HOW IT WORKS

A look inside a Senseeing run.

The methodology behind it, the moments it's built for, and the rhythm that sharpens the picture over time.

The methodology

Discover. Align. Act.

Customer Discovery. Jobs to be Done. Value Proposition Design. Force field analysis. Opportunity scoring. Design thinking. The proven methods that work at rapidly understanding customers and de-risking ideas, applied to your team.

Inside the cycle

See both sides of a Senseeing cycle

The manager does a short private briefing. Each team member has a private conversation. Pick an industry to see how the conversations flex per context.

See the full walkthrough
1

Manager Briefing

Sarah builds the hypothesis

Senseeing interviews Sarah Chen to understand their assumptions, priorities, and the context the team doesn't see. The result is a structured assumption map the team will respond to.

S

Senseeing

Manager briefing with Sarah Chen

Completed
S

Before we start, if you have a job description, team page, or org chart you'd like to share, paste a link or drop a file here. It helps me get context faster. If not, no problem, we'll just walk through it.

Don't have one handy. I'll just walk you through it.
S

Hi Sarah, thanks for taking the time. I'm here to understand your team so that when I talk with them individually, I'm asking the right questions. This isn't a survey and there are no scores. I just want to learn how you see things. Let's start simple: tell me about your team. Who are they, what do they do, and what's the situation right now?

Customer Success, 10 people. Enterprise accounts. Churn went up last quarter and I'm not sure why. QBR is in six weeks and I want real answers before I walk in there.
S

That's a clear motivation, and it's good that you're distinguishing between what you know and what you might be missing. Before we go deeper: how long have you been managing this team, and has the team composition changed recently?

Two years managing this team. We lost a senior CSM three months ago to a competitor. No backfill because of the headcount freeze. His accounts got redistributed and Jordan went from 35 to 45.
S

Got it. That departure and the redistribution are important context. Based on what you've described, I've drafted a set of objectives that I think your team is working toward, along with the challenges they're likely facing and what opportunities they see. I want you to look through these, confirm what resonates, change anything that's off, and remove anything that doesn't apply. This becomes the hypothesis I'll work from when I talk with the team. They'll tell me what's right, what's missing, and what you might not be seeing.

This looks right. The expansion one is more of a leadership mandate than something the team actually owns. They're relationship people, not salespeople. All eight confirmed.
S

Good. That distinction about expansion revenue is important. If it's a leadership mandate but not something the team owns emotionally, we might see a gap between your ranking and theirs. That's useful, not a problem. Let me ask a couple of follow-up questions to fill in some nuance.

S

On the expansion revenue side: when leadership says they want CS driving upsell, what does that actually look like day to day for your team? Is there a process, or is it more of a verbal expectation?

It's vague. Our CRO said at a company meeting that CS should be identifying expansion opportunities but gave us no playbook, no commission, no training. Most of the team actively avoids it. They think it erodes trust.
S

That tension between trust and commercial pressure is going to be an important signal. Let me shift to the CRM piece. You mentioned health scores not matching reality. Can you give me a concrete example?

We had an account last quarter, health score was green right up until they sent the cancellation notice. Their admin logged in every day so the score looked fine. Meanwhile the executive sponsor was already evaluating competitors. If our data can miss an account in the $150-200K ARR range going dark, what else are we missing?
S

That's a telling example. The lag between behavioral signals and actual health is a systemic issue, not a one-off. Let me ask about something you touched on earlier: the headcount freeze and the AI concerns. How openly is the team talking about this?

Not openly. A couple of the newer CSMs asked me directly whether the company is planning to replace CSMs with AI. The CEO did mention AI assisted CS in a board deck that leaked internally. People are nervous and I understand why. The headcount freeze is more concrete. We went from 11 to 10 and the workload went up. I keep making the case for one more hire.
Actually wait. What exactly will my team see from this? I want to understand what I'm agreeing to before we go further.
S

Your team will see patterns and themes from across everyone's conversations. Nothing is attributed to any individual. The specific examples and context you shared with me stay with me. What they see is a collective picture, anonymized and rewritten so nothing points back to you or anyone else.

