The Game Changing Index is one of the people-readiness tools at the heart of how we work. It maps every leader's natural inclination across five game-changing roles: Patterns, Productivity, Possibilities, Progress, and People. When I talk about it in workshops, I keep hearing the same gentle complaint. The five P's, in their formal definitions, sound a little textbook. People want them in working English.
So here they are, written the way I'd explain them to a senior team in a workshop, rather than the way the assessment guide would put them.
Patterns
The Patterns player is the one in your team who sees the shape underneath the noise. They notice what's repeating. They spot the structural cause when everyone else is reacting to the symptom. In a strategy meeting, they're the one who pauses and says “we've been here before, and the last time this happened the reason was...”
You'll know your Patterns player by the questions they ask. They tend to want to understand the system before they propose a move. They're often quieter than the room. They almost always notice the long-running pattern that nobody else is naming.
Without one, the team keeps treating new symptoms of the same structural problem.
Productivity
The Productivity player is the one who turns intent into output. They are not the cheerleader. They are the engine. Give them a clear brief and a deadline, and they will deliver the work, on time, to standard, again and again.
You'll know your Productivity player by the absence of drama. They get it done. They follow up. They close loops. The room rarely notices them until you remove them, and then everything slows down by about thirty percent.
Without one, the team's plans turn into wishes.
Possibilities
The Possibilities player is the one who can see what isn't there yet. They are the imaginer. They are the source of the idea that everyone else then turns into a plan. In a strategy session, they're the one who says “what if we did something completely different”.
You'll know your Possibilities player by their willingness to be wrong out loud. They float ideas that don't always land. They reach for what could be, not what is. The room sometimes finds them exhausting. The room is also lost without them.
Without one, the team optimises the present and misses the future.
Progress
The Progress player is the one who moves the work forward when it stalls. They are not the imaginer or the engine. They are the unblocker. They notice when something is stuck, work out why, and move it past the obstacle.
You'll know your Progress player by their relationship to friction. They don't tolerate it. They will pick up the phone, walk into the room, escalate to the level that solves it, and quietly get the work flowing again. They are sometimes mistaken for the Productivity player, but they're doing something different. Productivity delivers. Progress unsticks.
Without one, the team has lots of in-flight work and very little movement.
People
The People player is the one who holds the team together. They are the empathiser. They notice when someone is struggling, when a relationship is fraying, when the morale is starting to dip. They invest the time it takes to keep the human side healthy.
You'll know your People player by the conversations they have around the edges of meetings. They check in. They follow up. They notice the body language. They are sometimes mistaken for soft when they are doing the hardest, most invisible work in the team.
Without one, the team performs in public and decays in private.
Why this matters in practice
Almost every senior team I run the GC Index on is short of at least one of the five. Sometimes two. The team has often hired more of what it already has, because like recruits like, and the missing role has stayed missing for years.
The first piece of work, almost always, is to see the picture clearly. Once a team can see its own composition, the next moves get obvious. Sometimes it's a hire. Sometimes it's a role redesign. Sometimes it's the realisation that a particular team member, currently miscast, would be a brilliant Patterns player if you actually let them play that role instead of the one their title implies.
The five P's are a language. The diagnostic is what gives the team permission to use it. Once they have it, they tend to keep using it for years.
A small habit that helps
If you're a leader reading this and you want a five-minute version of the exercise, here it is.
Picture your senior team. For each of the five P's, name the person on the team you would describe as the strongest player. If you can't name one, that's the gap. If you've named the same person against two, that's a different kind of gap. Either way, you've just done the most useful version of this exercise that doesn't involve actually running the assessment.
The full version, with proper scoring and a debrief, is what we run for clients. The five-minute version is what you can run for yourself, in the time it takes to make a cup of tea.
