Platform Overview
You finished ATA far better prepared to know what HITA work is about and what it takes to earn and maintain that standing with leaders. The brief welcome page told you what's here, the platform Diagram offered a graphic representation. This overview offers more detail so you can understand how the individual pieces work, and how they work together.
Wherever you are on the platform, the red Guide button at the top right of the page takes you to the Navigation Guide.
The platform is organized around Core Features and Optional Features
Core Features
Two tools make up the Core Features and are available to you by default: the Coach and the Library.
The Coach
The Coach is an AI thinking partner grounded in the frameworks Daryl Conner developed over decades of advising leaders through major change. It does what Daryl does in ATA: it applies his frameworks to the advisory challenges you bring, offering his perspective as a starting point rather than the final word. HITA standards stay constant, but how you meet them is yours to work out. Daryl's thinking marks the trail; the Coach helps you walk it your own way.
The Coach is built for situations where you aren't sure how to interpret what's happening or what to do, and you want a partner to think it through with. It does two things:
- First, it sharpens your thinking about what you're facing. It tests the assumptions you're bringing into the situation, surfaces trade-offs you might be missing, and leads you toward a clearer sense of what to do next.
- Second, and just as important, it prompts you to examine how well you're remembering and embodying HITA standards in that situation, and what needs to shift so you can show up that way.
The Coach is built for interaction, not a single question-and-answer exchange. As you work with it, you'll often find the question you started with changes shape. You might begin by asking how to handle a specific leader's problematic behavior but end up realizing the real issue is how you've been contracting your role. That shift isn't a detour from the Coach's purpose; it is the purpose.
As is true for everything included in the platform, the Coach is designed exclusively for ATA graduates, people already fluent in HITA mindsets, principles, and language. It assumes that fluency and works from there.
The Library
The Library is where you go to look something up, better understand an issue, or work through a concept. It begins with two things included in the platform by default, Readings and a Glossary.
Readings — included is a complete version of all foundational material from ATA. Go here when you want the full reasoning behind an idea, not just its conclusion. In addition, a brief summary of each document is available.
Glossary — a brief definition for every key term. Go here when you just need a quick confirmation of what a word or phrase means.
How the two work together
You can use the Coach and the Library on their own and get plenty of value from each. You can also use them together. A question that comes up with the Coach often points back to a term worth checking in the Glossary, or a summary or full piece worth reviewing in Readings. Working through a document in Readings can just as easily raise a question you'd want to bring to the Coach.
Though these are separate tools, they can be viewed as two ways into the same body of knowledge. Sometimes there's something in a project that doesn't sit right, and you bring it to the Coach. That exchange reframes your perspective and you realize it connects to a concept or HITA standard you only half remember, so you check the Glossary. Other times, the Glossary points you back to Readings, where you revisit the full concept and see it in a new light. Used this way, the Coach and the Library give you a complete path from a practical question to a clear answer.
Optional Features
Beyond the core, the platform includes several optional features you can turn to if and when you want them. None of these are required; each one adds more value for practitioners who want it.
Resources
Compendium — A thorough treatment of key concepts, from a surface definition through to mastery-level application, organized so you can dive as deep as a situation calls for. Go here when you want to move beyond the basic definition and into how a concept actually plays out.
Nuggets — Unlike Readings, the Glossary, and the Compendium, looking up a Nugget doesn't hand you new information, it hands you a mirror. Nuggets aren't tied to any single paper or concept from ATA. They capture the mindsets and behaviors that keep showing up again and again in successful HITA practitioners.
Office Hours — if you need more than the Coach can offer, Daryl's Office Hours give you direct one-on-one time with him. The right move when a situation is complex enough, or the stakes are high enough, that drawing on his experience is warranted.
Take a situation where you started with gaining value from the Coach and Library, but you wanted to further your understanding even more. You might open the Compendium and follow a concept from its surface definition through to how it plays out in practice; recognize a Nugget you've seen before, catching yourself early enough to realign with it rather than letting it pass unaddressed or if the question is complex or the stakes are high enough, bring it directly to Daryl in Office Hours rather than working through it alone.
Engagement Notes
This is where you can keep observations and comments on the work you're actually doing, project by project, if and when you want a running record of it. Each engagement gets its own assignment folder with four parts: a description of the work, the contract with the leaders, current status, and field remarks you add as things unfold.
Engagement Notes isn't only for full HITA endeavors. It’s also useful for Solid Performer work where you're deliberately pulling in select HITA elements. It can also be helpful when you aren't in position to overtly apply anything from the HITA approach but you still want to privately track the HITA-level dynamics you see unfolding in a project.
