Ask one question first: has full self-reflection already happened?
Personality tools hand you a type and a score. This one hands you back your own words — what you like, what you are good at, what moves you and how you are seen — as neutral descriptors in a structured form, and then puts them to work.
ECHO is the self-discovery: reflective dialogues, then analogies, then a language pass that finds a truer word, ending in one page and one picture. CSIP is what is done with it — what suits you at all, whether this post suits you and the next one, and how far each capability is actually meant to go.
Teleology - Purpose: Why?
AGOKΩN — from ἄγω, to lead someone along. Not the teacher: the one who walks with them and stays. The tool does the walking. It returns your own words to you — what you like, what you are good at, what moves you and how you are seen — and then holds them against a life: what suits you at all, whether this post suits you, and how far you actually mean to go.
It is not a test. There is no type, no score and no profile. Nothing here measures you against anyone.
Two instruments, one process
ECHO — the self-discovery
Exploration · Characterisation · Holistic linguistic analysis · Ontological integration
- Nine pages, five to seven sessions, one person
- Ends in a characterisation: neutral descriptors, three to seven analogies, one page
- It is also published on its own, as ECHΩ
CSIP — what is done with it
Continuous Self Improvement Process
- Three pages, run again whenever the situation moves
- What suits you at all · whether this post fits, and the next · how far each capability goes
- It reads ECHO directly: a competence becomes a candidate, a candidate becomes a capability
What it is for
- The near end — a characterisation in neutral descriptors across four dimensions, documented in words and in a coat of arms, short enough to say in a minute.
- The end — to position yourself concisely, judge whether a context fits you, integrate into a group that is not like you, and develop from what you actually are.
- What it cannot do for you — interpret. What an answer means is settled in the dialogue, with someone who knows how to ask the next question.
Why strengths and weaknesses are not in it
A strength is a name given to a fit that was observed once, in one context, and then treated as a thing living inside a person. That is the realist error: it takes a universal — "decisive", "a strong communicator" — and lodges it in the individual as an objective property, from which performance is then supposed to follow.
The nominalist response keeps in the individual only what is really there: a neutral characteristic. What follows from it is fit or misfit with a context, and that is where performance actually comes from. The strength was never a thing; it was a name for a fit somebody liked. This is why the tool records a property and refuses to record a judgement.
Why a thing and its opposite are both true of you
Human nature balances its own opposites — approach and avoidance, risk-taking and risk-aversion, bonding and independence, cooperation and competition. Which side someone showed on a given day cannot be generalised into a property, because the other side is constitutionally there too. Coincidentia oppositorum.
Two things in this tool follow from it. Every element of the image carries its shadow — the same characteristic that one person values, another experiences as excess. And a candidate is never rated as a person but as a pairing: change the context and the same characteristic reads the other way round.
Where this tool stops
A small share of human characteristics are not a matter of fit at all but of a threshold: reality contact, prosocial orientation, general cognitive functioning, activation, communication capacity, behavioural regulation. Below such a threshold the question is medical, and a strategy consultancy's instrument has no business anywhere near it. This tool names them so they are not mistaken for weaknesses, and then stops. It will flag a word that sounds like one.
What is on this page is the part of the anthropology the tool actually acts on. The model behind it — constrained diversity, hyperprosociality, the structure of human needs, motivation and volition — is presented in person before the first session, because it is a conversation and not a page.
Enchiridion - Manual: How?
Two ways to use it
As a working tool, in the hands of a trained strategist — the senior strategist of the entity, say — who knows the method and drives it alone or with a small team.
Or, and this is where it is worth most, in a workshop moderated by such a specialist, or by us. Because the tool runs online, that workshop works over a collaboration platform (e.g. Teams®) as well as it does in a room.
Which instrument, and when
- Start in ECHO — always, the first time. CSIP has nothing to apply until there is a characterisation, and a person who has not done the work will answer CSIP from their job description rather than from themselves.
- Move to CSIP when the characterisation holds still: when the same words come back in two sessions running.
- Come back to CSIP alone — a new post, a new offer, a reorganisation. The self-discovery does not need repeating every time the situation moves.
- What ECHO holds, CSIP can see.
ECHO — the four steps behind the name
- Exploration in dialogues, in reflective mode — preferences, competences, inner workings, image. Every answer is asked why, and the answer to that is the property.
- Characterisation by analogies, in associative mode — three to seven, one per category. Exegesis reads the analogy for what it already carries; eisegesis reads your properties into it. Nothing is discarded to make the fit neat.
- Holistic linguistic analysis — synonyms, antonyms, translations, etymology, until the word is the right word rather than the first one.
- Ontological integration — structuring, networking, abstraction, consolidation. Seven to a level, four levels, and no more.
