The Leadership Lens: A predictive model for optimal organizational performance

The components of the Leadership Lens

To really understand how a leadership team and an organization can succeed, you need to build a perspective — or lens — on individual and collective leadership characteristics. To do this, you can use the context of organizational goals and culture.

From there, you need to look at three main areas:

1. Individual skills: Assessing individual team member competencies and comparing them to the competencies of successful leaders.
2. Team strengths and weaknesses: Developing a profile of the collective strengths and potential gaps in the overall leadership team’s profile.
3. Risks: Identifying the risks associated with the team’s capacity to execute strategy effectively and foster a productive culture.

To get a clearer picture, you need to explore your organization’s strategy, culture, and leadership by seeking answers to the following questions:

Evaluating strategy

• How clear is the strategy, and how well is it understood across all levels of the organization?
• Is the strategy up to date and aligned with current market dynamics and organizational goals? Does it take into consideration disruptive trends like AI, climate change, workforce changes and more?
• Are mechanisms in place to measure the effectiveness and progress of the strategy over time?

Assessing culture

• Do the organization’s values drive desired behaviours and decisions? How is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) considered in these?
• Are these values consistently applied across different departments and levels within your organization?
• What barriers hinder your organization from fully living its stated values?

Analyzing leadership

• Do your leaders possess the necessary attributes and skills to successfully implement the strategy? (Psychometric tests like SuccessFinder can be applied to build solid benchmark data.)
• Are leaders getting the support they need to achieve peak performance? Are there mechanisms in place to support their ongoing development?
• Do the members of the leadership team effectively complement each other's strengths and compensate for each other's weaknesses?

Enhance your strategic agility through leadership

Successful companies are characterized not only by having solid strategies, but also by having put in place effective, aligned leaders and cultures that promote successful implementation of their strategies. This leadership lens investigates the connection between an organization's strategy and cultural traits, and those of its leadership team, in relation to overall executional risk.

The leadership lens will help shed light on whether the organization as it exists today is well positioned to achieve its desired performance, and whether it will have the strategic agility necessary to address the challenges of tomorrow.

You don’t have to navigate this alone. An external advisor, like our team at MNP, can offer a fresh, unbiased perspective on your organization’s leadership dynamics. We can help you critically evaluate the alignment between strategy, culture, and leadership, so your organization is well-positioned for sustainable success.

Contact us

To learn more, reach out to Kevin Joy, MBA, B.Eng., Partner, Consulting.