Wake-Up Calls
As a subscriber to the platform, you receive a prompt every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday that either confirms you're on track or helps you recognize when you've drifted from a standard without realizing it. You don't have to go looking for anything, it comes to you, keeping HITA practice in active, conscious view week after week. The platform provides you a space to save any of these prompts you want to keep for easy reference.
My Journey
This is where you can maintain documentation about your own development, if and when you want to track it in a structured way. It has four parts that build on each other: HITA Criteria (the conditions you use to judge whether an opportunity to advise leaders matches with what you believe warrants HITA-level support, revisited as your experience grows), Self-assessments (the Readiness Summary, Proficiency Self-rating, Portfolio of Work, Predisposition Self-assessment, Where Do I Stand, and Practitioner Frustrations, updated after periodic checks), Mastery Development Plan (updated as your self-assessments evolve), and Mastery Journal (a running, informally structured record of questions, insights, challenges, and accomplishments).
HITA Criteria is a personal listing of the conditions you use to indicate when an opportunity to advise leaders appears to match your standard for a successful HITA engagement. It's meant to evolve. As you take on more endeavors and learn more about what HITA work actually demands of you and what you are capable of, your Criteria will likely shift to reflect that. This isn't a one-time exercise, it's a work in progress you come back to on an ongoing basis.
Self-assessments are tools you were first exposed to during ATA. These give you a periodic check on where you stand as far as progress on the mastery path. They aren't once-and-done evaluations completed during the program and then filed away. They're documents for capturing the current status of your ongoing HITA capability building, meant to be revisited.
Readiness Summary walks through each core element covered in ATA (e.g. Contracting, Provocateur, Sovereignty, etc.) and has you rate how prepared (able and willing) you are to perform in that area. Revisited over time, it gives you a granular, element-by-element picture of where your readiness is solid and where it still needs work.
Proficiency Self-rating has you assess yourself, on a 1–5 scale, across the mindset and behavior patterns that make up HITA competence. Because proficiency isn't fixed (it can atrophy from nonuse or strengthen through application), it's meant to be revisited periodically so you can shore up weak spots and reinforce strengths as they shift.
Portfolio of Work asks you to specify your current and desired mix of Solid Performer versus HITA engagements. Mapping your current mix against where you'd like it to be surfaces the gap between the work you're doing and the work you aspire to be capable of.
Predisposition Self-Assessment helps you determine if you have a natural penchant for the mindsets and behaviors needed for successful HITA work. Unlike the Proficiency Self-rating, which measures skill that can be built through deliberate practice, this assessment looks at inclination — the tendencies you bring into a room before any training kicks in, such as comfort with conflict, tolerance for ambiguity, or willingness to risk the relationship in service of the truth. Understanding your predispositions helps you tell the difference between areas where you're fighting your own grain and areas where growth will come relatively easily.
Practitioner Frustrations has you identify which of 23 common advisory frustrations you relate to, organized around themes like feeling misperceived, underused, constrained by politics, under-supported, or under-confident. Rather than a one-time venting exercise, it's meant to be revisited from time to time to see which frustrations persist, which ease as your capability grows, and which point to gaps your Mastery Development Plan should address.
Mastery Development Plan is informed by your self-assessments and should be updated periodically to reflect them. This is where you keep the current draft of your plan and track how it's evolving, rather than treating the version you wrote during the ATA program as final.
Mastery Journal is the running record of your personal HITA-related questions, insights, challenges, accomplishments, learning mistakes, and aspirations. It's the least structured of the four, and that's intentional. Some entries will be a single line. Others will be a deep reflection on something that happened in an engagement or in an exchange with a peer practitioner. Over time, this is where you'll see the overall arc of your own development, not just a sequence of disconnected moments.
Community
Community connects you to the HITA Collective, a space for ATA graduates to stay sharp together, if and when you want this kind of affiliation. The Collective is built around three things: Working as a HITA (application-focused, bringing real situations to each other), Growing as a HITA (mastery-focused, going deeper into character and presence), and Contributing to HITA practice (extending what the field knows).
Beyond the Collective, this feature also holds a place for capturing peer reflections and a directory of HITA practitioners on the mastery path, whether they're part of the Collective or not.
Using Platform Features Together
Every feature stands on its own — but used together, they can turn a single question into a much richer line of work. See how features connect →
Getting Help When You Need It
You have five channels for advisory support, from immediate 1:1 guidance to slower, group-based input, plus a place to turn for help with the platform itself.
To begin engaging with any of the features (Core or Optional), go to My Workspace