Creation
Shows where your contribution sits between pioneering and perfecting.
Understand how you contribute when work is changing
Pioneership is a contribution framework for people and teams working through change. It helps you understand the strengths you bring to new work and make clearer choices about how you contribute.
What we believe
Every stage of new work needs different strengths
A demanding role can make it feel as though one person needs to do everything: setting the direction, generating every idea, moving at full speed, and managing every little detail. However, new work truly succeeds when different strengths are given enough room to contribute.
People can be highly skilled yet placed in roles that do not suit them. When that happens, their strongest contribution has little room to flourish.
Why Pioneership was created
Created from 25 years of digital and technology work
Pioneership began with a pattern Jay Thomson saw throughout 25 years of leading digital and technology work across consumer brands, professional services, health, finance and other sectors.
Capable people often became frustrated because their roles gave them little room to use their strongest contribution. The same mismatch affected teams too. Ownership could be unclear, tensions could repeat and important work could be left uncovered.
Jay created Pioneership to give people and teams a practical language to understand those contribution patterns and to use it in everyday work.
Across the teams and work Jay led:
$500m+media spend managed
100+industry awards
30+markets
Organisations Jay and his teams have worked with
Google
Microsoft
SAP
Unilever
Nestlé
Vodafone
Deloitte
Heineken
Johnson & Johnson
DHL
Red Bull
PepsiSelected recognition
- MMA Smarties Agency of the Year2015, 2019
- MMA Smarties Best in Show2019
- New Generation Agency of the Year2014, 2015
- Digital Company of the Year, National Business Awards2017
- African Cristal Festival awards (7 confirmed)2017
- KPMG Fintech100 ranking2016
Why this matters now
Know what to strengthen as AI changes your work
AI is changing tasks, expectations and roles across almost every kind of work. Pioneership helps you see where your judgement matters, where AI can support you and which capabilities may be worth strengthening.
The framework in brief
A shared language for contribution
Pioneership describes the different ways people help new work move forward. It brings four areas of contribution and eight types into one clear framework, so people can talk about strengths, roles and support with more useful language.
Explore the framework →01
Visioneers
Set direction
02
Catalysts
Move ideas into action
03
Scalers
Make growth dependable
04
Marshals
Run work well
How the assessment works
A clear scoring model with its limits shown
Pioneership measures how you contribute when something new is being built. Your answers are scored across two axes and resolved into a primary and secondary type across the full eight-type spectrum.
Focus
Shows where your attention sits between seeing patterns and delivery.
Deterministic scoring
The same answers always produce the same scores. AI writes the explanation after the scores are calculated.
Measurement shown
The band shows how consistent your answers were. When your answers are close, your result is shown as close.
From your answers to something you can use
Each answer contributes to the two assessment axes. The complete set of answers determines your position and the shares shown across the eight styles. The same answers produce the same scores. Your report uses those scores to explain the contributions that appear in your result.
In the example report, the creation score is 29 towards pioneering and the focus score is -73 towards delivery. The leading contribution is Implementer, someone who makes a first version people can try. The guidance suggests choosing a small test, observing what happens and deciding what to do next.
Jay's experience informed the framework and its examples. The validation pilot investigates how consistently the assessment measures these contributions. Its findings will help establish what can be concluded from the scores.
Explore the example result and its guidanceWhat the Profile is for
Use your strengths with more clarity
Your Profile gives you a practical way to think about role choices, team conversations, personal development and working with AI.
- Make clearer role choices
- Have better team conversations
- Choose useful development focus
- Work with AI more deliberately
Take the next step
Get your Full Profile
Complete 40 questions in about 10 minutes to see your primary and secondary types across the full eight-type spectrum.