Teho
Study Readout · v0.2
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Northstar Services GroupWork Redesign Study

Where skilled capacity is going.

A team-level evidence readout showing where skilled capacity is being absorbed, which repeated work patterns are credible enough to act on, and what should remain human‑led.

Teho
Contents
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00How the story flows

Read the deck as a chain from evidence to decisions.

The readout is not a set of disconnected dashboards. The same repeated patterns are carried from observation, through friction, into opportunities, leadership decisions, and Pulse measures.

01 · Answer

What leadership needs to know first.

The executive readout names the capacity opportunity and the three repeated patterns that carry the story.

Executive readout

02 · Scope

What was studied, and what was not.

Study design and coverage rules explain the boundary, evidence states, privacy controls, and known limitations.

Study design · Coverage & Confidence

03 · Observe

Where reportable work patterns appeared.

The taxonomy, Work Profile Map, and tool transitions show the same work from hierarchy, concentration, and system-flow views.

Taxonomy · Work Profile · Tool transitions

04 · Synthesize

Which patterns are material enough to discuss.

Friction hotspots and work-mix direction turn observations into a small number of business conversations.

Hotspots · Work Mix Direction

05 · Decide

Which candidates move, and how proof is measured.

The opportunity portfolio, decision rail, and Pulse baseline show what Northstar can choose, protect, and track next.

Opportunities · Decision Rail · Pulse

06 · Provenance

How to inspect the method and artefacts.

Appendices explain value basis, non-capture, and the wider document system around this readout.

Calculation · Privacy · References

Teho
Executive readout
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01Executive readout

Northstar has a meaningful capacity opportunity, concentrated in three work areas.

Across 42 people and 30 days, Teho analysed reportable team-level work patterns. The issue is not productivity; skilled capacity is being pulled away from customer judgement into renewal status recovery, escalation handoffs, and manual control reporting.

P1Renewal status recovery P2Escalation intake and handoffs P3Manual control reporting

Capacity opportunity in scope

£575k-815k

Capacity-equivalent estimate based on reportable in-scope patterns. The range reflects how much of the opportunity set Northstar chooses to act on, and how much adoption those changes achieve.

Monthly hours in scope

800-1,140

FTE equivalent*

5.0-7.1

Top conclusions

  1. 0144% of reportable in-scope team-pattern time is absorbed by coordination load, process overhead, and avoidable burden.
  2. 0212-17% of team capacity appears addressable through simplification, workflow redesign, automation, and targeted AI assistance.
  3. 03The first moves are concentrated: renewal status recovery, escalation intake and handoffs, and manual control reporting.
22%Judgement
34%Execution
21%Coordination
15%Overhead
8%Burden

Reportable cost basis

£4.8m

Loaded team cost across scoped cohorts.

Reportable activity

82%

Passed scope, breadth, and confidence thresholds.

Low-value load

44%

Coordination, overhead, and avoidable burden.

Priority hotspots

3

High-confidence places to act first.

Teho
Study design
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02Study design

Designed to answer one operating question, not to monitor individuals.

Northstar agreed the team boundary, evidence sources, minimum pattern thresholds, and privacy guard controls before Teho produced leadership evidence.

Question studied

Where is skilled service and commercial capacity being absorbed, and where should Northstar simplify, automate, AI-assist, redesign, or keep work human-led?

Study boundary

Team-level evidence only. Findings are about repeated work patterns across cohorts, not individual activity scoring.

Minimum 30-day observation window. The Study also needs one week before for setup/testing and one week after for readout preparation.

Agreed evidence paths only. Signals came from approved workplace tools and optional sources agreed with Northstar.

Pattern graduation threshold. A signal only became leadership evidence when it was repeated across enough eligible contributors, fit the agreed scope, and met confidence and relevance thresholds.

