition research supplies the mechanism: trustworthy automatic behavior requires a regular environment + prolonged practice + quality feedback — literally the design of a spaced, multi-month cohort. And it adds a warning Jer can preach: positional power is a "wicked environment" — subordinates' deference is corrupted feedback, so seniority makes a leader's self-trust grow while their accuracy doesn't ("power increases trust in one's own intuition"). The leader's only fix is a pack that tells the truth — which welds Kahneman to Lencioni's trust pyramid and to The Pack in one move. (Quotes and line references: the Kahneman leadership notes in research. Positioning implications live in the Strategy Brief; this doc stays operational.)

The unifying architecture: Body → Soul

Jer already named his courses "The Body of the Leader" and "The Soul of the Leader." Loehr & Schwartz's The Power of Full Engagement (2003) provides a ready-made, business-credible architecture that is literally body→soul: energy is managed across four levels — physical → emotional → mental → spiritual (spiritual = values/purpose, "the highest octane"). Adopt this as the connective tissue:

• Body course = capacity, skills, disciplines, "muscle memory" (his words already)
• Soul course = the spiritual-energy level: values, purpose, character, formation
• Training metaphors Jer already uses (muscles, crock-pot) map to Loehr's oscillation/training model: stress + recovery builds capacity; rituals beat willpower.

Coyle names the same split from the team side (~5110): proficiency work needs a lighthouse (clear models, repetition, rules of thumb — the 21 Laws course); creative/formation work needs an expedition (protected autonomy, safe-to-fail, celebrate initiative — the Soul course). One more reason the two courses are different rooms.

Flagship: Team Leadership — The Soul of the Leader (9 sessions)

Keep Jer's structure exactly (9 × 1hr online meetings, pre-reading + pre-meeting chat questions, ~35 hrs total, 3 application projects, Wild Dogs Certificate). Principle: keep Maxwell + Lencioni as the warm, accessible spine Jer loves; pair every module with one soul text and one research twin so the program is simultaneously deeper and more defensible than anything Maxwell-only.

Reality check (2026-06-12): the real curriculum is in hand

Jer's actual Team Leadership curriculum has arrived (1,661 lines plus a build outline) and confirms the designed structure: 9 meetings — an Intro, six modules, and a Conclusion — delivered as pre-watch video + assigned chapters + asynchronous posts to Chat Questions, then a live virtual meeting. Videos are hosted on Radix, a portal borrowed from Jer's mission organization. The three projects above are confirmed real: they are Jer's Projects 1–3 (personal diagnosis with peer pairing, team diagnosis, integration plan presented at the final session). Role reframe: Jer's curriculum is the narrative spine — the WHAT; this doc is the facilitation and research layer on top of it — the HOW. The 9 designed sessions map 1:1 onto the real 9 meetings:

Resilience (S8) and shadow-work (S4) are where the design ADDS depth the curriculum only names.

Platform note: Radix handles the core loop (video, async chat questions, virtual meetings) but not peer pairing, accountability dyads, or an alumni space — and Jer retires from the mission in March 2027, so the borrowed portal has a hard end date. A migration to an owned platform (Heartbeat ~49/moorCircle 89/mo, per the Strategy Brief's researched figures) is needed before then; sensible timing is between cohorts. The strategy-level decision lives in the Strategy Brief.

Cohort norms (announced session 1, run all 9 sessions)

1. Leader discloses first. Jer opens every session with his own current character failure before anyone else speaks. (Strongest known driver of group psychological safety; the AA-structure mechanism with Cochrane-grade evidence behind the comp. Cooper's version: "I screwed that up… might be the most important four words any leader can say.")
2. Accountability dyads. Assigned pairs check in between sessions (the sponsor analogue). Rotates at mid-course.
3. Public formation goal. At launch, each member states one difficult, specific formation goal aloud to the group (public + difficult + group = the three moderators that make goal-setting work, Epton 2017).

