The Leadership Audit.

Every serious firm audits its strategy. Almost none audits the way its most senior people lead. If how your leadership leads is a commercial variable, it deserves what every other commercial variable gets: examination. Here are the five questions. They cost nothing but honesty.

One. Ask each member of your executive team, separately: what is the firm trying to do, and why will it work? In a strong leadership the answers differ in vocabulary and agree in substance. In most, they differ in substance. The organisation triangulates between the versions and concludes, correctly, that the centre has not decided.

Two. After your last company-wide address, what did the firm do differently on the Monday? If you cannot name it, the address was information. Information is what leadership sounds like when only the content was prepared.

Three. Take your next high-consequence room: the board, the investor call, the negotiation. What is the question underneath the agenda? It is rarely the stated item. It is usually whether you can carry it. Ask which of the two you are preparing for.

Four. Count the rooms in your week where you think aloud, and the rooms where you perform. If the first number is zero, your best thinking is happening in the car afterwards, and the highest-stakes decisions in the business are receiving the least examination.

Five. Who tells you the truth about how you lead, and what does it cost them to do it? The more senior the role, the fewer such people remain, at exactly the moment the decisions become largest. That is not a personal failing; it is the architecture of seniority. It is also a commercial risk, because it means the biggest calls are the least tested ones.

Run those five questions and you will know more about your leadership as a commercial instrument than most firms ever learn. Then decide what the results are worth to you.

From The Edge Nobody Audits, Communiqué No. 1. If one of the five unsettled you, that is usually the place to begin: nicolette@marcus-wolf.com.