Scoped cohorts

Customer Success Managers24Renewals, expansion support, account coordination
Support Specialists12Customer issue handling, triage, escalation support
Service Managers6Escalations, quality, coaching, operational control

Agreed exclusions and privacy guard controls

The privacy guard combined Teho's standard non-capture rules with Northstar-specific exclusions agreed before patterns could graduate into leadership evidence.

Standard non-capture

Personal activity Private messages Health or union topics Protected characteristics Individual rankings Raw surveillance logs

Northstar-specific exclusions

Non-customer teams HR casework Legal matters Personal calendar blocks Non-work browser use

If activity was out of scope, too sensitive, too sparse, or not relevant to the agreed business question, it stayed out of the leadership analysis even if a signal existed.

Teho
Coverage & Confidence
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03Coverage and Confidence

How to read the evidence.

This readout represents validated, reportable patterns from the agreed Northstar study boundary. It does not represent every activity, every minute, or every cost source.

Represented

Reportable team patterns

Repeated, in-scope work patterns that passed privacy, breadth, confidence, and relevance thresholds.

Not represented

Activity deliberately not represented

Emerging, sparse, personal, sensitive, or out-of-scope signals are not forced into a finding.

Use responsibly

Decision evidence, not surveillance

The right use is work redesign, not individual performance management.

What we don't know yet

Three things this Study deliberately did not try to answer.

  1. Long-term trendWhether the same patterns hold across seasonality, future quarters, or different operating cycles.
  2. Impact after changeWhether selected decisions actually move the work mix, reduce friction, or release capacity.
  3. Expanded scopeWhat unapproved evidence paths, excluded teams, or non-scoped activity might reveal if Northstar chooses to widen the boundary.
Evidence stateWhat it meansHow to use it
GraduatedSignals passed scope, privacy, breadth, confidence, and relevance thresholds and became team-level evidence.Use as reportable evidence in the Work Profile, hotspots, or portfolio.
EmergingSignals exist, but not enough breadth, confidence, duration, or scope fit to graduate into the Work Profile.Use as a candidate area for continued measurement, not as a conclusion.
ExcludedSignals were deliberately removed because they were personal, sensitive, non-work, out of scope, or not relevant to the agreed question.Use as evidence of privacy control, not as an operational opportunity.
SuppressedSignals were too rare, too small-cohort, too specific, or below threshold to show safely.Do not use as a leadership finding.
Teho
Work taxonomy
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04Work taxonomy

The taxonomy translates repeated work patterns into client-readable work areas.

Level 1 domains are the client-readable work areas. Level 2 gives enough detail to explain the operating picture without crowding the Work Profile Map.

ActivityTimeCostDominant mix
L2 activity
P1 Renewal status recovery
12%
£576k
ExecutionBurden
L2 activity
Commercial review preparation
11%
£528k
Execution
L2 activity
Customer expansion conversations
8%
£384k
Judgement
Teho
Work profile
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05Work profile

The Work Profile Map shows where validated team-level work patterns concentrate.

What to look for: the biggest coloured blocks show where reportable time and cost concentrate; the grey rail shows what Teho refused to turn into findings.

Customer operations · 42 people · 30 days

Reportable basis · £4.8m
Judgement Execution Coordination Overhead Burden
Customer growth
31% · £1.49m Customer delivery
28% · £1.34m Internal coordination
20% · £960k Admin/reporting
14% · £672k Mgmt/coaching
7% · £336k Not reportable
Teho
Tool transitions
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06Tool transitions

Tool transitions show where work fragments across systems.

What to look for: repeated loops between systems where P1-P3 lose context, ownership, or source-of-truth clarity. This is the evidence lens behind the friction hotspots, not a ranked list of apps.

Tool footprint

38

Distinct tools observed inside the agreed study boundary.

Tool concentration

64%

Activity concentrated in the five highest-use systems.

Switching load

5.6

Average touches in the priority transition patterns.

Top repeated transitions

Share

Touches

Read

Source-of-truth cleanup

P1 · Renewal status recovery

What is happening

CSMs rebuild renewal status across CRM, spreadsheets, Slack, and email before customer conversations.

