02 — Approach
Measure the reserve. Then build the system that reaches it.
Most leadership training is bought on trust and judged on applause. I start with a different question: how much performance is already inside your organisation, and how much of it can management actually reach?
The science
Performance varies inside the same person, not just between people.
Experience-sampling research follows the same people over weeks and months. It finds that 40–65% of the differences in job performance sit inside the same person, not between people.
Selection works on the other part: the differences between people. The structured interview, the strongest hiring procedure available, predicts about 18% of those differences. Hiring well is still worth doing.
It still cannot reach the within-person half. That half is already on your payroll.
The construct
The psychological delta.
The difference, within one person, between the versions of them that show up. It isn't potential. The good days have already happened, in the same job and the same organisation.
- Δ-peak
- The best-day gap: how much better the same person already performs on a good day.
- Δ-floor
- How far people drop on a bad day. The cost of being at work but not really working.
- Δ-total
- The full range, read together with the average.
- Recovery
- How fast a person returns to their typical level after a bad stretch.
What can be reached
Not all of the reserve is yours to recover.
Where variation sits is not the same as what management can change. I separate two quantities.
The observed reserve is the distance to a person's best days. It is the maximum; not all of it can be reached.
The addressable reserve is the part of the gap your managers can actually close: through development, internal mobility and effective day-to-day management.
The second is where development can make a difference. That is where I focus.
How I measure
Three weeks to see where your teams’ capacity is going, and what changes after.
A satisfaction form tells you whether people liked the training. The DynamixLab diagnostic shows whether managers lead differently and whether their teams perform differently — measured with the same tool before the programme and again after it.
- Before
Baseline
Managers and their teams complete the DynamixLab diagnostic — anonymous, about 15 minutes per person — read together with the weekly operational records you already keep, typically the last three to six months.
- Programme
Install
The programme is built on what the baseline shows: the conditions behind each team's best weeks, and the manager behaviours that create them.
- After · 3–6 months
Re-measure
The same diagnostic, the same teams. You see what changed — per manager, per team and for the organisation.
What you receive
- Reserve map
- For each team: how much performance is already there on good weeks, and how much management can reach.
- Manager reports
- A private development report for every manager, with the behaviours that matter most for their team.
- Collaboration map
- How advice, information and energy actually flow — hidden connectors, overloaded people, silos.
- Conditions profile
- What is present in each team's best weeks, and what is missing in the others.
- Before / after
- Change per manager and per team against the baseline, translated into euro-equivalent capacity using your own payroll and operational data.
Where the reserve shows up
Your people's good weeks already happen. The diagnostic shows what is present in those weeks and how often managers can recreate it. The gap between the typical week and the good week is where development budget does the most work.
Safe to answer honestly
- Anonymous. Results are shown only for groups of five people or more.
- DynamixLab holds the raw data, not the employer. Leadership sees team-level results only.
- Each manager's personal development report goes to that manager alone. It is a tool for their growth, not a verdict for HR.
- A written commitment, shared with every participant: nothing is used for appraisal, pay or selection.
- A short briefing for every team before anything starts, explaining what is asked and why.
Principles
Five rules I work by.
- 01
Raise the floor. Lift the peak.
Both ends of the range matter. Shorter, shallower bad periods protect everyday performance; deliberate peak work makes the best days happen more often — for front-line managers, executive teams and top athletes alike.
- 02
Both doors pay.
Hiring and developing current staff are compared on one monetary scale, with break-even values for each. The decision rests on numbers.
- 03
Start with the data you already have.
Every diagnostic begins with records your organisation already keeps. New measurement is added only where it earns its place.
- 04
Coaching, not surveillance.
I do not use emotion-recognition tools at work, which the EU AI Act prohibits (Art. 5(1)(f)), and I do not use employees' health or biometric data to manage them (GDPR Art. 9). Development data stays separate from appraisal.
- 05
Measure per manager, before and after.
Every programme ends with a comparison, not a satisfaction score.
The method
From diagnosis to lasting change.
- 01
Diagnose.
Size the performance reserve inside your teams, starting with data you already hold.
- 02
Build.
Managers build working habits: clear expectations, difficult-conversation scripts, a weekly planning rhythm.
- 03
Measure.
Every programme is measured per manager, before and after, so you see what actually changed.
Next step
Start with one team.
A 30-minute call is enough to tell whether a diagnostic is worth running, and what it would cover.