The kill session was the only afternoon our CFO and head of R&D have agreed on anything this year.
Tom H. · Adelaide · Mandate Studio, 2025
Flagship · 10 weeks
Innovation Mandate Studio
A working room for people who already hold budget. You will not leave with a mural. You will leave with a mandate the finance committee can interrogate.
What you walk away with
- A one-page innovation mandate with owners, cash envelope, and kill criteria
- A retired-list of work that will not be funded this cycle
- A 90-day inspection cadence a non-specialist director can run
- Language that survives translation from the studio into payroll and procurement
Informational fee
AUD 6,400 per seated operator, or AUD 18,900 for a three-person executive cluster. GST as applicable. This page does not take payment. Invoices are issued after a fit conversation.
Modules
- 01
Inventory without flattery
Every live ‘innovation’ item is listed with cash, calendar, and a named owner. Orphan projects are marked as such.
- 02
Constraint map
Capital, capability, regulation, and family or shareholder appetite. Australian distance and thin specialist labour are treated as first-class constraints.
- 03
Bet grammar
Each candidate is rewritten as a hypothesis with a stop rule. Adjectives are stripped until a number remains.
- 04
The kill session
A facilitated afternoon where at least one cherished item is retired. If nothing dies, the studio is incomplete.
- 05
Mandate compression
The one-pager is drafted, read aloud, and cut until it fits twelve minutes.
- 06
Inspection design
A board or ELT rhythm that does not depend on Fileflowbase remaining in the room.
Studio lead
Maren Quayle
Maren spent fourteen years inside industrial and public-sector transformation groups before opening Fileflowbase in Tickera. She teaches the Mandate Studio because she has sat on both sides of a starved innovation line-item. She does not coach pitch theatre.
From seated operators
The pre-work ate two Sundays. If your diary is theatre already, do not enrol and hope Maren will compress it for you.
Anonymous, energy services
Questions we hear
Can a single manager attend without the CEO?
Yes, but the mandate will stall if the person who controls cash never sits in the kill session. We say this before you pay a deposit.
Is this a certificate programme?
No. You receive a working artefact, not a badge. If you need a certificate for HR software, this is the wrong room.
What is the real limitation?
The Studio will not rescue a firm whose board has already decided that ‘innovation’ means a rebrand. We have ended two engagements early when that became obvious. Fees for unused weeks were returned under the refund policy; the relationship was not.
Remote or in person?
Hybrid. Two sessions are in person in South Australia or a city we agree in writing. The rest can be remote.