Likely cause

No single trusted renewal status field or owner is doing enough work for the team.

What to test next

Agree the source-of-truth rule, stop duplicate trackers, then test AI assistance for approved summary drafting.

Teho
Hotspots
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07Friction build-up

Three repeated friction patterns are material enough for a decision conversation.

Hotspots are not recommendations. They synthesize the same P1-P3 observations from taxonomy, Work Profile, and tool transitions into the repeated patterns material enough for a decision conversation.

HotspotScaleFriction signalDecision lens
Teho
Work Mix Direction
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08Work Mix Direction

The target work model is less reconstruction, more judgement.

The mix-level view becomes useful when it is translated into a role-level shape: what CSMs should spend less time doing, more time doing, and where the human boundary should stay protected.

Role-level lens · Customer Success Managers

Shift CSM capacity away from coordination load and avoidable burden, back toward customer judgement.

Current observed mix100% reportable CSM pattern time
18
JDG 29
EXE 27
COORD 16
OH 10
BDN
Target role shapeIllustrative first operating-model shift
26
JDG 34
EXE 21
COORD 12
OH 7
BDN
+8ppmore judgement-rich customer work
-6ppless coordination load
-7ppless overhead and burden

Not a job description or headcount recommendation. This is the role-shape hypothesis leaders can test through decisions and Pulse tracking.

Rough redesigned role

What would have to change for the target mix to be believable?

Reduce

Status reconstruction

Remove duplicate trackers, unclear CRM fields, and pre-call status chasing that make CSMs rebuild the same account picture.

Increase

Customer judgement

Give CSMs more space for renewal risk calls, expansion conversations, exception handling, and relationship-sensitive decisions.

Enable

Evidence assembly

Use approved AI summaries and cleaner source-of-truth rules to prepare context without delegating customer judgement.

Protect

Human-led boundary

Keep negotiation, coaching, customer-risk trade-offs, and account judgement outside productivity scoring or autonomous action.

Design principle

Teho is not recommending that Northstar automate every visible activity. The target is to remove avoidable reconstruction so skilled people spend more time on work that actually needs them.

Teho
Opportunity portfolio
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09Ranked candidates

The opportunity portfolio turns observed patterns into decision candidates.

Every opportunity below traces back to the same priority patterns surfaced in the taxonomy, Work Profile, tool transitions, and friction hotspots. It is a derived portfolio, not a brainstorm.

OpportunityRouteValueFTEEffortConf.Status
01

Remove duplicate renewal tracker

P1 Customer growth · status recovery

Stop
£180k-230kaddressable
1.8-2.3FTE
Low2 wks
02

Automate control-pack assembly

P3 Admin/reporting · manual packs

Automate
£130k-170kaddressable
1.3-1.7FTE
Med4 wks
03

AI-assisted renewal summaries

P1 Customer success · account prep

AI-enabled
£90k-130kaddressable
0.9-1.3FTE
Med6 wks
04

Standardise escalation intake

P2 Customer delivery · handoffs

Simplify
£70k-100kaddressable
0.7-1.0FTE
Med8 wks
Queued
05

Protect complex renewal negotiation

P1 Customer growth · judgement work

Keep human-led
Protectcapacity
n/aFTE
Low2 wks
Queued
Teho
Leadership decision rail
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10Leadership decision rail

The readout creates four leadership decisions.

This is not an implementation plan. It is the decision handoff needed to approve owners, first moves, guardrails, and the Pulse tracking list.

Decision rail

Four conversations that the next leadership team meeting should resolve.

T+10working-day decision window
48hafter readout

Name the P1 source of truth.

Decide which system owns renewal status and which duplicate tracker or side-channel stops first.

OwnerCOO + Customer Ops

If delayedstatus rebuild continues

Day 5first move gate

Choose the first 2-3 moves.

