Are Leadership Gaps Threatening Your Strategy?

Are Leadership Gaps Threatening Your Strategy?
There are moments when organizations hit a wall not because the strategy is flawed, but because the leadership bench isn’t strong or aligned enough to carry it forward. When the leadership team lacks cohesion or the right mix of capabilities, even well-designed plans struggle to gain traction. Strategy execution slows, decisions lose clarity, and the organization drifts away from the very strategic priorities it set out to achieve.

If you’re operating with too few leaders, or with leaders whose skills no longer match the demands of the work, the risk to strategic success grows quickly. Misalignment compounds the problem — when leaders interpret goals differently or pull in competing directions, the strategy suffers long before the results do. In these environments, performance shortfalls are inevitable.

Ensuring your strategy has a fighting chance requires an honest look at whether your leadership capacity reflects the complexity and pace of your ambition. Without that alignment, even the strongest plans are poised to fall short.

Research Related to Leadership Gaps Threatening Your Strategy

• The Corporate Leadership Council found that companies with high leadership quality outperform their peers by up to 37% in revenue growth.
• A longitudinal study published in The Leadership Quarterly demonstrated that strategic alignment among senior leaders is a significant predictor of organizational performance over time.

Have Enough of the Right Leaders First
Before you chase ambitious goals, make sure the leadership foundation is solid. Think of it this way: even the best strategy can’t succeed if the people responsible for executing it aren’t ready, aligned, and capable. Strong leaders in the right roles are essential for defining priorities, making tough decisions, and driving results.

The more complex or innovative your strategy, the greater the demand for capable leaders across all levels — particularly on the Executive Team. Identifying leadership gaps threatening your strategy early and taking decisive action to fill them is critical to turning strategy into reality.

Once your strategy is clear enough and strategically believable enough, ensure you have the resources to bring it to life by:

1. Predicting Where Leadership Is Needed Most
   New strategies often demand leaders with fresh skills, deeper expertise, and a mindset aligned to the challenges ahead. And by leaders, we don’t mean just those with formal titles — we mean anyone across the organization whose role is critical to driving performance.

   Our leadership simulation assessments consistently show that ambitious strategies succeed only when bold leaders operate at multiple levels, take ownership of challenging goals, and build high performing teams.

   Have you mapped where the right leaders will have the greatest impact over the next three to five years? Identifying these roles early allows you to focus leadership development, recruitment, and succession efforts where they matter most.

2. Putting the Right Leaders in the Right Positions
   Success depends on having the right leaders in the right positions at the right time — especially where your most critical strategic initiatives are on the line. The highest-impact leaders don’t just manage day-to-day operations; they make the big strategic choices and fundamental leadership decisions that determine whether the organization thrives or stalls.

   Stretching your current leadership too thin not only increases execution risk but also prevents your top talent from delivering at their full potential.

   Do you have a talent management strategy in place to ensure the right leaders occupy the roles that matter most?

The Bottom Line
Leadership gaps rarely resolve themselves. If you want your strategy to take hold, ensure your leaders — in terms of quality, quantity, and motivation — are fully aligned with what the business is trying to achieve.

To learn more about how to close leadership skill gaps, download The Top Research-Backed Skills for High Performing Leaders