Session rhythm (every session)

• Before-Action Review opens: intended results / anticipated challenges / what we've learned from similar / what makes us successful this time. After-Action Review closes: intended vs actual results / what caused them / same next time / different next time. Run by participants, not Jer; findings written and shared (SEALs, ~4271–4288).
• Check-in liturgy (Givechi's IDEO "Flights" questions, verbatim — the register is already confessional): "The one thing that excites me about this opportunity is ___ / I confess, the one thing I'm not so excited about is ___ / On this project, I'd really like to get better at ___" (~3961).
• Facilitator sentence (the 19 words of "magical feedback"): "I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them" (~1582) — the three cues (you belong / we have high standards / I believe you can reach them) map to Sacrificial + Excellence in one sentence.
• Homework spine — facilitated WOOP closes every session (live facilitation nearly doubles the effect vs worksheets): Wish (from the S1 Best-Possible-Self) → Outcome → Obstacle (the member's named inner pattern — their Q6B fear, immunity-map commitment, or shadow pole) → if-then Plan ("If I feel the urge to dominate the meeting, then I ask a question and wait"). Between sessions, dyads check the if-then plans — that's the whole check-in agenda. (A live-facilitation guide for WOOP is still to be written.)

The nine sessions

Session 1 — The Pack Covenant (fit, mutuality, leadership timeline)

• Core (Jer's spine): course intro; wild-dog values.
• Soul text: Clinton, The Making of a Leader — life-phases timeline exercise (each leader maps their formation so far).
• Research twin: Crossan et al., Ivey Leader Character framework — character is developable (the evidence the whole course rests on).
• Threshold ritual: mark the crossing — cohorts are ripest for belonging cues at thresholds (Pixar's "you are a filmmaker now"; OKC's memorial visit, ~2345). Open with the nomination story: each member hears, out loud, why they were named. (Also Edmondson's learning-velocity factor #2: tell people explicitly why they're here, ~5013.)
• Exercise: Best Possible Self at 70 written exercise → becomes the Wish/Outcome of every later WOOP. Re-author the first mountain: "what it cost, what it was for." (Carrillo 2019; McAdams/Adler; Rohr.)
• Values under load — the Credo Challenge (J&J, ~4438): invite the cohort to attack the four wild-dog values — "if we can't live by them, we ought to tear them off the walls." Values survive challenge or get revised; either way they become load-bearing. Repeat annually in the Pack.
• Kahneman lens: System 1/System 2 as the course vocabulary — "head" = System 2 knowledge, "soul/formed character" = what System 1 does at your worst. Kahneman's confession as the case for 9 sessions + practice instead of a seminar.

Session 2 — Humility + Will (what kind of leader changes the world)

• Core: Maxwell 5 Levels overview; self-diagnosis (Project 1 begins).
• Soul text: Brooks, The Second Mountain — résumé vs. eulogy virtues; which mountain are you on?
• Research twin: Collins, Level 5 Leadership — window-and-mirror; the empirical case that humble+willful wins.
• Exercise: "I am who I am" rebuttal — Hudson & Fraley 2020: adults who set trait-change goals show measured trait growth in ~16 weeks. Character is a practice, not a verdict.
• Kahneman lens: CEO halo — the stronger CEO leads the stronger firm only ~60% of the time; "a few lucky gambles can crown a reckless leader with a halo of prescience." Teach Collins with Kahneman's Built to Last critique (winners' edge regressed to nothing) — intellectual honesty is part of the brand, and humility about one's own success-narrative IS the module's content.

Session 3 — Servant First (the Sacrificial value)

• Core: Maxwell Level 4 (People Development).
• Soul text: Greenleaf's "best test," used verbatim: do those served grow… become more likely themselves to become servants?
• Research twin: Grant, Give and Take — "otherish" givers finish first; boundaried sacrifice vs. burnout martyrdom.
• Kahneman lens: availability asymmetry — every team member privately over-credits their own contribution (claims sum >100%). The regression-to-the-mean trap: life "statistically punishes you for being nice and rewards you for being nasty" — your own experience will argue against grace; don't trust it.

Session 4 — The Leader's Shadow (change the world inside you)

• Core: bridge — why teams inherit their leader's interior.
• Soul text: Palmer's five shadows (insecurity, battleground worldview, functional atheism, fear of chaos, denial of death) + Barton's rhythms of solitude/silence.
• Research twin: Wiseman, the Accidental Diminisher self-exam — well-intended behaviors that shrink others.
• Exercise: the 4-column mini-map (Kegan, Immunity to Change) — seed column 1 from the taker's Scorecard Q6B fear. The full 75-minute facilitation guide, with the canonical prompts, worked examples, and 12-week testing arc, is the Immunity Map Exercise doc.
• Exercise (here or S8): Shadow energy check (Moore & Gillette, gender-neutral): which energy's shadow runs you under pressure — and the flip-risk of its opposite pole. Prescription always borrows a different energy (Tyrant → Heart's empathy). (KWML.)
• Kahneman lens: the shadow, mechanized — substitution, self-halo, confirmation retrieval; why a leader literally cannot see themselves accurately by introspection ("the stranger in you"). Ego-depletion parole judges: who you are when tired is the formed you.

