The TOTE frame
- Test: compare current state against criterion ("does this feel right?")
- Operate: do something — gather info, adjust, try again
- Test again, and either Exit satisfied or loop
- Strategies are written in representational-system shorthand: Ve → Ai,d → Ki → exit ("look at it, talk it through, check the feeling, decide")
What strategies explain
Why two people with the same information decide differently (different sequences and criteria), why some learners need diagrams first and others dialogue first, why "just do it" fails for someone whose strategy requires three internal checks before action. Sales teams use strategy elicitation to match how their buyer actually buys — see the sales pages.
Elicitation and modelling
You elicit a strategy by asking someone to repeat a decision slowly while you track eye movements, predicates and sequence: "what was the first thing that had to be there before you said yes?" This is modelling at micro scale — the same discipline NLP was built on, and the core of the modelling project in Spirit of NLP.