Where it all began
Back in the late 1990s, organisational change was an emerging discipline – complex to sell and even harder to sustain. At that time, Dr Mike Carter was Managing Director of Stratagem Consulting, a Salisbury-based firm specialising in leadership and change. One day, while visiting a client at B&Q’s head office in Chandler’s Ford, he heard about something called Insights Discovery.
“It was one of those Eureka moments,” recalls Mike. “The HR Director introduced me to Brad Gentry, who outlined the model – and within minutes, it just clicked. The idea that we all have different working styles or behavioural preferences which can be expressed in different ‘colour energies’ not only gave us an incredibly valuable shared language to use while navigating these changes, it also brought the human side of organisational change vividly to life.”
That brief conversation would influence the next 25 years of Mike’s career.
From colours to culture
Stratagem quickly adopted Insights Discovery. Several members of the consultancy team trained in the model, using it to help clients such as the Foreign Office, Gillette, and the NHS explore leadership dynamics and collaboration through increased awareness. The effect was immediate: conversations about performance and change became faster, clearer, and far more engaging The effect was immediate: conversations about performance and change became faster, clearer, and far more engaging.
“Insights gave us a common language,” says Mike. “It distilled complex psychometrics into something intuitive. Our clients could see and feel how people worked together — and that drove real improvement.”
Fast-forward 20 years – the birth of Tensense.ai
Those lessons in clarity, simplicity, and usability stayed with Mike. Two decades later, they would resurface in a different context – the creation of Tensense.ai, a platform built to measure and interpret organisational health in real time.
Where Insights Discovery explores individual behaviour through Jungian psychology, Tensense applies principles of organisational sensemaking.
It examines how collective perception, energy, and adaptability flow through a business – and how those patterns influence performance.
“We wanted to stay true to what Insights taught us,” explains Mike. “A diagnostic must be fast, intuitive, and meaningful. Tensense was designed to capture high-quality data about an organisation’s lived reality – information that traditional surveys or consulting interviews would take months to uncover.”
The Four Lenses of Organisational Health
To achieve that clarity, Tensense visualises results through four lenses:
- Culture Climate – how creativity, collaboration, results, and organisation interact.
- Performance Energy – where focus and drive are building or faltering.
- Team Attributes – the strength and cohesion of key teams.
- Motivation & Leadership – how leadership behaviours shape engagement and commitment.
Each lens is divided into four characteristics, producing a clear, colour-coded map of an organisation’s “health signature”.
In seconds, leaders can see where performance is strong, where tension is building, and where to intervene.
Complementary tools, shared purpose
Despite their different origins, Mike sees Insights Discovery and Tensense as natural partners.
“Tensense scans the whole organisation – fast and wide. It highlights where the current issues are and even more valuable, it draws our attention to potential issues before they happen which avoids the financial and human cost of organisations getting it wrong. Insights then provides a tool to respond to these challenges in a meaningful and effective way. Insights fosters more self-aware leaders and better team effectiveness through a shared understanding of our individual and team preferences. Together they’re not just complementary; they’re interdependent.”
In practice, the Tensense diagnostic identifies performance hotspots or areas under stress. Once these are surfaced, an Insights Discovery programme can help leaders and teams understand the perceptions and behavioural patterns that need to change – creating a direct bridge from data to action.
Culture, colour and climate
Perhaps the clearest overlap lies in the Culture Climate lens, which aligns closely with the colour energies familiar to anyone trained in Insights Discovery.
- Red energy — drive and results orientation
- Yellow energy — creativity and innovation
- Green energy — collaboration and empathy
- Blue energy — structure and discipline
“Organisations, like individuals, display combinations of these energies,” Mike notes. “When one dominates too much, balance – and performance – suffer. A healthy culture has the ability to dial energies up or down as the situation demands.”
Tensense captures those shifts monthly, giving leaders a living pulse of their organisation’s mood and momentum.
The synergy in one sentence
In Mike’s words:
“Tensense identifies the problem. Insights Discovery helps you fix it.”
One platform illuminates the system; the other unlocks the people within it. Together, they offer consultants and leaders a powerful, evidence-based route to performance improvement – linking culture, behaviour, and results in one continuous flow.
Ready to see what your organisation is really telling you? Start with a Tensense cycle and discover how Insights Discovery can turn those insights into meaningful behavioural change. Contact us to begin your organisational health check.
Comments are closed