Why belief, action and ability belong together.
Someone can feel confident about investing and still struggle to make a decision. A team can value its roadmap and rarely use it. To understand either situation, we need to ask more than one kind of question.
P–B–C stands for Perception, Behaviour and Capability. We use these three lenses to compare how work is experienced, what people report happening, and the conditions that help it happen consistently.
Developed by u impact, the P–B–C approach helps identify useful questions to investigate. InnovationFlow applies it to how organisations turn ideas into action.
What each lens asks
Perception
How useful or effective does the practice seem?
Your judgement of how clear, useful, trustworthy or effective something is, based on your own experience.
Answer from your vantage point. You are not being asked to speak for everyone.Behaviour
What actually happened during the stated period?
The practice you have observed in the period stated by the question: for example, whether a roadmap was used in recent decisions.
This is reported behaviour. A survey response is not independent verification that an event occurred.Capability
What enables the practice to happen consistently?
The ownership, skills, time, resources, information, processes and appropriate tools that support repeatable work.
More sophisticated technology does not automatically mean stronger capability.Related questions use all three lenses so that an overall impression does not hide an important difference between experience, practice and support.
A roadmap can feel useful and still be rarely used.
- P · Perception
- “The roadmap gives me a clear view of our priorities.”
- B · Behaviour
- “We rarely refer to it when making investment decisions.”
- C · Capability
- “There is an owner and a regular forum for reviewing it.”
A question to investigate
When did the roadmap last change an investment decision, and what helped or prevented its use?
The answers might reflect an outdated roadmap, a forum without decision authority, or different expectations about its purpose. Ask people involved in a recent decision and review the relevant records before choosing an explanation.
These are illustrative statements, not scored survey items. A difference between one person's answers does not establish a disagreement between leadership and teams.
From an individual decision to an organisational practice.
The bridge into innovation management was shaped by Clemens Chaskel's more than 15 years of roadmapping research and practice, including his work as an Industrial Associate with IfM Engage. His work connects strategic planning, technology and innovation management, and the implementation of practices that help organisations make and carry out decisions.
IfM Engage's roadmapping work brings research and practical application together to support strategy development. In their article on innovation management, Clemens and John Saiz describe organisations repeating strategy exercises without fully implementing their objectives, and technical expertise being insufficiently involved in planning. They emphasise the connections between strategy, people, leadership and implementation.
Experience of the gaps between those activities helped us recognise the value of the P–B–C approach developed by our partner company, u impact. A roadmap can express a strategic direction while funding follows a different logic. A team can gather valuable external insights without a clear route for considering them in its plans. The framework gives us a structured way to investigate such discrepancies.
Translating it into innovation meant defining questions around organisational work: shared priorities, investment decisions, responsibilities, information flows and the conditions that sustain practice. That experience informed what to ask, which perspectives to involve and what evidence to examine. The resulting Diagnostic brings u impact's analytical approach together with the practical questions arising from innovation management.
In an organisation, belief, action and support are distributed across people. One person sets priorities, another allocates resources, and others coordinate delivery. A useful assessment therefore asks whose perspective we are hearing, which decisions they have seen, and what they can influence.
- Perception: what people understand and expect
- A leader may see the roadmap as a way to set direction, while a project team expects it to resolve dependencies. Both may call it useful while meaning different things. Ask what each person uses it to understand and what they expect it to help them decide.
- Behaviour: how work and decisions actually proceed
- Look beyond whether a roadmap is produced or updated. Ask when it was consulted, whether an assumption was challenged, and whether it influenced a priority, resource allocation or delivery decision. A workshop or review meeting shows activity; understanding its effect requires examining what followed.
- Capability: what makes useful practice repeatable
- A template or software licence is only part of the picture. People also need the skills to connect evidence to choices, time to maintain the roadmap, access to relevant information, and clear responsibility and decision authority. Capability concerns whether the organisation can sustain the practice when people or circumstances change.
Discrepancies the lenses can bring into view
Two examples from Clemens's roadmapping research and practice show why it helps to examine perceptions, behaviour and capability together. They illustrate situations to investigate, rather than conclusions that a score can establish on its own.
Technology roadmaps set a direction. Budget pots shape the decisions.
A technology team develops a roadmap around future needs and strategic priorities. Funding decisions then follow existing departmental budget pots, leaving work that crosses those boundaries difficult to fund.
- P · Perception
- People describe the roadmap as a guide to strategic priorities.
- B · Behaviour
- Projects are selected or deferred according to the budget available in each department, with limited reference to the roadmap's priorities and dependencies.
- C · Capability
- The organisation can produce a technology roadmap, but may lack a shared investment review, authority to move funding between budgets, or a process for reconciling the roadmap with financial planning.
The discrepancy: strategic direction and resource allocation are weakly connected. Roadmapping capability in the technology team may not extend to the people and processes that control investment.
What to investigate: trace a recent funding round. Which roadmap priorities received funding, which did not, and why? Were budget constraints explicit strategic trade-offs, or did existing allocations determine the outcome without that discussion?
A possible next step: bring roadmap priorities and dependencies into investment reviews, with a clear route for resolving decisions that cross departmental budgets.
AI expands the view outside. Planning continues much as before.
A team uses AI to explore technology trends and competitor activity. It produces more material for discussion, but the insights have little visible influence on planning assumptions, priorities or experiments.
- P · Perception
- People feel better informed and describe planning as responsive to external change.
- B · Behaviour
- Trend summaries circulate, but planning reviews rarely record how their implications were evaluated or what changed as a result.
- C · Capability
- Tools make exploration easier, but the organisation may lack responsibility for checking sources, assessing relevance and bringing the findings into decisions.
