Deck Journal Field Guide Killhouse
Instrument · 02

Journal

A year-long passage. Twelve stages. Fifty-two weeks. Each week pairs a card with the work. The sequential arc of belief maintenance.

Stages
12
Weeks
52
Sequence
Begin when you begin
52
Weeks of practice
What it is

A year of practice. Held in your hand.

Journal is the long-form sequential instrument of the Foundership practice. Twelve stages — each a recognizable passage in the operator's relationship with the work — distributed across fifty-two weeks. Each week pairs a card pull with the structured exercise for that week. The operator writes. The page holds the writing.

The journal is participant-anchored, not calendar-anchored. Week 1 is the week you begin. You are not tied to a fiscal year, an academic year, or a January start. The first page is yours.

The work begins when you begin. Belief left unattended drifts.

How it works

Twelve stages of practice. One year. One operator.

Each stage runs roughly four weeks and carries the operator through a recognizable shape of the work. The stages are structural, not metaphorical — they describe what the operator is doing in that arc of the year, not what they will become.

01
Where you stand
Naming the territory the operator walks in with. The articulation of belief as it currently sounds in the operator's voice.
Wk 01–04
02
What the actions say
Surfacing the say/do gap from ninety days of decisions. The truer signal than statement.
Wk 05–08
03
Naming the gap
The Founder's Gap surfaced in the operator's own writing. The substitution event made visible.
Wk 09–12
04
The costs paid
Specific accruals. The small costs the operator stopped noticing. The structure of the drift.
Wk 13–16
05
Who has been carrying
Naming the people and practices that have held the belief through the drift. The carriers.
Wk 17–20
06
The save list
Three named things committed to maintenance. Owner, cadence, definition of protection.
Wk 21–24
07
The kill list
Necessary endings. Hollowed rituals, accommodations, beliefs that no longer carry weight.
Wk 25–28
08
The trust contracts
The people and structures depending on the operator's word. Mapped, audited, recommitted.
Wk 29–32
09
The filter at work
The operator's wiring made visible. The discipline they have been running on without naming.
Wk 33–36
10
The new target
The point where existing operator wiring gets aimed at what comes next. Specific. Dated.
Wk 37–40
11
Returning to alignment
The recursive return. The work cycles back through Alignment with the year's discoveries in hand.
Wk 41–48
12
The standing operator
The year completed. The new posture. The next year named and entered.
Wk 49–52
A single week

How a week is shaped.

Each week of the year has the same internal structure. The operator pulls the week's card, reads the frame, does the exercise, and writes the close. Forty minutes minimum, an hour preferred. The journal holds the year in place — one week per opening — so the operator can return to any week and see what they were carrying then.

Week 18 · Sample
Stage 05 · Who has been carrying
The card
"Who on your team has been carrying what you stopped tending — and at what cost to them?"
The frame
The carriers are visible only when you go looking for them. Most operators discover them by accident — when the carrier leaves, or burns out, or asks a hard question. This week we go looking on purpose.
The exercise
Name three people whose continued effort has masked something the operator stopped maintaining. For each: what they are carrying, what it has cost them, what the operator will do in the next thirty days to take that weight back.
The close
"You can only choose what you've maintained — including the people you stopped tending while they kept tending you."
Who it's for

Three uses. Same journal.

The journal is built so it can be worked alone, in a small cohort moving at the same pace, or as the long-form companion to a retreat or symposium.

Use 01

Solo arc

One operator. Fifty-two weeks. The long-form maintenance discipline made personal. The standing instrument of the operator's own work, returned to one week at a time.

Use 02

Cohort

A small group of operators moving at the same pace. Same week, same card, separate writing. The discoveries are shared in cadence — monthly, quarterly — without anyone reading anyone's pages.

Use 03

Retreat companion

The journal opens at a Killhouse, a leadership retreat, an EntreLeadership cohort. The shared engagement starts the year-long work, and the journal carries it forward when the operator returns home.

What you get

A printed journal. Sewn to be opened a thousand times.

Journal is delivered as a printed, sewn-bound book of fifty-two openings — one spread per week — with structured space for the operator's writing. The paper is uncoated and accepts ink. The binding lays flat so the operator can write across the gutter. The cover holds up to a year of carry.

Format
Printed journal · sewn binding · lay-flat opening
Trim
A5 · 148 × 210 mm
Pages
~160pp · 52 week-spreads + 12 stage openers + front and back matter
Paper
Uncoated cream · 100 gsm · pen-friendly
Cover
Cloth-over-board · gold foil crest · Smyth-sewn
Edition
v0.6 · 2026 · Foundership Institute
Print partner
BookBlock UK · production-ready
Sequence
Participant-anchored · Week 1 begins when you begin
Where it stands

In the passage tradition. Not Campbell's myth — the operator's year.

The twelve-stage arc draws on the passage literature — the structural shape of a transformative year — without inheriting the heroic mythology that often comes with it. The work is operational, not mythic. The passage is real, but the operator is the one walking through it. Nothing else is doing the walking.

van Gennep · 1909
The Rites of Passage
The structural shape of a passage — separation, liminality, reincorporation. The journal year is sized to this shape at the operator's scale.
Turner · 1969
The Ritual Process
The liminal middle is where the operator's identity is open to revision. The journal's middle stages are designed for this.
Bennis & Thomas · 2002
Crucibles of Leadership
A hard, transformative passage remakes who a person is. The journal makes the passage deliberate — not waited for, walked through.
James · 1902
The Varieties of Religious Experience
The twice-born — beliefs you only truly own after you have lost them and found them again. The journal year is designed for the second time through.
Schein · 2010
Organizational Culture and Leadership
Founders embed culture through what they attend to over time. The journal makes the attending explicit, week by week.
Graham · 2025
Foundership
The canonical published work. Tenet 5 — always be working — operationalized as a year of writing rather than a year of striving.
Also in the practice

One spine. Four instruments.

Begin the year when you're ready.

Single journals for individual operators. Cohort orders for leadership teams. Retreat-companion bundles for partner-led engagements — Ramsey, EntreLeadership, Black Rifle Coffee Company.