Session 5 — Trust (Dysfunction #1)

• Core: Lencioni: absence of trust; team assessment (Project 2 begins — Five Dysfunctions Online Team Assessment, $56.50/seat).
• Soul text: Brown, Dare to Lead — rumbling with vulnerability; BRAVING checklist.
• Research twin: Edmondson, psychological safety — Google Project Aristotle's #1 team dynamic; free 7-item survey.
• The trust inversion (Coyle, ~2822): "Vulnerability doesn't come after trust — it precedes it." The vulnerability loop (Polzer, ~2752): A signals weakness → B detects it → B signals their own → trust materializes; "the second person is the key." The 36-questions evidence (deep questions make strangers ~24% closer in 45 min, ~2713); the first-vulnerability and first-disagreement moments set the group's whole pattern (~4196) — engineer both deliberately, host goes first.
• Exercise: Dinner of Truth — a meal with one trusted person; the ask is verbatim: "the characteristic or action of mine you find most bothersome"; ground rules contracted in advance (listen to comprehend, no self-defense). (Eurich.)
• Kahneman lens (runs across the Lencioni arc, S5–7): "Organizations are better than individuals… a factory that manufactures judgments." Three team practices straight from the book: (1) decorrelate errors — everyone writes their position before discussion; (2) premortem — "it's a year out and this failed; write the history"; (3) judge decisions by process, not outcome — or your people will optimize for blame-avoidance. A shared bias vocabulary as team culture ("more precise gossip → better decisions").

Session 6 — Conflict & Commitment (Dysfunctions #2–3)

• Core: Lencioni: fear of conflict, lack of commitment.
• Soul text: Schein, Humble Inquiry — asking instead of telling; Level-2 relationships (= Jer's "mutuality," named by MIT's culture scholar).
• Research twin: Project Aristotle dynamics 2–3 (dependability, structure & clarity).
• Exercise: Loving Critics protocol — pick feedback sources by two criteria: they love you AND they've seen the behavior up close; then structured questions designed to challenge your self-beliefs. (Eurich.)
• Coyle upgrades (S6–7): BrainTrust rule — the advisory group may only name problems, never prescribe solutions; preserves the leader's ownership (~4292) — becomes the Pack's peer-advisory format too. Candor, not brutal honesty: smaller, targeted, less personal (~4312). Feedback format for the faith-adjacent register: "What Worked Well / Even Better If" (~6142).

Session 7 — Accountability & Results (Dysfunctions #4–5)

• Core: Lencioni: avoidance of accountability, inattention to results.
• Soul text: Marquet, Turn the Ship Around! — giving away control; "I intend to…"
• Research twin: Wiseman, Multipliers — 2× capability finding; Liberator/Challenger disciplines.
• Exercise: Candor Challenge / Mulally pattern — leader goes first, candor institutionalized as a recurring facilitated round: the move from receiving feedback to building cultures that surface it. (Eurich.)
• Coyle upgrade: make the leader occasionally disappear — Popovich skips a timeout; Cooper: "The best teams tended to be the ones I wasn't that involved with" (~4384). Late sessions get run by participants — and it prefigures Guides.
• Kahneman lens: why leaders dodge hard calls — loss aversion (sure loss vs gamble, "one more quarter"), sunk cost ("a permanent stain on the record"), regret asymmetry (action is commission, drift feels blameless). The fresh-start question: "If you hadn't already invested a year, would you start this today?" The turf question: "Imagine we didn't own it."

Session 8 — Resilience (the Resilient value)

• Core: integration — leading through hardship.
• Soul text: Bolsinger, Tempered Resilience — leaders formed like steel: heated, held, hammered.
• Research twin: Collins, the Stockdale Paradox; Loehr/Schwartz oscillation (recovery builds capacity).
• Exercise: SMART experiments on a big assumption (Kegan): don't argue with the assumption — run one low-risk test that violates it and collect the data. Repeat until second nature. (The crock-pot mechanic made concrete.) The Shadow energy check (see Session 4) can run here instead.

