How We Work

This page covers:


Our Philosophy

Helping people access their innate intelligence and wisdom to answer their own questions is the hallmark of our work. Our preference therefore, is to provoke a shift in confidence and competence in people in their capacity to have insights and think more clearly, rather than to give advice. We do this by providing an understanding of human thought and experience and an appreciation for how the mind can work at its best. We are not against advice. In a complex legal situation, an expert attorney is invaluable, but once you have the facts, and have heard all of the opinions, how will you decide? Our fundamental approach is to help people reliably surface their innate capacity to do their best thinking and make good decisions.

With our extensive experience in business, we also become thinking partners to help you sort through your issues and questions to surface your own insights.


How We Work With You - An Overview

Our first step is to understand your world - how it is structured, how you think about it, what you need to get done in it and why.

Next, we provide education on powerful principles that underlie human psychological experience. It is this understanding that will shift your capacity for insight.

We do this in two steps:

  • We share an understanding of fundamental human principles (the framework, the facts and how the system works)
  • We help you see these principles operating in you and your people, and the power of using this knowledge in service of your business' short and long term needs.

The desired results of this education is an understanding of the human mind - not why you think what you think, your specific style, opinions, etc. but at a deeper level of functioning - how perception and experience are created moment to moment. With this knowledge comes the power to stay present, thoughtful, creative and proactive regardless of what is happening around you. Once a sufficient level of learning (insights) has occurred, we help you use this understanding to address the questions or situation you wish to resolve or advance.

Finally, we provide ongoing support, as needed. Our commitment is to the accomplishment of your result. When we contract with you, we agree to a fixed fee for the result you have specified, and then work with you until you have what you want - for however long it takes.

The results section shows how our work has been successful for a very wide range of business and people challenges over the last 15 years.


Core Programs

We group our core programs as follows:

  • Individual
  • Teams and groups
  • Organizational

Each follows the same basic philosophy outline above.

For Individuals

Our most popular individual programs include:

  • Exceed: An in-depth transformative program for leaders and executives with a four-day insight leadership retreat and 6 months of follow up calls.
  • InsightEdge: An insight program for leaders and executives with a two-day insight leadership retreat and 12 months of follow up calls. This program is a stand-alone program or is often taken as a follow up to the Exceed program as a refresher and continuation of the learning.

Education in insight principles has lifelong value. Given that you take your heart and mind wherever you go, this understanding is relevant to both one's business and personal life. The range of performance and development challenges addressed by our programs is very wide and can encompass:

  • Specific business challenges and opportunities
  • Personal character, style and capability
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Leadership development
  • Ability to lead organizational change

After initial rapport is established, the assessment phase may include only conversations with the individual attending our program or may include input from the individual's supervisor or others as is appropriate. In some cases, a full 360-degree feedback process may be useful. When needed, the individual's supervisor is informed of progress and involved in feedback during the course of the program.

Once the assessment is completed and goals are set for the program, we focus on a providing a deep understanding of insight principles as a foundation for all other work. This is usually done one-on-one with a trainer at an offsite retreat that lasts anywhere from 2 to 4 days depending on the need and individualized goals for the program. The overall purpose of this retreat is to:

  • Enable the person to relax mentally, away from the office and day-to-day routines
  • Allow for learning about insight principles
  • Experience the feeling of an insightful state of mind
  • Allow for significant time to reflect and deepen what is learned
  • Explore how the insights apply at work and at home
  • See insight as the resource for answers to ongoing opportunities and challenges at work

After the retreat, the program continues with on site visits or on the phone, to maintain what is learned during the retreat, to have it gel into a consistent competence, and to partner on whatever business challenges arise.

For Teams and Groups

Our most popular program, Reveal, involves four days for both the education piece and the resolution of questions/challenges. The speed with which results are produced once a group of people is able to operate in a clear, engaged and insightful state of mind has been nothing short of remarkable to our clients. Our results section of this site has many such examples.

The first step in the process, assuming that good rapport is in place, is to understand the situation and define the desired result.

We interview key participants and assemble their views into an overall picture of where things are and where things need to be. We then review this with the leaders and key owners before moving forward. By establishing the process this way, we ensure that all participants and stakeholders are engaged, enrolled and aligned.

Typically, training in insight principles is given to all participants, consistent with their role on the project, i.e., more education for the core team, and less to none for minor or occasional players. The primary goals for team and group trainings are to:

  • Share an understanding of human thought and experience and the innate capacities of the human mind
  • Establish the value, efficiency and power of a clear and insightful state of mind in the hearts and minds of all participants
  • Develop group competency at operating in this state of mind
  • Experience working together on a challenge with ease and alignment

Included in the working sessions is a determination of what is required for successful implementation. Implementation planning includes not only the obvious concrete steps, but also how the new solution will be "socialized" and grasped by the various critical parts of the organization. Again, insights can provide real help in forming solid, easy-to-implement plans.