The rule about abstraction
Ask why until the answer stops being an instance — and stop before it becomes a basic need. "I like solving hard problems with other people" is a property. "I like Tuesdays" is too low. "I need self-actualisation" is too high, and true of everyone.
CSIP — the three that follow
- Fit — a candidate is something you could actually do. Four judgements on it: do you like it, can you do it, does anyone need it, will anyone pay. Four of four is 生き甲斐. Three of four is the normal case and has a name and a cost: Mission without demand, Comfort zone without need, Amateur without competence, Duty without preference.
- Positions — nine judgements per post: Congruence, Continuity and Competition against Content, Context and Compensation. Run it for the post you hold, the one next and the endgame; comparing the three is the whole point.
- Development — every capability carries the level it is at and the level it is meant to reach. Most should stop at 守 or 破 deliberately. Wanting 離 everywhere is the error, and the tool says so.
Five to seven sessions
One to one and a half hours, every two to six weeks. Prepare on the pages before a session, work through them in the session, and refine afterwards — the file remembers what changed and when.
Ontology - Structure: Parts & relations?
How the parts fit together
- A property is one neutral characteristic, with the why that produced it. It belongs to one of four dimensions and is either actual or aspired.
- Preferences are what you like to do and to experience; competences what you offer and what others ask of you; inner workings what triggers you and how you cope; image how you are experienced — which is not a fifth kind of property but a reading of the other three from outside.
- An analogy gathers properties irrespective of which dimension they came from. That is the point: the segmentation is by analogy, not by dimension.
- The ontology is what the coat of arms adds to the taxonomy — position, hierarchy and interaction between the analogies.
- A candidate is something a person could actually do, judged on four: preference, competence, need, demand. It is not a property, and it is not a job — it is a pairing.
- A post is a concrete position, judged nine times over. Posts are compared, never scored.
- A capability carries two levels: the one it stands at and the one it is meant to reach. The distance between them is the development, and a distance of nothing is a legitimate answer.
The join between the two instruments
A competence in ECHO can be carried across as a candidate in CSIP, and as a capability on the development page — carried, not copied: the candidate remembers which property it came from and says so underneath. That is the whole reason the two instruments live in one tool rather than two.
Where this sits
AGOKΩN holds the whole of the continuous self-improvement process. Its first nine pages are the ECHO method — Exploration in dialogues, Characterisation by analogies, Holistic linguistic analysis, Ontological integration — and that is the self-discovery. What follows applies it: what suits a person at all, whether a particular post suits them, and which capability they mean to take how far. The self-discovery is also published on its own, as ECHΩ.
Terminology - Glossary: Meaning?
| Term | Meaning here |
|---|---|
| Property | One neutral characteristic of a person, with the reason it was named. |
| Preference | What one likes to do, actively, or to experience, passively — actual or aspired. |
| Competence | What one can sensibly offer, or is sensibly asked for, from what one has and how one uses it. |
| Inner working | What triggers a strong reaction, the emotion it activates, and the coping response that follows. |
| Image | How one is experienced by others. It exists in their minds; it is perceived, not proclaimed. |
| Analogy | A substance one is characterised by — an animal, a tool, a weather. Three to seven, one per category. |
| Exegesis | Reading out of the analogy what it already carries, and keeping what fits. |
| Eisegesis | Reading a property into an analogy that does not obviously carry it — the way nothing is left orphaned. |
| Coat of arms | Which analogy carries which top header of the ontology — the join a picture is drawn from. |
| Fit | What happens when a neutral property meets a particular context. Not a property. |
| CSIP | Continuous Self Improvement Process — the application half: fit, position, development. |
| Candidate | Something one could actually do, judged on preference, competence, need and demand. |
| 生き甲斐 | Ikigai — all four at once: what there is to live for. Rare, and not the target of every candidate. |
| Mission | Three of four, demand missing — possibly no financial return. |
| Comfort zone | Three of four, need missing — possibly no sense of purpose. |
| Amateur | Three of four, competence missing — possibly over-exertion and uncertainty. |
| Duty | Three of four, preference missing — possibly no passion. |
| Extensity · intensity | How wide a thing is pursued, against how deep. A choice, not a quality. |
| C₃ₓ₃ | Congruence, Continuity and Competition against Content, Context and Compensation — nine judgements per post. |
| 守 Shu | Knowledge and compliant imitation. The recipe is followed. |
| 破 Ha | Conscious scrutiny and understanding; application to what is near. The recipe is broken. |
| 離 Ri | Capability that no longer explains itself; application across contexts. The recipe is left. |
| Threshold | A characteristic where below a certain point the matter is medical, not a matter of fit. Out of scope here, and named so it is not mistaken for a weakness. |
Mechanics - Operation: Which control?
Nothing leaves this machine
No server, no account, no transmission. The tool runs in your browser and your case stays there — which is why it can be used on material a client would never put in a cloud.