Session 9 — The Ripple (legacy & convergence)

• Core: projects presented (Project 3: integrated plan to move up a level personally + as a team); certificates.
• Soul text: Clinton's "convergence"; Nouwen's relevance/popularity/power triad as parting diagnostic (optional deeper track).
• Research twin: Frei, Unleashed: leadership is "empowering other people as a result of your presence — and making sure that impact continues into your absence."
• Exercise: Discharge the loyal soldier — a short ceremony, not a court-martial: honor the identity that got you here ("one must do the first half"; the soldier got you home from the war), then release it from command. Pairs with the amnesia-test debrief and certificate reframe. (Rohr.)
• Kahneman lens: the two selves — the remembering self chasing peaks vs the experiencing self living the days; "the tyranny of the remembering self"; "we all want our life to be a good story, with a decent hero." The amnesia test as the closing soul exercise. The boss finding — time with the boss rated the worst part of workers' days — as the mirror: you are your team's experienced day.
• Certificate reframe (one sentence): present the Wild Dogs Certificate as the commemoration of the formation goal the member stated publicly in session 1 and worked for nine sessions — not as a credential. (Keeps Jer's element; removes the SDT external-reward risk.) Graduation artifact: an engraved crock-pot, presented with the certificate. Cheesy is a feature (per Coyle, ~5942).

Keep unchanged: Jer's three projects (diagnose personal level, diagnose team level, integration plan) — they're already excellent and map cleanly onto the assessment instruments below.

Assessment stack (cheap, credible, no certification required)

• Working Genius ($25/person) — session 1 or 2; Lencioni-native, team map exercise
• Five Dysfunctions Online Team Assessment ($56.50/person) — session 5, re-run after
• Edmondson 7-item psychological safety survey — free, pre/post
• Total: <$85/participant, and it creates the pre/post evidence story B2B buyers need.

Zero-cost variant (pro bono cohorts — use for the India cohort this fall, from session one):

1. Edmondson 7-item psych-safety survey, pre/post (free, ~2 min).
2. Each participant's leadership-level self-diagnosis from Project 1 — already in the curriculum; just capture it as baseline data, and again at Project 3.
3. One public formation goal per person at session 1; at the close, self-rated progress plus one sentence on "what changed in how you lead."
4. Attendance/completion rate (cohort completion is the format's own proof).
5. Exit: testimonial permission + "would you recommend this, and to whom?"

Costs nothing, adds ~10 minutes per cohort, and produces something the paid market can't ignore: outcome evidence from a cohort spanning India, Bangladesh, and Tibet — "instrumented across three countries" is a sentence no competitor can say.

Reading load: keep light — Lencioni's fable + 5 Levels as required; everything else excerpted in session or offered as a "go deeper" track. Crock-pot, not cram.

Body course: 21 Laws of Leadership (20 sessions, ~15 months)

Keep the shape (every 3 weeks × 1hr — the spacing IS the pedagogy; spaced practice + application is what the training-transfer research validates).

Reality check (2026-06-12): the real curriculum is in hand — 19 lesson docs that map almost perfectly onto the 5 arcs below. Two deltas: Jer front-loads a "Leading Self" intro lesson, and Arc 5 is one combined capstone lesson covering Timing + Explosive Growth + Legacy with a 21-law self-assessment. Lesson 15 (Law of the Picture) is missing from the files — ask Jer. Content is 75–80% Jer's own IP per lesson: custom frameworks (FOCUSED vision acronym, 5 Cs, trust formula, 10 crisis-leadership protocols, 7-step mentoring method, 9 humility tests), his own case studies (HyLife, Kenya/Maasailand, SE Asia), and research citations (Kahneman, Coyle, Lencioni, Collins, Schein). Maxwell supplies the law names, definitions, and 1–2 anecdotes per lesson, plus the assigned book reading.

Two changes:

a) Group the 21 Laws into 5 arcs so the long course has chapters and momentum. Each arc gets one research twin so the course answers the "Maxwell is anecdotal" critique from inside:

Kahneman in the Body course: add Kahneman to Arc 1 as the "why this takes 15 months" frame; CFO calibration exercise (80% intervals) as a humility instrument in Arc 1 and re-test in Arc 5.

b) Add an entry-level product (see the Strategy Brief): a 6-week "Foundations of the Wild Dogs Way" short course extracted from Arc 1 — because a 15-month commitment cannot be anyone's first purchase. The full course becomes the continuation for people who've tasted it, which is also where the market research says it belongs (back-of-ladder formation track, not front door). The extraction has clear cut points in the real lessons: roughly L1–L2 + the core of L3 (Connection), L4 (Process), L5 (Navigation), L7 (Trust) + L8 (Respect), with influence integration (L9/L10/L14 compressed) as the capstone. Extraction materials don't exist yet — that's the remaining deliverable.

