Organizational Leadership Assessment

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  by Mike Hawkins

    mike@alpinelink.com 

The term leadership represents many ideas. In some contexts, leadership refers to position, e.g. “the senior leadership team.” In others, it refers to those who are at the peak of their profession, e.g. “she is the leading performer on the team.” In still others, leadership refers to characteristics that drive positive influence and results. It is this latter context that is most meaningful to overall organizational performance. It is also the least understood and most inconsistently applied.

In defense of this misunderstanding, characteristics that drive positive influence and peak organizational performance vary from organization to organization. There is not one universal standard. An organization that relies on frequent product innovations would value the leadership competency of creating a climate of creativity more than an organization that relies on being a low cost provider which would more likely value the leadership competency of operating an efficient organization.

Further compounding the difficulty in understanding, not only do leadership characteristics vary, most are intangible. Characteristics of influence by definition are indirect. Performance improvements are often the ripple effect of someone else’s influence. If you do or say something that motivates your employees to take more responsibility for the quality of their work, the resulting improvement in work quality is theirs. Characteristics of influence that result in higher employee engagement, a stronger work ethic, more responsible empowerment and a deeper sense of ownership for results are extremely valuable, but difficult to objectively measure.

The question then becomes how to best measure leadership. Some would rightly suggest than an organization’s culture, attitude, values and energy level give insight to the quality of leadership. However, cultures, attitudes, values and energy are means to an end, not ends in themselves. The same can be said for leadership. Leadership is not the objective but the means to an objective. The objective for example being improved business performance. Therefore, if you want to most accurately assess the quality of your organization’s collective leadership competency, the best measure is business performance over which the organization has control.

Following are twenty-one high-impact business performance metrics on which strong leadership depends and on which organizational leadership competency can be clearly assessed.

Alpine Link Leadership Test:

____ Sales: % of qualified sales/business opportunities unengaged or lost

____ Customers: % of customers dissatisfied

____ Expenses: % of costs and expenses not directly adding value to the organization or its mission

____ Communication: % of communications lacking clarity, accuracy, relevancy and timeliness

____ Meetings: % of time spent in meetings that waste time and resource

____ Employee Strengths: % of employee’s strengths not leveraged

____ Teamwork: % of employee’s energy focused on the “me” at the expense of “we” (or the % of team cooperation and synergy not leveraged)

____ Best Practices: % of repeatable best practices and good ideas not being leveraged or shared between applicable employees

____ Partners: % of partners and 3rd parties whose talents and capabilities are materially underutilized

____ Value Add: % of employee’s time not directly contributing value to the organization

____ Employee Productivity: % of employee’s time adding value, but not optimally

____ Employee Morale: % of employees with low morale, low engagement, attitudes of entitlement and sub-optimal work ethic

____ Employee Turnover: % of undesired turnover (or % of the cost of recruiting/training allocated to back-filling employees)

____ Employee Promotion: % of managers brought in from outside versus those from internal promotions

____ Talent: % of personnel employed not considered “A” players

____ Quality: % of costs due to preventable mistakes, quality control issues, scrap and other failures to meet specified standards

____ Processes and Systems: % of processes, systems and incentives considered below the optimal levels needed to support the needs of the organization

____ Values: % of company issues and costs related to employee conflict, lawsuits, fraud, ethics violations, audits and dishonesty that could have been avoided had organizational values been followed

____ Project Management: % of projects completed behind schedule, over budget or not to required specifications

____ Employee Development: % of managers not actively training, teaching, coaching, guiding and leading their employees and instead merely managing or individually contributing

____ Decision Making Quality: % of decisions which were made poorly (or not made at all) and resulted in sub-optimum products, strategies, personnel moves, operational execution, etc.

Put your organization to the Alpine Link Leadership Test. Decide what percentages are acceptable for your organization. By rough measure, any percentage over 15% should raise concern. Any measures over 30% should raise serious concerns!

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