Skip to main content
The Incentives Lab
Mental Models · Learning

Strategy Elicitation

Reverse-engineering the internal sequence — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — an expert uses to produce a result.

"'How do you do that?' is the most underused question in business."

Quick answer

What is Strategy Elicitation? Reverse-engineering the internal sequence — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — an expert uses to produce a result. Sales modeling, top-performer studies, training program design.

In the wild

Bandler & Grinder modeling Erickson, Satir, and Perls.

Why it matters in the room

Sales modeling, top-performer studies, training program design.

Counter-move

Document strategies, not just outcomes. Outcomes don't transfer; strategies do.

Visual · Pattern
Strategy Elicitation — a recurring shape in how people decide.
Live example · Apply Strategy Elicitation

Use the model. Pick the move.

Reverse-engineering the internal sequence — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — an expert uses to produce a result. You've just seen this: Bandler & Grinder modeling Erickson, Satir, and Perls. Which lever does the model recommend?

● Live

Pick a lever. There are no neutral ones — every incentive funds a behavior somewhere.

How does this land?

Pick a reaction to Strategy Elicitation

One tap. We'll point you at the most useful next surface based on how this hits.

Human Behavior Element™ · HBE Spec

The full taxonomy entry

Every concept in the Atlas uses the same structure — so Strategy Elicitation can be compared, recombined, and cited like an element on a periodic table.

About the standard →
M
SE
HBT-M5863
Official name
Strategy Elicitation
Mental Models · Learning
Identity
HBT ID
HBT-M5863
Symbol
SE
Official name
Strategy Elicitation
Synonyms
Learning
Keywords
Mental Models, Learning, human behavior, incentive design
Version
v1.0
Last updated
Maintained by The Incentives Lab
Classification
Kingdom
Cognition
Domain
Frameworks
Family
Mental Model
Class
Learning
Element
Strategy Elicitation
Definition
Scientific
Reverse-engineering the internal sequence — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — an expert uses to produce a result.
Plain-English
Reverse-engineering the internal sequence — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — an expert uses to produce a result.
Feynman
'How do you do that?' is the most underused question in business.
Core principle
Reverse-engineering the internal sequence — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — an expert uses to produce a result.
One-sentence summary
Sales modeling, top-performer studies, training program design.
Mechanisms
Psychological
Reverse-engineering the internal sequence — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — an expert uses to produce a result.
Behavioral econ.
Sales modeling, top-performer studies, training program design.
Neurological
Reward, threat, and salience circuits bias attention toward the cue.
Evolutionary
Heuristics that paid off in ancestral environments now misfire in modern systems.
Sociological
Group norms and status incentives reinforce the pattern across a team.
Computational
Models trained on biased human signals will replicate and amplify the pattern.
Systems thinking
Feedback loops between metrics, incentives, and behavior lock the pattern in place.
Signals & signature
Inputs (activators)
Bandler & Grinder modeling Erickson, Satir, and Perls.
Outputs (observable)
Sales modeling, top-performer studies, training program design.
Behavioral signature
You see Strategy Elicitation when the explanation for a decision sounds reasonable but the outcome keeps repeating.
Behavioral molecules
Often combines with related Atlas entries — see the rail below.
Pathways · before
A goal, metric, or contract clause makes the behavior rational locally.
Pathways · after
Locally rational choices accumulate into a systemic distortion.
Domains where it shows up
  • Business
  • Leadership
  • Government
  • Healthcare
  • Education
  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • AI
  • Negotiation
  • Media
  • Public Policy
  • Relationships
Examples
Everyday
Bandler & Grinder modeling Erickson, Satir, and Perls.
Modern
Sales modeling, top-performer studies, training program design.
Historical
A pattern repeatedly documented since the foundational behavioral science literature on mental model.
Famous experiments
See the References block — primary papers in the Atlas link out to the original studies.
Design principles
How to leverage
Sales modeling, top-performer studies, training program design.
How to reduce
Document strategies, not just outcomes. Outcomes don't transfer; strategies do.
How to redesign
Document strategies, not just outcomes. Outcomes don't transfer; strategies do.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How it's exploited
Organizations weaponize strategy elicitation — sometimes deliberately, often by accident — when metrics reward the symptom rather than the outcome.
Common perverse incentives
Volume metrics, short review windows, bonus cliffs, and contracts that pay on activity rather than impact.
Failure modes
When Strategy Elicitation dominates, teams optimize for the dashboard while the real outcome quietly degrades.
Incentive redesign
Document strategies, not just outcomes. Outcomes don't transfer; strategies do.
Ethical considerations
Don't engineer strategy elicitation into customers, employees, or citizens as a manipulation tactic — design for informed choice instead.
Diagnostic questions
  • Where in our org would Strategy Elicitation most often show up unnoticed?
  • Which metric, ritual, or contract clause quietly rewards Strategy Elicitation?
  • If we removed every payoff for Strategy Elicitation, what behavior would replace it?
  • Who benefits when Strategy Elicitation persists — and who pays the cost?
Organizational warning signs
Metrics
A KPI is hit while the underlying outcome stalls or worsens.
Behaviors
People route around the rule rather than challenge it.
Language
'That's just how we do it here.' / 'The system requires it.'
Culture
Naming the pattern is treated as disloyalty.
Red flags
  • People defend the status quo using the language of strategy elicitation.
  • Decisions cluster around the easiest narrative rather than the strongest evidence.
  • New data changes the slide deck but not the decision.
  • Anyone naming the pattern is treated as the problem.
Intervention playbook
Immediate
Make the perverse payoff visible to the people creating it.
30-day
Run a small pilot that pays for the outcome, not the proxy.
Long-term
Rewrite the comp plan, contract, or ritual so the right behavior becomes the easy behavior.
AI considerations
Detect
Audit training data and reward signals for the same pattern this element describes.
Avoid amplifying
Don't optimize models on metrics that already encode the perverse incentive.
Counteract
Use the model to surface where the pattern is most active, then redesign the incentive — not the model.
Measurement
Metrics
Outcome-to-proxy ratio over time.
Assessment
The Incentives Lab III Diagnostic.
Survey
Calibrated pulse questions on rules vs. outcomes.
Behavioral signals
Where people work around the system.
Observational
Where the dashboard and the lived experience disagree.
Scientific evidence
Evidence grade
Synthesized from the behavioral science literature; see Atlas references.
Replication
Tracked in the Atlas as primary, replicated, or contested.
Intervention confidence
Moderate — patterns generalize, mechanisms vary by context.
Research consensus
Broad agreement on the pattern; ongoing debate on boundary conditions.
Known limitations
Local context, culture, and incentive structure all change the strength of the effect.
Open questions
How does Strategy Elicitation interact with AI-mediated decisions at scale?
References
Meta-analyses
Tracked in the Atlas registry.
Seminal authors
Kahneman, Tversky, Thaler, Ariely, Cialdini, Ostrom, Simon — and the field they built.
Cross references