Follow up is also included in all our programs to ensure the insight principles learned during the process continues to deepen and get embedded in the organization as it executes the plans.

Our team and group programs are customized as no two situations are the same and one size rarely fits all.

For Organizations

Our organization programs address large-scale issues, such as:

  • Transforming business performance
  • Company-wide leadership development
  • Culture change
  • Integration after a merger
  • Employee morale or participation during or after crises
  • Any opportunity or challenge requiring a new foundation of creative thought

The impetus to begin an organizational program emerges when enough individuals and groups have been through our other programs and the true potential of an organization-wide understanding of insight principles becomes apparent.

At this point, we advise our clients to set up a Steering Committee composed of senior staff that understand and have experienced their own insights about the human mind. This group is charged with designing and owning how insight principles are spread company-wide. Our logic for proceeding in this way is simple - we will never understand your organization as well as you. What works best for you needs to be generated by you. As with all individuals, organizations are endowed with the intelligence and wisdom they need.

Practically, this translates into these typical elements:

  • All senior leaders receive in-depth training (e.g., our Exceed or InsightEdge programs)
  • Education of others typically occurs in contiguous groups through resolving business issues and challenges, which are identified by senior leaders.
  • When enough programs have been run and this understanding is starting to gain momentum (organizational awareness), a core-training program is created as part of the leadership development curriculum.
  • Internal people are identified who can become trainers and facilitators, and a train-the-trainer program is established. The intent here is to enable the organization to license our approach and become mostly self-sufficient.
  • Our role from that point one becomes one of counsel and provider of specialized training.

The above comes about as a natural progression. When people, groups and organizations can think and see clearly, what is needed next becomes obvious.


FAQs (Frequently asked Questions)

Q/ How does your approach differ from others?

Understanding insight principles enables an entirely new perspective on opportunities and challenges such that the actual opportunity/challenge people see changes. When people see to the heart of the matter, surprising solutions emerge in record time. We do not try to solve business problems. Instead we teach people about the power and mechanism of insight - then the insights of individuals, teams and organizations solve the problems. (see our results section). An appreciation of the power that insight can bring to change the playing field takes the conversation to an entirely different level.

Most consulting approaches will engage in the content and structure of your business or people issues, taking your and your people's thinking as a given. Focusing on problems limits our frames of reference to a view created in a narrow state of mind. Understanding insight principles shows people how to live with efficient thinking, expansive perspectives and a strong esprit de corps.

We therefore pay as much attention to the quality of thinking and insight you and your organization are accessing along with understanding the complexity or your business opportunities and challenges. During this process, we help you see how the human dimension impacts your business issues and what you can immediately do about it. With our understanding of insight principles, we will then be in an excellent position to offer various approaches to choose from that will enable individual, team or organization insights.

Q/ Why is addressing human thought so important?

A misunderstanding of human thought brings about the greatest inefficiency in any business. Understanding the nature and power of thought and its influence on state of mind can often generate an insight that reframes the issues at hand or even helps people realize that they need to look in an entirely different direction. How many millions of dollars can be spent on large consulting projects only to have them sit on a shelf unused? How many large programs get stalled, derailed or are over budget or deadline because of the lack of insight, buy in or clarity in those assigned to implement the grand plans that were developed. Insights (yours and others') from a clear state of mind in the early stages of a project and throughout implementation can avoid such costly mistakes.

Q/ How hard is it to realize insight principles?

In short it varies. Some people seem to naturally be aware of this understanding. For those people, we provide language and a framework to something they already see. This provides very rapid acceleration of their competence. At the other end of the scale, you find people who have never looked or never been interested in the human dimension. Clearly, for this group, learning can be slower, though many of these people are deeply touched by this understanding.

Across all cultures (company and societal), all levels of education and very varied experiential backgrounds, we have found a universal capacity to learn this understanding.

The critical factors are:

  • That the learning is relevant to the person's view of life and to what needs to be done
  • The delivery, i.e., individual vs. group setting, visual vs. auditory vs. kinesthetic, etc. is suitable to the learner.
  • The right amount of time is allowed given the learning style and the desired outcomes.
  • The setting - for many people, a calm, quiet, detached from day-to-day work issues environment, seems to assist in learning this understanding.

That said, people also seem to have insights anywhere, anytime, and under any circumstances.


Let us know your questions and we will gladly add them to this list. Contact us at info@insightprinciples.com

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