OK. That's what I needed to hear.
S

Understood. Let's move to ranking. I want to know how you'd prioritize these objectives. Drag them into the order that reflects your priorities as a manager right now. First position is most important.

1Reduce churn by identifying at-risk accounts early
2Ensure enterprise clients hit their adoption milestones
3Coordinate handoffs between sales, onboarding, and CS smoothly
4Maintain accurate account health data in the CRM
5Drive expansion revenue through upsell and cross-sell
6Be seen as strategic advisors, not just reactive support
7Build genuine relationships with clients, not just manage tickets
8Feel confident that the team has a future as the company grows
Churn is number one, everything flows from that. Adoption and handoffs are close seconds because they feed directly into retention. Expansion is a leadership mandate but it's not what keeps me up at night.
S

Makes sense. Now the challenges. Of all the challenges we discussed, which three keep you up at night?

1CRM health scores don't match reality
2Sales promises features we don't have
3Portfolio size keeps growing
S

And finally, which three opportunities would make the biggest difference if they were real tomorrow?

1Clear data for early intervention
2Invited to product roadmap discussions
3Seeing clients go from struggling to adopted
Clear data, hands down. See the risk before the fire starts and half my problems go away. The roadmap one matters because the team wants to feel heard by Product.
S

One more thing. Before I talk to your team, is there anything I should avoid bringing up? Any topics that would be better left out of these conversations?

Don't bring up the reorg rumors. And go easy on the expansion revenue topic. Some of the team pushes back hard on that.
S

I appreciate you sharing both of those. I'll handle the departure topic and the sales tension carefully. The team will have space to talk about handoff friction and workload without it being framed as a complaint about specific people. Nothing you've said will be attributed. When themes emerge, they'll be presented as patterns from the team as a whole.

S

One more thing, roughly what's the average annual compensation for your team? It's one of the inputs I use when estimating the real cost of unresolved challenges in the report.

That's not something I want to put in the transcript. I can share the figure directly with you — treat it as entered.
S

Understood. The cost analysis stays with you. Your team will see their collective priorities, challenges, and opportunities. None of the financial data or cost estimates are visible to them. What gets shared back is their team profile: what they raised, what aligned, and what needs attention. The numbers are yours.

S

We're nearly done. One final question: on a scale of 1 to 5, how engaged would you say your team is right now?

1
2
3
4
5
Mixed
Three. Veterans are still committed but I can feel energy dropping. Newer ones seem uncertain. Nobody's phoning it in but nobody's excited either.
S

That's an honest read. Here's what I'm going to do: I'll use everything you've shared as a hypothesis map. Your eight objectives, their challenges and opportunities, your rankings, and the context about the team's workload and the sales relationship. I'll talk with each team member individually and give them space to confirm, challenge, or add to what you've outlined. The output will show you where your read matches the team's reality, where there are gaps, and what they see that you might not. You'll get it before the QBR. Thanks, Sarah. This was a strong briefing.

S

Here is what I will cover with your team. I will explore their daily work and priorities, what is getting in the way, their view on team direction and future, how tools and processes are working, and what they see as opportunities. I will not mention your specific assumptions or anything you flagged as sensitive. Does this look right?

Looks good. Go ahead.

How it works

Six steps. One clear picture.

01

You

You name what you believe (5-10 min)

You tell Senseeing what you think is happening. What frustrates your team, what their top pain is, how motivated they are, which tools work and which don’t. This is your hypothesis. Everything that follows is designed to test it.

Why: You can’t test what you haven’t made explicit.

Your hypothesis

Top concern: CRM friction

Pending

Motivation: 7/10

Pending

Territories: working fine

Pending

3 assumptions recorded. Ready to test.

Senseeing

What makes a great day in this role?

Follow-up

You mentioned deal handoff. What happens specifically when a deal stalls past day 10?

A survey would never ask this.

🔒

Your identity: Sparrow-41

Nothing connects back to who you are

02

Team

Your team speaks privately (10-15 min each)

Each person has a private conversation with Senseeing. Not a form. It follows up, goes deeper, and captures what is actually happening. They see and approve everything before it is submitted.

Why: Forms get surface answers. Conversations get root causes.

03

Prioritise

Your team ranks what matters (8-12 min)

Each person privately ranks the top pains. Forced choices, no group pressure, no anchoring on what others said. The output is a team priority list that nobody negotiated into existence.

Why: Individual opinions become collective priorities.

Forced choice

Which costs you more time?

Stalled deal process

CRM data entry

Team ranking (forming)

#1

Stalled deal process

#2

Territory overlap

#3

CRM data entry

Hypothesis vs. Reality

YOU SAID

Top pain: CRM friction

TEAM SAID

Top pain: Stalled deal handoff (8/10)

YOU SAID

Territories: fine

NOT IN YOUR HYPOTHESIS

Territory overlap creating competition

YOU SAID

Motivation: 7/10

NOT IN YOUR HYPOTHESIS

Motivation: 4/10

04

Profile

You get a Team Profile

Not a score. Not a dashboard. A structured picture of what it feels like to work in each role on your team. Ranked pain points. Tool health. Team energy. And at the end: your original description compared side-by-side with what the team actually said.

Why: This is the moment assumptions meet reality.

05

Act

Intelligence becomes action

Each finding is classified by what kind of action it needs. Quick wins you can act on this week. Issues that need coordination across teams. Problems that need deeper investigation before you commit resources. Your team can see what you committed to. The system follows up with you at 30 days.

Why: Intelligence without action is just information.

Action board

Quick wins

Deal handoff protocol at day 15

Coordinate

CRM field reduction with IT

Investigate

Territory boundary review

↻30-day follow-up scheduled

When findings go beyond day-to-day management, pilot members connect with innovation strategists who start with the cycle’s findings.

Longitudinal view

Stalled deal process

Resolved in Cycle 3

Territory overlap

Persists. Escalation recommended.

Persistence flag

Territory overlap survived 2 attempted fixes. This is structural, not operational.

06

Compound

Run another cycle. See what changed.

The system tracks what improved, what did not, and what persists across cycles. When something survives two attempted fixes, the system flags it. The picture gets sharper and more honest every time.

Why: One cycle is a snapshot. Two cycles is a trend. Three is a strategy.

WHEN TO USE IT

Before any decision is final. That is the right moment.

Your first Senseeing gives you your Team Profile: the ranked, validated mapping of your team's challenges and opportunities. Every Senseeing after that sharpens the picture, and gives your team one dedicated place to close feedback loops to show you listened, turning functional challenges into opportunities to align on what's important and engage them effectively.

01

Before a strategic decision

You're weighing a direction. Your gut says one thing, the dashboards say another, and the people closest to the work have a third read you haven't heard yet.

02

Before the next planning cycle

Quarterly plans, annual roadmaps, OKRs, V2MOM. Every cycle locks in priorities for months. Start from the team's reality, not last quarter's slide deck.

03

Inheriting a team

New in the manager seat. You don't know who does what, what's broken, or which fires are real. One-on-ones take months and half the honest signal never surfaces.

04

Before the next bet

You're about to commit people and budget to something big. Past initiatives that nobody reviewed are still running quietly in the background. Is this one worth the bet?

05

Launch reality check

Regular retrospectives miss things. People self-censor, the loudest voice sets the frame, and the real lessons stay private. Pre-launch or post-launch, the picture is partial.

RUN RHYTHM

One run gives you the picture. Running it again shows you what changed.

The Team Profile Map captures a full picture of how the team is operating, once a quarter. Between maps, run smaller focused checks on new systems, recent decisions, or anything you want clear before the next QBR. The data sharpens each cycle, showing whether actions landed and where patterns repeat across teams.