A Question I Ask Every Leadership Team

Early in any engagement, I ask the leadership team a question.

"If a talented, motivated new employee joined your organisation tomorrow, what experience would they have in their first three months?"

Would they understand where the business is going and why? Would they know what's expected of them? Would they feel like they'd joined a team — or a collection of individuals each focused on their own part of the organisation? Would they see the leadership team modelling the behaviours they say matter?

The answers are revealing. Not because they expose a failing. But because they force a conversation about the gap between the organisation people intend to build and the one that actually exists today.

Most leaders are so close to the business that they've stopped seeing it as a newcomer would. That outside perspective — fresh, unencumbered, honest — is one of the most useful lenses a leadership team can look through.