The discrepancy: the ability to gather information has developed faster than the ability to evaluate and use it. More scanning activity is not evidence that planning has become more responsive.
What to investigate: choose a recent trend or competitor development. Was it verified? Who assessed its implications? Did it lead to a revised assumption, a scenario, an experiment, or a reasoned decision to keep the plan?
A possible next step: give relevant signals an owner and a place in planning reviews, recording the evidence, implications and decision. A well-supported decision to make no change can also demonstrate that an insight was properly considered.
The practice works because one person holds it together
Regular use can coexist with fragile support. A committed individual may coordinate updates and resolve dependencies without protected time or a replacement. Ask what would continue if that person moved on, and which responsibilities and skills are shared.
The relationship is the useful part
A clear purpose can encourage use. Using a roadmap can reveal missing information or skills. Better support can make use easier, and experience can change how people value the practice. P–B–C helps organise that inquiry; it does not establish which influence caused a particular result.
Compare accounts from people involved in the same work and check them against relevant records. Different perspectives may reflect different responsibilities or access to information. The aim is to understand the practice well enough to choose a useful next step.
From answers to action
Set the scope
Agree which team, project or organisation the answers concern and use the time period stated in each question.
Gather relevant perspectives
The Diagnostic Snapshot asks 15 scored questions across five connected fields. A full Diagnostic selects relevant questions from a catalogue of more than 200 across people, topics and stages. Each participant answers the questions appropriate to their role and the agreed scope.
Compare answers and check explanations
Look at the individual lenses, the distribution of responses and what is missing. In a full engagement, qualitative discussion, factual checks and organisational evidence help a facilitator and the team examine possible explanations.
Decide what to do next
Identify what needs attention, agree an action and owner, and decide what evidence to review later. Keep observations, interpretations and verified findings distinct.
Developed by u impact. Extended to innovation.
The approach grew out of research by our partner company, u impact, into private investors' investment ability: how their knowledge, confidence, behaviour and access to support affect their ability to make and carry out investment decisions.
The investor research starting point
The working paper A view on end-investor types in sustainable investment, by Clemens Chaskel, Alistair Hume and Lesley (Lu) Li, was first published in 2022 and later revised. It reports 106 questionnaire responses, 53 investor interviews and 12 adviser interviews. It explored investor confidence, sustainability interests and barriers to action.
u impact's first P–B–C diagnostic
Building on that research, u impact developed its first diagnostic to investigate private investors' investment ability using Perception, Behaviour and Capability. Its survey specification groups related questions to compare what someone believes, what they do and what enables action. One example examines whether investment choices reflect the personal values an investor considers important.
Bridging into innovation through research and practice
Clemens's experience in innovation management and roadmapping, including his work with IfM Engage, helped shape the adaptation to organisational decisions and capabilities. This informed the Innovation Health Check and its roadmapping assessment. InnovationFlow extends that work across connected fields of innovation, with revised questions, clearer interpretation rules and evidence review.
The investor study is the research starting point; it does not itself define or validate the later P–B–C diagnostic. The current Diagnostic also distinguishes reported behaviour from independently checked evidence.
The ideas behind the approach
u impact's original investor-survey methodology names three foundations for the P–B–C approach. The contribution was to turn these ideas into related diagnostic questions about perceptions, behaviour and the support available for action.
Personal factors, behaviour and environment interact
Bandura's social cognitive theory describes these three influences as mutually interacting. The u impact methodology cites this as triadic reciprocal causation (1986). It informs looking at people's beliefs, their actions and the conditions around them together.
Intending to act is not the same as acting
Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior (1991) connects attitudes, social norms and perceived behavioural control with intentions and behaviour. It informs examining whether positive intentions translate into action and what people believe enables or limits that action.
Motivation depends on supportive conditions
Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory (2000) identifies autonomy, competence and relatedness as basic psychological needs. It informs attention to people's sense of choice, ability and connection when investigating what supports engagement.
How u impact translated this into a diagnostic
For a related topic, ask what a person thinks or feels (Perception), what they report doing (Behaviour), and what resources, tools or support they can access (Capability). Compare those answers to identify questions for further investigation.
This is u impact's practical synthesis. The three lenses do not map one-to-one onto every construct in these theories, and the survey does not test their causal models.
A naming distinction: Ajzen uses PBC for perceived behavioural control. Here, P–B–C means Perception, Behaviour and Capability; the terms are not interchangeable.
Research context and later development
The earlier investor paper discusses the attitude–behaviour gap. Later roadmapping methodology adds organisational perspectives from dynamic capabilities, sensemaking and organisational learning. These extend the context in which the lenses are used.
These foundations explain design choices. They do not establish that a particular score proves a cause, predicts an outcome or measures a validated level of maturity.
How to interpret your results
- A personal result is one perspective. Organisation-wide conclusions require relevant participants and an appropriate evidence review.
- Different answers suggest questions. They do not prove a cause, a contradiction or a failing in a person or team.
- Unknown and not applicable are separate. Neither is scored as zero. Missing coverage limits what can be concluded.
- Numbers describe answer patterns. They are not calibrated measures of organisational maturity, a benchmark against other organisations or proof of financial value.
- Development and validation are different. The current Diagnostic remains a developing instrument. Further work includes checking question comprehension, testing across varied engagements and evaluating reliability and decision usefulness.
Start with one real decision.
Choose a recent decision and ask the people involved three questions. Use the same decision and time period for everyone.
- Perception: How clear and useful did the process feel to you?
- Behaviour: What information did you use, and what did you do?
- Capability: What skills, time, authority or support helped you act? What was missing?
Compare the accounts, ask for examples, and check relevant records. Agree one question that needs more evidence before deciding what to change. This is a discussion exercise, not a scored assessment.