Four rules, and what they cost.
Every programme on this platform is written to the same format. It is a demanding one, and deliberately so: a subject that cannot carry all four rules should be an article rather than a programme.
The four rules
They are constraints on the writing, not features of the product. Each one rules out something that is easier to make and worse to learn from.
- 01
The wrong-answer rationales are the teaching
Every knowledge check explains why each wrong answer is wrong, not just why the right one is right. A distractor without its own explanation is a trick question, and a trick question teaches nothing.
- 02
Gates are behavioural and falsifiable
A gate is a claim about something you can do, phrased so that you could observably fail it. "Understands stakeholder mapping" is not a gate. "Can run a forty-five minute interview that reaches the difficult material" is.
- 03
Exercises run against real subjects
Not case studies. You pick a real organisation you have access to and a real problem it has. The work is worth keeping afterwards, which is the only reliable test of whether it was worth doing.
- 04
Simulations constrain
Early decisions close later options. A branching exercise where every path stays open is a quiz with extra steps.
What a gate actually looks like
The second rule is the one that sounds like marketing until you see one. These are quoted from the free level of three live programmes, exactly as they are written there.
You can state who you serve, what problem, what change, and what proof, in two sentences, without notes.
Evidence: Attach the artefact, or attest with a date if it lives somewhere you cannot upload from.
The Consulting Practicum →You have three complete days of interruption log, every entry timed, sourced, classified and costed against what it displaced.
Lead What Matters →You can state your subject in one sentence naming a person or organisation, the outcome you want, and the date it stopped moving.
Get Out of Your Own Way →
Notice what none of them say. Not “understands”, not “is familiar with”, not “appreciates the importance of”. Each one names something you either did or did not do, and you are the one who has to be honest about which.
How a lesson actually runs
Six verbs, in order. The order is the argument — you cannot demonstrate before you have practised, and you cannot practise something you have not been made to think about.
- 01Read
Text first. Opinionated, argued, and written to be reread rather than watched once.
- 02Think
Knowledge checks whose wrong-answer rationales are the teaching, all of them shown.
- 03Record
You write against the lesson, in the lesson. The note is part of the method.
- 04Practise
A working tool for the thing just taught, with a reviewer that tests it.
- 05Reflect
Exercises run against a real organisation you have access to, not a case study.
- 06Demonstrate
Gates: claims about what you can do, phrased so you could observably fail them.
What is free, and what is not
An account and access are two different things, and this page used to say they were one.
Free, with no account
Level 0 of every programme. Not a sample chapter — the same lessons, the same knowledge checks, the same working tools and the same gates as every level above it.
Free, with an account
Everything above, plus your progress, your notes, your gate claims and your saved work carried between sessions. An account costs nothing and opens nothing further.
Bought, per programme
The remaining levels, the working tools, the simulations, the gates and that programme’s worked exemplars. There is no all-access subscription; you buy the one you are going to do.
Never
Your performance shown to an employer, a manager or another learner. There is no such view and there is no export of one. The privacy notice puts it in writing.
Read Level 0 before you decide anything.
It is the whole argument in a form you can check, and it costs nothing to find out whether the method suits you.