Kirton Adaption-Innovation (KAI)
A reliable, BPS-approved measure of cognitive style. Our Advanced KAI Practitioners have assessed over 3,000 project professionals. The highest-rated session on the UK Government's Project Leadership Programme.
Project professionals assessed
Most-rated session on the UK Government's PLP
Formally approved by the British Psychological Society
Among the largest single users of KAI
Project teams don't get the time to form properly.
Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing — the classic Tuckman model assumes time. Project teams rarely have it. They're expected to hit the ground running with little regard for the individual personalities in the room.
The result: collaboration that grinds, problem-solving that splits along invisible fault-lines, and team performance that lags long after it should have lifted. KAI gives teams a reliable, psychologically-safe way to understand the cognitive differences underneath all of that — and put them to work.
A stable measure of cognitive style.
Not personality, not ability. KAI maps where someone sits on the adaption-innovation continuum — a stable preference that shapes how they think, collaborate, and respond to change.
How we collaborate
Adaptors prefer to refine within agreed frameworks. Innovators prefer to redefine the frameworks themselves. Both create friction unless surfaced.
Problem-solving preferences
One end gravitates to incremental improvement; the other to step-change. Project teams need both — they usually have both.
Detail vs. big picture
KAI predicts where attention naturally lands. Useful for project leadership where the same problem needs both lenses.
Adherence to norms
How comfortable a team member is with established culture, processes, and rules — and how visible that becomes under pressure.
Reaction to change
Predicts how each individual is likely to respond to organisational change — long before the change actually arrives.
Team cognitive gap
The distance between team members on the KAI scale — the single biggest predictor of where collaboration will either spark or stall.
Internationally recognised. Approved by the BPS.
KAI is one of a small number of cognitive-style instruments formally approved by the British Psychological Society. It's used worldwide — including by the US military, one of its largest single users — for what it does to self-awareness and team performance.
On the UK Government's Project Leadership Programme, our KAI work consistently rates as the most popular and value-adding element of the curriculum. Around 2,000 senior project leaders have completed it with us.
Where it earns its place
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Stable, reliable measure — doesn't drift over time
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Doesn't depend on self-report perception bias
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Psychologically safe — no "right" or "wrong" score
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Predictive of real team behaviour
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Translates immediately into action
Off-the-shelf packages and bespoke design.
Our team of Advanced KAI Practitioners delivers both standard team assessment-and-training packages and fully bespoke programmes built around a team's specific challenges.
Off-the-shelf team package
KAI assessment for each team member, plus a facilitated workshop that explains the model, surfaces team-level patterns, and translates them into ways of working. Run regularly for project teams of 6–20.
Bespoke programmes
For teams facing specific challenges — accelerating team development, resolving collaboration breakdown, or building organisational change capability. We design from scratch around the problem.
Embedded in coaching
KAI also runs as part of our 1-2-1 leadership coaching — most often when a leader is struggling with team dynamics or with their own response to organisational change.
Integrated into PLP
For UK Government cohorts, KAI is delivered as part of the Project Leadership Programme curriculum — our most highly-rated element across the programme.
Where KAI sits.
KAI is one of several psychometric instruments we deploy across coaching, team development and leadership programmes.
Solution
Behavioural Assessments
The wider behavioural and psychometric toolkit — KAI plus our 360 reviews, Hogan suite, and bespoke instruments.
Solution
Leadership Coaching
1-2-1 coaching that uses psychometrics to surface patterns and accelerate personal change.
Case Study
Project Leadership Programme
KAI consistently rates as the highest-value session on the PLP. 2,000+ leaders have now completed it with us.