Promote a small set tied to P1-P3 instead of trying to pursue every visible opportunity at once.

OwnerExec sponsor + leads

If delayedportfolio stays theoretical

Day 10guardrail gate

Approve AI and human-led boundaries.

Confirm where AI may assist, where human approval is required, and which judgement work stays protected.

OwnerOps + risk sponsor

If delayedAI work stalls or drifts

Q+1first Pulse read

Lock the measurement loop.

Agree the Pulse baseline, quarterly read cadence, and capacity-equivalent proof measures.

OwnerExec sponsor + Teho

If delayedno proof that work moved

Cost of delay

£48k-68k / mo left unvalidated

Not booked savings. 800-1,140 hours stay in tracked friction patterns each month until leadership chooses what changes first.

Three pathways after the readout

Northstar chooses how the evidence turns into action.

Teho holds the evidence line. Northstar decides whether to act internally, brief a partner, or keep the work under measurement in Pulse.

  • 1Act internally using the portfolio and decision routes.
  • 2Implement changes through Northstar or its chosen partner.
  • 3Use Teho Pulse to evidence whether selected work patterns changed.
Teho
Pulse baseline
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11Pulse baseline

Pulse shows whether the work actually changed.

The Study creates the baseline. Teho Pulse keeps the same privacy-safe patterns live, so leaders can see whether work mix moved, target patterns changed, and capacity equivalents were released from tracked friction.

Recurring question 01

Is low-value load falling?

Compare the live work mix with the Study baseline. The goal is not 100% coverage; it is movement in validated, in-scope team patterns.

Study
213324148
baseline
Q+1
253620127
-7pp load
Q+2
303816106
-14pp load

Judgement

+9pp

More time in customer judgement work.

Coordination

-8pp

Meeting and handoff load reduced.

Burden

-2pp

Less rework and preventable chasing.

Recurring question 02

Did target patterns actually move?

Track named friction patterns from the portfolio, not generic adoption. Pulse shows whether each pattern is reducing, stuck, or creating new review burden.

P3 Manual control reporting

Process overhead · automate

Study
36h
Q+1
17h
-52%

P1 Renewal status recovery

Core execution + burden · AI-assist

Study
31h
Q+1
19h
-38%

P2 Escalation intake and handoffs

Coordination load · simplify

Study
28h
Q+1
11h
-61%

Human review burden

New friction check · AI guardrail

Study
flat
Q+1
+6%
watch

Recurring question 03

What capacity equivalent moved?

Hours reduced in tracked friction, converted using agreed loaded-cost assumptions. This is a proof measure, not a headcount claim.

194 hrs/mo

capacity-equivalent released from tracked friction

£436kannualised equivalent
88%of first target
Study
8 hrs
Q+1
46 hrs
Q+2
108 hrs
Q+3
194 hrs

Evidence of impact

Show whether the changes worked, and where value is emerging next.

Pulse turns the Study baseline into quarterly proof of work-mix movement, friction reduction, and capacity-equivalent value without shifting into individual monitoring.

Teho
Basis of calculation
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12Basis of calculation

The financial values are capacity-equivalent estimates, not savings claims.

Teho translates reportable team-pattern time into a decision-grade capacity view using agreed loaded-cost assumptions. The numbers show what is worth validating, not what has already been saved.

Calculation chain

01

Start with the agreed boundary.

Only scoped cohorts, approved evidence paths, and the 30-day observation window contribute to the readout.

02

Graduate reportable patterns.

Signals must pass scope, privacy, breadth, confidence, and relevance thresholds before they can carry time or cost.

03

Apply loaded-cost assumptions.

Reportable pattern hours are translated using the agreed loaded team cost basis, not individual salary or performance data.

04

Estimate capacity opportunity.

The opportunity range is confidence-adjusted and should be validated through decisions, partner work, or Pulse tracking.

Included

Reportable, in-scope team patterns.

Repeated work patterns that graduated into leadership evidence and can be shown at team level.

