Our method is based on research by Eliot Jacques, he noticed that workers at different levels of the company had different time horizons. He was a pioneer in defining the interaction and the fit between the complexity of a function, role or organisation and the mental processing capability of an individual. Jaques' breakthrough was the discovery that a person's capability to perform complex tasks is a lifelong evolution. He defines this as 'mental processing capability', or the ability of people to handle complexity in decision-making. Managing complexity can be understood as the attempt to find patterns in order to make complexity easier to handle.

This is an indication of the extent to which a person is cognitively able to solve problems or add value at a certain level of complexity.

We combine Jacques's research with The Theory of Basic Human Values, developed by Shalom H. Schwartz, is an important theory in the field of intercultural research. It measures the universal values that are recognised throughout all major cultures, and therefore in every organisation. Ideally, there are certain similarities between the personal values of the Board members and those of the organisation itself. Schwartz's theory identifies nineteen such motivationally distinct values and describes the dynamic relations amongst them. It also demonstrates how these values are interconnected, since the pursuit of any of these values results in either the amplification of or friction with at least one other value. These nineteen values are visualised in a circular structure and can oppose one another lightly or more strongly, which has generated their arrangement along two bipolar dimensions. We distinguish four important quadrants: