When a sponsor says "make them more strategic", one question turns the adjective into a behaviour you can design for and measure.
Read this if sponsors hand you requests like "make them more strategic." Skip it if your briefs already arrive with named behaviours.
The short version. Don't ask what a vague word means. Ask about the last time someone did it, and what they actually did. Then check the answer with the Tuesday Test.
4-minute read
Your sponsor says the team needs to be "more strategic." Don't ask what strategic means. You'll just get another adjective.
Ask three questions instead:
Then run the Tuesday Test on each answer. Could a colleague see or hear it on an ordinary Tuesday, without asking anyone how they feel? If not, ask question 1 again.
Psychologist John Flanagan's critical incident technique grew out of the Aviation Psychology Program. One early use: sorting out why 1,000 pilot candidates failed to learn to fly. [1] His method collects "direct observations of human behavior," not opinions about people. [1]
In one study, foremen were asked to "tell just how this employee behaved." Almost every answer came back about personality and attitude. [1] The fix was one word: "Tell just what this employee did." [1]
Flanagan also warned that job requirements are too often "merely lists of all the desirable traits of human beings." These, he wrote, "are practically no help" in training people for specific jobs. [1] "More strategic" is one of those traits.
The World Economic Forum's 2025 jobs report ranks analytical thinking as the top core skill. Next come "resilience, flexibility and agility" and "leadership and social influence." [2] Employers expect 39% of workers' core skills to change by 2030. [2]
So more requests will arrive as labels lifted from a skills list. They feel precise because someone official wrote them down.
AI speeds this up. One free generator, top of our search for this exact question, turns a one-sentence topic into objectives with observable verbs. It never asks for an example. [3] An observable verb is not an observed behaviour.
An illustrative composite, not a client.
| Before | After the Did Swap |
|---|---|
| "Our new managers need to be more strategic." | "When a team asks for more headcount, the manager brings two costed options to the budget meeting." |
| Objective: "Managers will be able to analyse strategic priorities." | What happens next: "The director decides in one meeting, not three." |
| Tuesday Test: ✗ nobody can watch someone "analyse" | Tuesday Test: ✓ everyone in the budget meeting sees it |
The left column becomes a course about strategy. The right column becomes a practice rep, a manager check-in and a measure.
Sometimes the sponsor can't recall one good example, or one miss. That's a finding, not a dead end. In my experience it usually means nobody has agreed what good looks like yet.
That's a decision for the sponsor, and no programme can make it for them. Put it in the first line of your Read-Back Close and ask which part is wrong.
Kirkpatrick Partners call these "critical behaviors": "the few, key behaviors" people must perform consistently to get the result. [4] The Did Swap hands you the candidates before you've designed anything.
Write each as one line: when [situation], [who] does [visible action], so that [result]. Then build your Level 3 plan around them.
Want to practise the whole conversation before a real call? The free Diagnostic Conversation Coach walks you through it. No signup, no email.
The Did Swap · copy this
When the sponsor uses a vague word ("strategic", "resilient", "accountable"), say:
1 · "Think of the last time someone here did this well. What did they do?"
2 · "What happened next because of it?"
3 · "Now think of the last time someone missed it. What did they do instead?"
THE TUESDAY TEST, for every answer:
Could a colleague see or hear it on an ordinary Tuesday, without asking how anyone feels?
No → ask question 1 again.
WRITE THE BEHAVIOUR LINE:
When ________, ________ will ________, so that ________.
No example at all? That's a sponsor decision, not a skills gap. Say so before you design.
[1] Flanagan, J. C. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin, 51(4). Full text hosted by the American Psychological Association: apa.org. Read 27 October 2026.
[2] World Economic Forum (2025). The Future of Jobs Report 2025, chapter 3, "Skills outlook". weforum.org. Read 27 October 2026.
[3] Mindstamp. Learning Objective Generator. mindstamp.com. The page describes the tool as turning "a training topic into measurable learning objectives"; input is a one-sentence topic and a learner level. Read 27 October 2026; ranked first in our search for this article's question that day.
[4] Kirkpatrick Partners (7 January 2021). Why training programs and New Year's resolutions usually fail. kirkpatrickpartners.com. Read 27 October 2026.
The before/after is an illustrative composite, not a client conversation. The Did Swap and the Tuesday Test are our own, built on Flanagan's method; he did not name them.