Interpret data on the leadership curve

Learning Outcomes:

How to interpret data on the leadership curve
How to identify activities for focus
Create your backlog

On each leadership curve you will see 3 maturity scores and a series of activities listed along the leadership curve:

An overall score for the business or function
A skills score
A system score

The total score is a benchmark of maturity tracked on the leadership curve.

Activities are listed starting at least mature at the bottom of the curve and progress up to most mature at the top of the curve. These are the activities an organisation masters on its way to leadership. So the best way to work with the leadership curve is to start at the bottom and work up.

Skills activities (human competency and knowledge) are listed on the upper side of the curve, systems activities (technology and process capability) on the lower side of the curve.

Lets look at Vision.

Activities at the bottom of the curve represent the fundamentals for the function of business, in this case vision. In most cases, as you build clarity and maturity within the business, activities at the bottom of the curve will become second nature and your focus will shift to activities further up the curve. In the case of Vision, the activity of problem-solving comes before clarity of purpose and value creation.

Identify activities for focus

Its easy to identify activities for focus on the leadership curve. Green is good, yellow is ok, orange needs attention and red is bad. Isolate activities to be addressed by unchecking the green and yellow Activity Score checkboxes.

In the example below, you can see the business needs to address customer-centricity.

However, there will be times when the activities for focus are not so cut and dry. In the following image you can see Customer Clarity is the weakest activity moving upwards from the bottom of the curve. However, there are 2 activities below customer clarity that directly relate, Customer Research, and Ideal Customer.

Both of these activities appear as yellow, so you could think, they're ok. But is this correct?

Why is the team not clear on Customer Clarity? Is the research component not understood or incorrect? Has the Ideal Customer been defined correctly? Perhaps both are ok but there has been a communication breakdown that has led to the team not having Customer Clarity.

When answering the 7 Questions, and interpreting the data on the leadership curves, be careful not to fall into a 2 dimensional trap.

Where related activities exist but the results do not correlate, ask the question why? Bring in the expert to provide context. In this case, the Head of Marketing may be able to communicate the information clearly, or even take away an action item to clearly communicate the information to the broader business.

Build a backlog

To quickly raise a goal to address customer centricity and move on to the next function, click the quick action goal button in the top right of the screen, add a clear title and description, hit save.

There you have it. You should now have the beginnings of an understanding of how to interpret data from the diagnostic. Use the leadership curves to identify activities for focus, and create goals in backlog that address the activity.