Not included

Emerging, excluded, or suppressed signals.

Signals outside scope, below threshold, sensitive, sparse, or not approved are not forced into the value basis.

Cost basis

Loaded team cost, not individual pay.

The model uses an agreed cohort-level cost assumption to avoid turning the readout into employee-level finance data.

Range scenarios

What lands low vs high.

Bottom assumes the highest-confidence hotspot moves with partial adoption. Top assumes redesign of all three hotspots with high adoption. The midpoint reflects a typical first-90-day decision portfolio.

MetricBasisGuardrail
£575k-815kCapacity-equivalent value of repeated reportable patterns credible enough to act on or validate.Not guaranteed savings.
800-1,140 hrs/moMonthly equivalent of tracked friction patterns inside the scoped reportable basis.Not a complete ledger of all time.
5.0-7.1 FTECapacity-equivalent translation of the same hours using agreed assumptions.Not a headcount recommendation.
Teho
Privacy appendix
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13Privacy & non-capture appendix

Trust is built into what Teho refuses to capture.

The Study was designed to create leadership evidence without employee monitoring. Teho only uses approved evidence paths and only graduates team-level patterns that pass agreed privacy, scope, breadth, and confidence thresholds.

Client takeaway

You can act on the readout without turning people into productivity data.

Teho is deliberately incomplete where the evidence would be unsafe, personal, sensitive, sparse, or outside the agreed question. That restraint is what makes the findings usable.

Why this should build trust

The system is willing to say “not enough evidence” rather than pretending every signal can become a leadership conclusion.

01

Scope agreed first

Northstar controlled the question, boundary, evidence paths, and exclusions.

The readout answers the agreed operating question. It is not a general-purpose activity review.

02

Non-capture by design

Personal, sensitive, out-of-scope, sparse, or weak signals are suppressed.

Excluded and emerging states are shown as trust controls, not hidden as analysis gaps.

03

No individual file

No employee ranking, productivity score, keystroke ledger, or personal timeline.

The evidence is about repeated team patterns across cohorts, not individual performance management.

04

Graduated patterns only

Findings appear only when evidence thresholds pass.

Partial coverage is intentional: Teho would rather leave something out than overclaim what the evidence can support.

Teho
References and provenance
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14References and provenance

The Study Readout sits in a versioned system of documents.

Each artefact below answers a defined question about scope, method, evidence, governance, or what comes next. The deck is the leadership artefact; the rest are the system around it.

Leadership artefacts

What should leaders read first?

  • Study ReadoutThis deck: Evidence, analysis, opportunities, and decisions.
  • Executive MemoSponsor-ready narrative derived from the readout for board, ELT, or steering updates.
  • Opportunity Portfolio ExportDecision candidates, routes, value ranges, confidence, and proof metrics.

Scope and method

What was the Study designed to answer?

  • Study CharterPre-study question, boundary, cohorts, evidence paths, and agreed exclusions.
  • Coverage & Confidence StatementHow reportable, emerging, excluded, and limited evidence should be interpreted.
  • Basis of CalculationLoaded-cost basis, reportable time method, and capacity-equivalent guardrails.

Evidence assets

What data supports the findings?

  • Study Data SetVersioned evidence tables used to produce the readout, governed by agreed access rules.
  • Work TaxonomyDomain, activity, time-share, cost, and dominant work-mix hierarchy.
  • Evidence State LogPattern status, confidence, breadth, scope fit, and suppression rationale.

Trust and governance

What can legal, procurement, and InfoSec inspect?

What comes next

How does the evidence become a follow-on decision?

  • Leadership Decision RailThe conversations Northstar should resolve before action starts.
  • Pulse BaselinePatterns, measures, and cadence for proving whether selected work changed.
  • Follow-up Study BriefQuestions that need more scope, more time, or a different team boundary.
  • Document RegisterCurrent versions, owners, access level, and request route for each artefact.
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