Every Atlas entry is a node in a knowledge graph. See the related rail below to follow the connections.

Disciplinary layers

See Strategy Elicitation through 2 lenses

Each layer of the Incentives OS reframes this concept with its own thinkers, vocabulary, and diagnostic question.

Test yourself · 60 seconds

Do you actually know Strategy Elicitation?

Three quick questions. Result is saved into your review streak — come back when the term is due to lock it in.

Question 1 of 3Score: 0/3

Which best describes Strategy Elicitation?

Go deeper

Worked example, counter-example & concept map

On-demand AI analysis grounded in the Lab's research. Cached on your device after first run.

How this lands in you

Your nervous system has a region for this.

Primary region
Prefrontal Cortex

When you encounter Strategy Elicitation, your prefrontal cortex has to do extra work to override the automatic response — and that override budget is finite.

Executive control, planning, impulse override, working memory, System 2. First thing to go offline under stress, fatigue, or low blood sugar. Why your 4pm decisions are worse than your 9am ones.

See Prefrontal in the Brain Atlas →
You may also like

Picked for you, from the Atlas

Ranked by shared learning paths, overlapping chips, and what you've saved.

Share this rabbit-hole

Send the card, not just the link

A pre-rendered social card with the title, eyebrow, and URL. Copy the link, post it anywhere, or download the SVG for slides.

Keep pulling the thread

More definitions to follow

Every term in the Atlas connects to a dozen others. Pick any of these and see where it takes you.

Keep exploring the Atlas
← Browse the full Atlas