It follows that a private window forgets everything when it closes, and that clearing your browser data clears the case with it. Save file keeps a copy; the exports take the result out.
Who is being characterised
One person, over five to seven sessions. Nothing leaves this browser, which is why this is the one tool in the house where a real name is acceptable — everyone else stays a role.
The sessions
One to one and a half hours, every two to six weeks. Note what was covered; the file remembers the rest.
What I like to do, and to experience
What I offer, and what others ask of me
Trigger, emotion, coping response
A situation experienced or anticipated activates a schema, and the schema produces a response — immediate regulation, medium-term navigation, long-term maintenance. Cognition is where the intervention happens, and it reaches the response, not the emotion.
How I am experienced
Image exists in the minds of others: it is perceived, not proclaimed. And a characteristic that shines casts a shadow — what one person values in you, another feels as excess or as something missing. So each one is entered as a pair.
Three to seven analogies, one per category
Association first, then exegesis — read out of the substance what it carries, and keep what is yours. Then eisegesis — read the properties that fit nowhere into the analogy nearest them. Nothing is discarded to make the portfolio tidy.
What each analogy has been given
Every property must sit in at least one. Click a property's tag on its own page to allocate it; here you see what has landed where, and what is still orphaned.
Until the word is the right word
Synonyms and antonyms to find the alternative; translations because another language cuts the same thing differently; etymology to check the original meaning still fits. Refinement, not decoration — the point is a shorter, truer word.
Structuring, networking, abstraction, consolidation
Seven to a level, four levels, and no more — conciseness is not tidiness here, it is what makes the result carryable. Group opens where it stands; the arrow puts it to the front.
The coat of arms
Not drawn here. This is the join it is drawn from: every top header of the ontology says which analogy carries it. A list says which properties there are; this says what stands for what — and that is what turns a taxonomy into an ontology. The picture itself is made where a person can draw.
What suits you at all
What the four say together
Four out of four is 生き甲斐. Three out of four is not a failure but a common case — it has a cost, and the cost has a name. Fewer than three may be problematic.
C₃ₓ₃ — three domains against three criteria
Click a field to judge it, and to say why. A field with a remark carries a blue edge.
The posts being weighed
Side by side
This is the point of running it more than once: the post held now, against the one next, against the endgame.
What you mean to be able to do
Authorship
This tool is a synthesis. It was derived from an analysis of the works named below and combined with development of our own. The characterisation method, the four dimensions, the analogy portfolio with its MECE discipline, the linguistic refinement and the coat of arms are the work of dsc Strategy Consulting. We claim neither the foundations nor the established techniques built on them — they are named and attributed here. What we claim is the synthesis, and the moves the literature does not contain. This page shows what was inherited from whom, and what was developed here.
The theoretical basis this rests on
- Ξενοφῶν, 4th c. BCE — φιλανθρωπία: the disposition to attend to what a person actually is.
- Ἀριστοτέλης and Thomas Aquinas, analogia entis — analogical thinking as a way of knowing what cannot be defined directly.
- Erich Fromm, Die Seele des Menschen, 1964 — biophilia: a nature oriented to growth, and the tendency to improve that follows from it.
- 五行 Wuxing, traditional Chinese — five elemental types held in dynamic balance rather than fixed.
- 生き甲斐 Ikigai, traditional Japanese — what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, what you can be paid for.
- 守破離 ShuHaRi, traditional Japanese — follow the rule, break the rule, transcend the rule: the three stages of any mastery.
Why nothing here is a strength or a weakness
The person–situation evidence: what looks like a property of a person is mostly a property of a pairing.
- Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and assessment. New York: Wiley.
- Funder, D. C., & Ozer, D. J. (1983). Behavior as a function of the situation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 107–112.
- Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244(4907), 933–938.
- Ross, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). The person and the situation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
- Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance. Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 1–26.
- Ganzach, Y. (1998). Intelligence and job satisfaction. Academy of Management Journal, 41(5), 526–539.
- LePine, J. A., Colquitt, J. A., & Erez, A. (2000). Adaptability to changing task contexts. Personnel Psychology, 53(3), 563–593.
- Judge, T. A., Piccolo, R. F., & Kosalka, T. (2009). The bright and dark sides of leader traits. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(6), 855–875.
- Bloom, P. (2016). Against empathy: The case for rational compassion. New York: Ecco.
Fit is an interaction, and the context is half of it
Why the tool rates a pairing and never a person.
- Aristotle (c. 350 BCE). Nicomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.).
- Heidegger, M. (1927). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York: Harper.
- Ashby, W. R. (1956). An introduction to cybernetics. London: Chapman & Hall.
- Simon, H. A. (1969). The sciences of the artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York: Putnam.
- Gazzaniga, M. S. (2018). The consciousness instinct. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The competency frameworks this deliberately departs from
Named because the tool does the opposite of what they do — and because they are the best evidence that the same property is a strength in one report and a weakness in the next.
