Your Distributed Leadership Score

Your Distributed Leadership Score

Understanding Your Results

Understanding Your Results

Four practices of distributed leadership

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Autonomy

What This Measures

This measures how much freedom and ownership people have to make decisions, take initiative, and manage their own work. High autonomy empowers people to act like entrepreneurs, trying new things and taking prudent risks to improve products and services without waiting for direction from above.

Ways to Strengthen Autonomy

Create "safe-to-fail" experiments where teams can test new approaches with minimal risk.
Establish clear decision rights that specify what teams can decide on their own, such as controlling their own budgets without needing management approval.
Replace detailed process manuals with principle-based guidelines and simple rules that allow for wise judgment.
Implement regular training in foundational business skills (e.g., financial literacy, design thinking) so people can make good independent decisions.
Celebrate intelligent failures by having people readily share what they've learned so the organization can improve.
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Alignment

What This Measures

This measures whether everyone understands the organization's purpose and priorities, feels accountable for results, and operates within clear boundaries. Strong alignment ensures that increased autonomy doesn't lead to chaos, but instead focuses collective effort on an ambitious mission.

Ways to Strengthen Alignment

Involve teams in strategy development throughout the year, rather than just communicating the final plan.
Replace abstract KPIs with metrics that assess performance based on tangible customer impact.
Create simple "guardrails" or 'do this, not that' principles that help teams make choices consistent with strategy.
Establish transparent performance dashboards that are accessible and understandable to everyone in a given unit.
Ensure a majority of employees have real "skin in the game" through bonuses, profit sharing, or other compensation that rewards good performance.
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Sensing

What This Measures

This measures how well the organization stays connected to external realities, shares information across boundaries, and maintains awareness of changes in the environment. Strong sensing capabilities prevent distributed teams from becoming insular by encouraging an "outside-in perspective".

Ways to Strengthen Sensing

Create regular sessions where teams share external insights, such as benchmarking against organizations both inside and outside the industry.
Flatten reporting structures to reduce the layers of approval and push decision-making down to the people closest to the work.
Establish cross-functional communities or teams to ensure people can easily access information and expertise across silos.
Implement customer journey mapping exercises that involve collecting stories, observations, and data to improve how customers are served.
Set up systematic processes for capturing and sharing knowledge and innovations from one part of the organization with other areas where they might be valuable.
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Mobilizing

What This Measures

This measures how quickly and flexibly the organization can form teams, allocate resources, and respond to opportunities or challenges. High mobilizing capability means the organization's structure is adaptable, allowing roles and teams to shift easily to meet new challenges and opportunities.

Ways to Strengthen Mobilizing

Create "tiger teams" or allow employees to spontaneously "swarm" problems or opportunities without waiting for management direction.
Establish innovation funds that internal innovators can access through simple approval processes without excessive bureaucracy.
Design roles and teams to be flexible, allowing them to shift to meet the needs of the moment.
Implement regular reviews to ensure resources like people and funding move fluidly with business needs, and reallocate them from underperforming initiatives.
Build a "culture of helpfulness" where managers are expected to be mentors and colleagues support promising initiatives regardless of title or position.
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Your Distributed Leadership Score
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