What You Miss When You Only Take an Assessment Once

Most assessments are designed to answer one question: Who are you?

They are administered once, scored once, and filed away in a folder that no one reopens. The implicit assumption is that the results don't change. That “who you are” as a leader is a fixed condition, like blood type or eye color.

That assumption is wrong. And the outcomes from INSI prove it.

INSI - the Innovation Navigation Styles Inventory - isn’t a one-and-done analysis of a leader’s fixed personality traits. It is a tool to reveal the biases and preferences that drive leadership behavior and decision-making. 

The problem with "one and done."

Personality assessments provide a very valuable snapshot. They tell you something real, but only reflect “you” in an ideal scenario. When circumstances shift for any number of reasons, such as a new role or a reduction in staff, the person who took a personality test three years ago may be operating from an entirely different orientation today.

We've seen this play out consistently and clearly, across individuals and teams who have taken INSI more than once.  INSI measures innovation leadership preferences, and preferences shift when circumstances change. The four domains of Strategy, Creation, Scrappiness, and Growth are not personality traits. They are operating orientations. And operating orientations move.

The shifts are not random noise. They follow patterns. And those patterns contain the real intelligence. For example, across clients who have taken INSI more than once, the same patterns surface with striking consistency. As you read through the following sections and learn about the patterns, keep your leadership and team in mind. Consider where they apply to you and where your approach may differ, and why. 

Scrappiness is the most context-sensitive domain. 

When organizational pressure increases (i.e., fewer resources, faster timelines, reduced headcount), scrappiness activates and intensifies. Effective leaders who were previously reactive become proactive. Those who explored broadly before committing now focus with precision. 

In one case, a health plan leader whose department downsized by one person and absorbed two new hires in a single month showed a complete transformation in her Scrappiness domain: now, she exhibits strong preferences in each of the domain’s four key principles, whereas before she had a strong preference in only two. Her preferences shifted from reactive adaptation to what she called "spider sense" in the ability to predict where effort is needed before the demand arrives. Capabilities that had been primary simply stepped back to make room for what the moment required.

This is the insight that a single assessment will never surface: which version of you is running the show right now and why.

Core strengths hold. 

Across all readouts, a few anchors appeared: Analytical intuition, purpose-driven motivation, and customer-centric empathy. When present, these patterns remain consistent even as other preferences shift. The presence of these core strengths tells leaders what is unwavering in their approach and what they can count on regardless of context. The preference shifts reveal what they are calling upon today. Together, the stable and the dynamic paint a complete picture.

Growth edges become operational strengths. 

This is the most instructive pattern we've observed. Repeatedly, preferences that appeared in a leader's stretch zone at one reading appear in their strength zone six to twelve months later. In one profile, fast recovery from setbacks was the primary strength in January. By April, sustained endurance under prolonged adversity (which was previously out of reach) had become her new preference. The earlier competency hasn't disappeared; it will show up again when needed. The leader had simply developed her growth edge.

This does not happen by accident. It happens because the work between assessments, including organizational challenges, coaching, and team dynamics, was developmental. INSI simply makes that work visible.

Teams change too, and not always in the direction you'd expect.

An incubator team that was fast-moving, resilient, and opportunistically bold in January showed a more analytical, deliberate, and structured profile by April. This is not regression. It is recalibration. The team was applying a different set of muscles to a new stage of their program. Without a second readout, the January profile would still be treated as current intelligence, and the lessons designed around it would be for a team that no longer exists.

The compounding value of measurement over time

A single INSI readout gives you a map. Repeated INSI readouts give you a trajectory. The difference matters more than most executives appreciate. A map tells you where you are. A trajectory tells you where you're going, how fast you're getting there, and whether the direction is planned or accidental.

Leaders who take INSI multiple times develop something that one readout cannot build: self-awareness as a practice, not as a one-and-done event. They start to recognize the difference between a static trait (say, blue eyes) and an evolving tendency or preference (for example, a specific behavior).  This insight enables them to start noticing the conditions that call on different patterns. For example, when they're being stretched into growth territory, and when they're operating from creativity. 

For teams, the value compounds further. Multiple team readouts reveal constraints and opportunities. In the incubator example, comparing pre- and post-cohort INSI data revealed that the team's primary constraint moved during the work, from gaps in motivation and feedback acceptance in the first weeks to gaps in imagination and ambition in the later part. Same team. Different constraints. Without the second measurement, you'd be coaching yesterday's problem with today's resources.

Change over time is the point.

We designed INSI to be retaken. Growth and development require movement. They require accessing a range that sits outside your current defaults. They require, on occasion, operating from a part of your profile that doesn't come naturally – until it does.

The leaders who benefit most from INSI are not the ones who take it once and file the results. They are the ones who retake it three or six months later, sit with what changed, and ask the harder question: Did that change happen to me, or did I choose it?

That question is only possible when you have the data to ask it.

One readout gives you a label. Multiple readouts give you a story. And the story, from the arc of who you were and how you are becoming an innovation leader, is the only thing that actually predicts how you will show up in your next destination.

To explore this topic further, drop us a quick email. We’d love to hear from you.