IP position (updated, supersedes earlier "verify Maxwell licensing" hedging): Jer has confirmed he is NOT Maxwell-licensed, and the real lessons show the curriculum is substantially own-IP (75–80% per lesson, per above). Remaining exposure is the "21 Laws" framing itself and the assigned Maxwell reading. A clean independence path exists if ever needed for licensing to Guides: rename the arcs and add a one-paragraph attribution.

Pack Companion (AI between-session helper)

Design brief, from Kahneman: the Companion's job is to be the always-on System 2 the leader can't sustain — and the pack itself gets the same justification: "It is much easier to identify a minefield when you observe others wandering into it than when you are about to do so" (the pack is each leader's external System 2).

Prompt jobs:

1. WOOP rehearsal — "walk me through my if-then plan before tomorrow's board meeting."
2. Immunity-map journaling — "what did I do this week that served the old commitment?"
3. Dinner-of-Truth prep — role-play receiving the bothersome-trait answer without self-defense.
4. Premortem prompts before big decisions; fresh-start reframes on stuck initiatives; outside-view base rates on plans; "what would your team say?" perspective flips between sessions. (Plumbing for the crock-pot, now with a precise job description.)

Scorecard method note (Kahneman): self-ratings are unusable (substitution, self-halo, mood contamination); the questions must make the taker catch themselves in real time — "You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general." Full design: the Leadership Soul Scorecard doc.

The Wild Dogs reading library (ranked, reconciled)

Top additions, each chosen for fit with a named Wild Dogs theme:

1. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership — canonical "feed the pups first"
2. Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership — shares the flagship's literal thesis; the model for crock-pot soul formation (her Transforming Center runs 27-month cohorts)
3. Collins, Good to Great — Jer already speaks "good to great"; Level 5 = empirical humility+will
4. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow — the research twin of the entire program rather than of one module. (Optional companion: Kahneman/Sibony/Sunstein, Noise, 2021, for the judgment-hygiene practices.)
5. Coyle, The Culture Code — the team-culture research twin for the entire flagship, sitting beside the Lencioni spine (Coyle's own recommended-reading list includes The Five Dysfunctions — the bridge is native). Honesty note: Coyle is a journalist synthesizing research, not a researcher; where we cite mechanisms (vulnerability loops, belonging cues, psychological safety) the primary sources remain Polzer, Edmondson, Felps, Pentland — all already in our evidence docs.
6. Loehr & Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement — the body→spirit architecture unifying both courses
7. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak — "inner world changes outer world," faith-adjacent and quotable
8. Wiseman, Multipliers — best senior-leader mirror exercise in print (Accidental Diminisher)
9. Brown, Dare to Lead — the research mechanism under Lencioni's trust pyramid; free workbook
10. Grant, Give and Take — data proving sacrificial leadership wins; burnout inoculation
11. Clinton, The Making of a Leader — lifetime-stages model; makes 15 months feel fast
12. Crossan et al., The Character Compass — academic validation that character drives performance
13. Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader — inner-life/outer-life two-track structural model
14. Kouzes & Posner, The Leadership Challenge + LPI — the validated instrument for the Body course
15. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization — psych safety science under Dysfunction #1
16. Brooks, The Second Mountain — secular vocabulary for the anti-self-advancement thesis; describes Jer's exact target client
17. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus — 80-page depth charge for the "heavy lifting" track

Module-specific honorable mentions: Marquet (delegation), Schein (mutuality as practice), Frei (trust triangle; "impact in your absence"), Bolsinger (resilience), Holiday (Ego Is the Enemy — secular-Stoic track for clients allergic to anything spiritual), Quinn (Deep Change — "change the inside or accept slow death," Jer's thesis from a Michigan professor).