- Bartram, D. (2005). The Great Eight competencies: A criterion-centric approach to validation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(6), 1185–1203.
- Society for Human Resource Management (2022). SHRM Body of Applied Skills and Knowledge (SHRM BASK). Alexandria, VA: SHRM.
- Gallup, Inc. (2020). CliftonStrengths 34 Report. Washington, D.C.: Gallup Press.
- LinkedIn (2024). Workplace Learning Report: Most In-Demand Skills.
- McKinsey & Company, Leadership Model — observable behaviours linked to business outcomes.
The thresholds, which are named and then left alone
A small share of characteristics are a matter of threshold rather than of fit. Below one, the question is medical. These are the sources that define them; the tool goes no further than naming them.
- Spearman, C. (1904). “General intelligence” objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology, 15(2), 201–292.
- Bleuler, E. (1911). Dementia praecox or the group of schizophrenias. New York: International Universities Press.
- Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
- Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action. Boston: Beacon Press.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.
- Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor: The science of mental ability. Westport, CT: Praeger.
- Barkley, R. A. (2001). The executive functions and self-regulation. New York: Guilford Press.
- Berridge, K. C. (2004). Motivation concepts in behavioral neuroscience. Physiology & Behavior, 81(2), 179–209.
- Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2004). Handbook of self-regulation. New York: Guilford Press.
- Tomasello, M. (2009). Why we cooperate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Oakley, B., Knafo, A., Madhavan, G., & Wilson, D. S. (Eds.) (2012). Pathological altruism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The anthropology the two instruments stand on
The model itself is presented in person before the first session. These are the parts of it the tool actually acts on: that a person is read by others, that reflection has a seat, and that variation runs inside shared constraints.
- Hiromi Kobayashi and Shiro Kohshima, “Unique Morphology of the Human Eye,” Nature 387 (1997) — the visible sclera: being read by others is part of the equipment.
- Giacomo Rizzolatti and Laila Craighero, “The Mirror-Neuron System,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 27 (2004).
- Michael Tomasello et al., “Understanding and Sharing Intentions,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (2005).
- Robin I. M. Dunbar and Susanne Shultz, “Evolution in the Social Brain,” Science 317 (2007).
- Josep Call and Michael Tomasello, “Does the Chimpanzee Have a Theory of Mind? 30 Years Later,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12 (2008) — others hold a model of you; that model is the image.
- R. Nathan Spreng et al., “The Common Neural Basis of Autobiographical Memory, Prospection, Navigation, Theory of Mind, and the Default Mode,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 21 (2009) — the default mode network: reflecting on oneself is not idleness.
- Shalom H. Schwartz — the universal value dimensions, as the frame for variation within shared constraints.
What the individual pages rest on
Each of these is used by a particular page rather than by the argument as a whole — the etymology the language pass runs on, the emotion the inner workings page refuses to treat as a fault, the ceiling the abstraction rule stops below, the levels 守破離 sorts.
- Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2. Aufl. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993) — the language pass ends in etymology.
- Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Allen W. Wood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) — the person as an end, never rated.
- Maslow, Abraham H. Motivation and Personality, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1987) — the ceiling the abstraction rule deliberately stops below.
- LeDoux, Joseph E. The Emotional Brain (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) — the emotion is not chosen, which is why it is recorded and not corrected.
- Miller, Earl K., and Jonathan D. Cohen. “An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function.” Annual Review of Neuroscience 24 (2001): 167–202 — cognition reaches the response, not the emotion.
- Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 1999) — capability as what a person can actually do and be.
- Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan. “Self-Determination Theory.” American Psychologist 55, no. 1 (2000): 68–78 — the motivation pair on the development page.
- Hersey, Paul, and Kenneth H. Blanchard. Management of Organizational Behavior, 10th ed. (Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2012) — development level as the thing a context must match; the nearest management analogue to 守破離.
- Henrich, Joseph. The Secret of Our Success (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015) — high-fidelity imitation, which is what 守 actually is.
Rights
Provision and liability
- Whether provision is charged or free of charge depends on the engagement; where an individual agreement exists, it prevails.
- It computes and displays on the basis of the data entered. It does not give advice and it does not make decisions.
- No warranty is given as to correctness, completeness or fitness for a particular purpose; use is at your own risk.
- Decisions and their consequences remain with the user.
Copyright and use
- © 2026 dsc Strategy Consulting. The frameworks, the wording and this application are our work.
- Clients may use it for their own work, commercially included.
- Reusing it, passing it on, publishing it, reselling it or reworking it into a competing offering is prohibited.
- If you want to do more with it, ask us — usually we are glad to agree.
Use permitted, redistribution and resale prohibited.
Provided without contractual obligation. The tool computes and displays; it does not advise and does not decide.