Develop · the first move in every focus area
Prime
Workshops
Every Prime is engineered to end in one thing: a manager committing to act on a real problem on their plate.
Everything else is reverse-engineered from there. No slides, no lecture, no death by PowerPoint. A Prime is a room we design backwards from the commitment, so by the time a manager makes it, they care about the problem, they have a sharper way to see it, and they have worked it on their own real challenge.
Focus Area 01 · Prime
The spine
Meaning
Find the real gap, and the will to close it
Lens
A reference point that shifts how they see it
My World
Apply it to their own real challenge
Act
Commit to a real action, and run it
Delivered in this order. Designed in reverse, from the commitment up.
of the commitments managers make in a Prime are followed through.
Why it works
An effective decision is the right decision multiplied by the commitment to it. A brilliant idea nobody owns changes nothing. So a Prime is not built to deliver content or to make people feel good. It is built to get a manager to make a real, deliberate decision about a real problem, and to own it enough to act.
That is why we design every room backwards. We start from the action we want a manager to commit to, and work back to the meaning that would make them care. Everything in between has to earn its place.
No parachute expert at the front. We design the room so the people in it do the solving.
The spine
Four domains, every time. Designed back to front.
Every Prime moves through the same four domains in the room. We design them in reverse, from Act back to Meaning, so each one opens the door to the next: Meaning earns attention, Lens sharpens it, My World makes it personal, Act turns it into a commitment.
Meaning
Find the real gap, and the will to close it
We connect each manager to a real performance gap they care about, and to the cost of carrying on unchanged. That relevant emotion is the engine for everything downstream. Without it, the rest runs on compliance. It is earned by a true question, never performed at the room.
Lens
A reference point that shifts how they see it
One reference point, at most: a framework, a distinction, a named pattern that the room could not reach on its own. Never more than one model per session, so what we introduce gets properly explored, not just mentioned.
My World
Apply it to their own real challenge
New thinking meets real life. Each manager works the reference point against their own situation and their own challenge, learning from the managers around them. The community does the work; we create the conditions and ask the questions.
Act
Commit to a real action, and run it
Everyone leaves with a specific, committed action: a between-session experiment they run before Elevate, with their manager primed to ask about it and Tensai holding them to it. This is the point of the whole session. Everything before it is built to make it happen.
We design for the gap, not the topic
The spine never changes. The emphasis does.
Before we design anything, we classify the gap, because a skill gap and an identity gap need completely different rooms. Get this wrong and the best-run workshop still moves nothing. It is the difference between a generic session and one built for the problem in front of you.
The sign
They can describe what good looks like, but fumble it live.
What the room does
The room swells into practice: real rehearsal of a real situation, with feedback, before they go back to the floor.
The sign
They know how, they are willing, and the old pattern wins under pressure.
What the room does
We surface the exact moment it slips and design the cue that replaces it, with someone primed to hold them to it.
The sign
A belief is quietly limiting them; the same solution keeps returning the same problem.
What the room does
We let them hit the wall of their current frame, then reframe it. The reframe is the event, but it has to be earned.
The sign
They can do it, they are willing, and still do not, because it costs them something about who they are.
What the room does
A small, forward, uncomfortable action, taken live and reflected on after. The action reveals what no discussion could.
The sign
The gap is between people, not in any one of them. Everyone names the dynamic, no one names their own part.
What the room does
The room surfaces the shared dynamic and works it together, ending in relational asks and who does what.
Behind every session
A Prime is engineered, not improvised.
Every session is bespoke-designed from your real situation, through a structured process. What looks like an effortless conversation in the room is the product of deliberate design before it.
Discover the gap
We read your diagnostics, the transcripts of previous sessions, Tensai conversations and engagement data, and the sponsor's own definition of success in 90 days. If success cannot be defined, that gap is the first finding.
Classify it
Is this a skill, a habit, a mental model, an identity question, or a relational dynamic? The answer changes the whole design. We also rule out gaps that no workshop can move, where the cause is incentives or environment, not capability.
Map the impact
One clear performance outcome, how we will know it landed, and the signal we expect to see back at work three weeks later. The measure lives at work, not just in the room.
Design backwards
From the committed action up: Act, then My World, then Lens, then Meaning. Every element has to earn its place by serving that commitment. We choose the fewest methods that do the job.
Sharpen
We strip anything that does not serve the gap, prime the manager loop, and pressure-test that the room creates real emotion, real thinking and a real action, not a performance.
What a manager leaves with
Not a good conversation. A committed experiment.
A Prime does not end with a nice discussion and good intentions. It ends with a specific action each manager has committed to run before the next session, designed to be high in meaning and low in consequence, so it is safe to try but matters enough to do.
Typed to the gap
A skill rep, a habit cue, a decision made through the new frame, a forward identity action, or a shared relational move. The right kind of experiment for the right kind of gap.
The manager is primed
Before they leave, each person sends one line to their line manager: here is what I committed to, will you ask me how it went. The manager loop is the multiplier.
Tensai holds it
The action becomes an Execution Plan in Tensai, configured to the experiment type, supporting the manager between sessions and capturing the signal Elevate later reads.
The delivery, reinvented
Every Prime runs on its own web app.
Not a slide deck. A bespoke web page, built for that one session and branded to your organisation, that the whole room runs through together. It holds the flow, the exercises and the live interaction in one place, and the room never sees the method behind it.
- Private inputs keep self-assessments and reflections to the manager alone, so they can be honest without performing for the room.
- Shared inputs surface the room's patterns live, giving the Performance Partner real data to facilitate from.
- Everything is captured. Every input feeds the Elevate design, the playbook and the impact report. The web app is a data engine, not just a deck.
See it for yourself
Step inside a real Prime, the way managers experience it.
We rebuilt a representative Prime as a working web app. Click through it beat by beat, all the way to an Execution Plan activating in Tensai.
How we design every room
The rules that keep a Prime honest.
We are not the experts in the room
We create the conditions, structure the design and ask the questions. The intelligence is already in the room. Our job is to unlock it, not to lecture over it.
Fewer activities, more depth
Quality is depth of discovery and action, not a high volume of clever exercises. One framework per session, maximum, so it gets explored properly.
Relevant emotion, never manufactured
The stakes and the cost of carrying on unchanged, earned by a real question. Never an inspirational, motivational performance aimed at the room.
Designed backwards from the action
Outcome to action to meaning. If an exercise cannot be traced to the commitment, or used by Monday, it does not make the cut.
Proof it moves things
A room people rate, and act on.
A Prime is not measured on how much people enjoyed it. It is measured on whether the commitment made in the room actually happened, and whether the problem moved.