Appendix A — Phrase bank & marketing/scorecard language

The phrase bank (Meyer's method, Jer's voice)

Jer has two already. Per Coyle, name the rest — "you have priorities whether you name them or not" (~5357). Candidates to test with the Fall cohort:

• Crock-pot, not microwave. (have)
• Feed the pups first. (have)
• Hunt together. (Excellence — the 80% is a pack number)
• Truth from below. (Team Leadership — keep the feedback channel open)
• Make the charitable assumption. (borrowed openly from Meyer — he'd approve)
• If a teammate needs help, we give; if we need help, we ask. (borrowed from KIPP — the Pack norm in one line)
• Rank off, humility on. (adapted from Cooper's AAR rule, ~3663)
• The ache is the map. (from the Rohr work — the second-mountain hook)
• Leave the pack stronger than you found it. (adapted from the All Blacks' "leave the jersey in a better place")

Scorecard & marketing language candidates

• The head/soul pitch in research language, for the skeptical buyer: "Every leader knows what good leadership looks like. Kahneman proved knowing isn't enough — the automatic self is formed only by practice. We form the automatic self."
• New reveal-grade stat (~5880): executives predicted 64% of employees could name the company's top three priorities — 2% could. Candidate quiz question: "What fraction of your team could name your top three priorities, word-for-word? Now — would you bet a month's salary on it?"
• The missileer diagnostic (~1269) as a quiz triple: Are we connected? Do we share a future? Are we safe? — three questions that diagnosed a decade of nuclear-force failures; they port to any leadership team.
• Marketing lines that are now evidence-backed: "Google didn't win because it was smarter. It won because it was safer" (~679); the commitment-model startup study (shared values + emotional bonds beat star-talent models, ~817); WIPRO: an onboarding hour about the employee's own uniqueness made them 157–250% more likely to remain seven months later (~1135) — which is precisely what the Scorecard does to a stranger: it's a WIPRO group-2 intervention disguised as a quiz.
• For the nomination kit: Coyle's Pygmalion section (~4742) is why the nomination story matters — being told "you were named because…" is the highest-octane belonging cue a new member can receive.
• The host role has an empirical job description: Jonathan. In Felps's bad-apple research, one negative member cuts group performance 30–40% — except in groups containing Jonathan, who neutralizes the toxin with warmth-first deflection, drawing-out questions ("Hey, what do you think of this?"), and intent listening. "He doesn't perform so much as create conditions for others to perform" (~294). That sentence goes in the host one-pager verbatim.

Appendix B — The Pack upgrades (six, from Coyle)

• Tiny-touch infrastructure. Belonging cues must be a "steady pulse," and small ones are absurdly powerful: six empathy words raised compliance 422% (~726); brief caring postcards halved psychiatric readmissions (~735); a worthless tip from someone who "cared" doubled work persistence (~683). Between-session and between-cohort: short personal notes from Jer and hosts — scheduled, individualized, future-oriented ("looking forward to March").
• The Il Gabbiano norm (~1622): when the Spurs suffered the worst loss in NBA history, Popovich's response was a pre-set family dinner — he "filled their cups" at the door. Write it down as a Pack rule: when an alum fails publicly — loses the job, the company, the election — the Pack's response is a dinner, not a debrief.
• Measure what matters (~5956): Zappos replaced calls-per-hour with "Personal Emotional Connections." The Pack's metrics: connections made, nominations given, hosts raised — never attendance.
• Artifacts (~5975): elite cultures fill rooms with objects that say this is what matters. The graduation artifact writes itself: a crock-pot — engraved, presented at certificate time. (Cheesy is a feature, per Coyle.)
• Flash mentoring (~4360): single-hour alumni mentoring slots — the lowest-cost, highest-signal Pack benefit.
• Crisis as lore (~5820): high-purpose groups retell their founding failures with gratitude. The Pack should keep its stories — including the ones where it almost didn't work.

The Pack priority itself is said by Coyle's data (~5871): successful groups keep five or fewer priorities and put in-group relationships at the top — "their greatest project is building and sustaining the group itself."

Appendix C — Source gaps worth pulling originals for

The Shortform summaries lacked these:

• KWML (original): the invocation/active-imagination access practices (absent from the summary entirely).
• Falling Upward (original): "stumbling stones," elder/second-half-community material — useful for Pack copy and Jer-as-guide framing.
• Insight (original): the statistics (95%-vs-10-15%, steak-dinner study) and the four self-awareness archetypes — needed if we quote numbers in marketing.