For CEOs and COOs at 50 to 500 person companies
One scorecard your whole leadership team owns together.
Your function leads stop running their own private dashboards. Primer is the operating scorecard the mid-market CEO and the COO have been hand-rolling in spreadsheets — built once, deployed on your own server, owned by your company for a one-time $5,000. No SaaS subscription. No per-seat fees.
Composite Score
↑0.2 prev. cycle
The ceiling of command-and-control
Telling people what to do only gets you so far
Set targets. Assign KPIs. Tie compensation to outcomes. This is extrinsic motivation - and it has a hard ceiling. Your people will work just hard enough to hit the number and avoid consequences. They won't internalize the goals. They won't innovate around them. They won't own them. Fifty years of research confirms this: extrinsic systems produce compliance, not commitment.
Intrinsic motivation, structured
Intrinsic motivation doesn't mean letting people do whatever they want
It means enforcing your organizational goals AND having your people define their own goals within that structure. Every goal in Primer serves one of three functions:
Predict
Leading indicators
Leading indicators that forecast future performance. Your teams define the metrics they believe will drive outcomes - giving them ownership over the 'how' while you retain control of the 'what.'
Intrinsic motivation explains 45% of the variance in work behaviors
Meta-analysis, 124 studies
Report
Lagging indicators
Lagging indicators that demonstrate results. Revenue, retention, delivery timelines - the metrics executives and board members need to see. These aren't optional. They're structural.
Only 21% of employees worldwide are engaged at work
Gallup, 2025
Comply
Mandated requirements
Regulatory, legal, and board mandates that must be met. Safety certifications, audit requirements, executive directives - non-negotiable goals that exist regardless of individual motivation.
Employees in goal-setting are 2× as likely to have clear expectations
Gallup / ThriveSparrow
"The difference: your people chose how to define success within these constraints. That's what transforms compliance into commitment."
The platform
The operating cadence finally has tooling that matches it instead of fighting it
Composite tier scores roll up across functions automatically — no more spreadsheet consolidation by a chief of staff. Cascading metrics make cross-functional dependencies explicit before they become fires. Mid-cycle changes leave a paper trail. Goals cannot quietly drift. Sales, product, and ops show up to leadership meetings with the same numbers, in the same five-tier language, on the same cadence.
Autonomy through ownership
Employees define their own thresholds for every metric - what Alarm, Concern, Content, Effective, and Optimized look like in their function. They assign weights to reflect their strategic priorities. The result: goals they own, not goals imposed on them.
Employees with autonomy report 50% more engagement
Self-Determination Theory - Deci & Ryan
Mastery through visibility
The five-tier scale creates a clear progression path. Employees can see exactly where they stand, what the next level looks like, and how their weighted composite score evolves over time. Progress becomes visible and meaningful.
Progress in meaningful work is the #1 driver of engagement
Harvard Business School
Purpose through alignment
Colleagues at the same level see each other's goals and priorities - what matters to each function and how it's weighted. They don't see each other's scores or tier placement. The aim is alignment across functions, not collective performance assessment.
High-engagement orgs see 41% less absenteeism and 21% higher profitability
Gallup Workplace Research
Structured inquiry keeps it honest
Employees can challenge their own metrics or a peer's metric through a formal inquiry process. No backchannels, no politics - transparent accountability that keeps goals current and aligned.
People don't buy what you do - they buy why you do it
Daniel Pink, Drive
What the researchers say
The people who proved it
"Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement."
Daniel Pink
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
"Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work."
Teresa Amabile
The Progress Principle, Harvard Business School
"When people are acknowledged for their work, they are willing to work harder for less pay. When they are not, motivation collapses - even when the pay stays the same."
Dan Ariely
Predictably Irrational, Duke University
Your infrastructure, your data
One payment. Owned by your company. Forever.
$5,000 once, paid from the operations budget without needing a multi-year SaaS line item. Complete source code. Deploy on your own infrastructure. No subscriptions, seat fees, or renewals. DavidPM never sees, hosts, or has access to your data.
$5,000
$5,000 perpetual license
Plus any applicable taxes or fees.
- Complete source code
- Deploy on your infrastructure
- Modify however you want
- Have it forever