Creating the conditions for success: A key link in delivering business impact

Picture this.

A company with a talented leadership team struggles to deliver the desired business impact despite their best efforts. Solid strategies are in place, resources are available, yet performance does not deliver the desired results. Why?

The missing link often isn’t a lack of effort - it’s about ensuring the optimal environment exists, which is about ensuring the right conditions for success are in place, so that teams can deliver the desired level of performance.

As a key part of LIW’s Leadership Impact Chain approach, when leaders understand the conditions they need to create for their teams to deliver the desired performance and ultimately business impact, organisations and their leaders are better equipped to deliver long-term success.

What is the Leadership Impact Chain?

The Leadership Impact Chain framework helps to ensure that leadership and its development and practice isn’t just theory, but is directly linked to practical business outcomes, leading to desired business results and long-term success. It also helps identify and address any breaks in the chain quickly. The approach identifies four key links in the chain:

Business impact: Defining the business results you want to achieve
Performance: Understanding the performance needed from the leader’s team to reach those results
Creating the conditions for success: Ensuring leaders create the optimal environment for their team to deliver the desired level of performance
Leadership behaviours: Defining the specific leadership behaviours necessary to foster the right environment

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These elements are interconnected and must work together to achieve meaningful results.

Having defined the desired business impact and the specific levels of performance that are required to deliver that, it is then important to create the specific conditions for success that will enable the desired level of performance.

Exploring the Conditions For Success

When considering what the optimal environment needs to be, it can feel overwhelming and daunting to think of all the factors that could impact on the team’s environment. To simplify the task for leaders, LIW consolidate the factors into the Conditions For Success, the 3C’s, Clarity, Climate and Competence.

1. Clarity

Clarity is about the Vision, Purpose, Measures, Strategy, Roles and Measures. Without clarity, teams will not only find it difficult to deliver the desired level of performance, but it can also lead to frustration and a reduction in the levels of trust.

Clarity is also about more than just sharing information - it’s about ensuring mutual understanding.

Clarity isn’t just the leader’s responsibility. Creating a democratic environment where everyone works together to develop, understand and build clarity together can develop thinking, build accountability and help ensure alignment.

2. Climate

The conditions associated with the Climate include elements like systems, processes, physical resources, and structures. These are the tools and frameworks teams use to achieve their goals. In addition, it includes relational and cultural aspects including trust, relationships, and organisational culture. By that, we mean it’s about how people experience and interact with the systems and processes in place.

The climate significantly affects how teams work together and how effectively they can use processes and resources. For instance:

High-trust cultures foster autonomy and effective decision-making
Low-trust environments can create barriers, even when processes are well-designed

When problems arise, companies often focus on tweaking processes, but many issues stem from behaviour or culture. For instance, if employees don’t fully use a system, the root cause might be cultural habits rather than flaws in the system itself.

Let’s say a hospital implements a new electronic record system to centralise patient records and simplify scheduling tasks. The system is robust, and staff receive comprehensive training sessions.

Despite this, adoption rates remain low.

In a high-trust climate, where staff feel confident in leadership and value open communication, hospital leadership might approach the issue collaboratively. By collecting feedback through team meetings and focus groups, they might identify real concerns about compatibility with existing tech and data protection.

Working with staff to address these issues builds trust and encourages adoption, helping staff feel valued and recognise the system's benefits in reducing duplication.

In a low-trust workplace, staff might view new software as an unnecessary headache handed down by out-of-touch leaders. Instead of embracing it, they stick to old habits, like using paper systems or patchwork communication, even if the software is more efficient.

If workarounds are the norm and leadership doesn’t address trust issues, no amount of training or updates will fix adoption. It’s like trying to patch a sinking boat without plugging the hole.

3. Competence

Competence consists of elements of both skills and knowledge and also mindset and behaviour, recognising that these elements are crucial for performance, ensuring that the team have the right level of each to deliver the desired performance.

Across all the factors you may notice a balance in each of the 3Cs between elements that are more "doing" (i.e. tasks, actions) and "being" (i.e. exploring understanding, appreciating mindset). This recognises that over recent years our understanding of the importance of things like psychological safety and psychosocial hazards has grown, and the implications for leaders, to ensure they are considering both in the conditions they create, is clear.

Aligning the conditions for success to the desired level of performance

To deliver impact, the environment and the associated conditions that create it need to be aligned to the desired level of performance, otherwise it becomes just generic. Generic conditions might include “leaders should be transparent” or “employees need clear communication.” While these are important, they’re too fuzzy to guide effective action.

Using the Leadership Impact Chain framework helps ensure that conditions are directly linked to impact and performance. This provides clear direction, making it easier for teams to align, measure progress, and focus on practical actions.

This shift from general to specific is crucial for leaders to understand specifically what behaviours are expected of them in order that they can create the right conditions for their team to deliver the desired performance.

Imagine you’re trying to cook the perfect meal. If the conditions are too vague, like simply saying, "I need to make a good dinner," you’re left guessing what steps to take. But if someone gives you the specific recipe, with a full ingredient list and method, you can measure each step and know exactly when the dish is ready.

The same principle applies to leadership.

Designing and delivering effective leadership development

Did you know that just 10% of CEOs believe their company's leadership development initiatives have a clear business impact?

Why is this?

In part, we observe that this is because often leadership development programs focus on improving behaviours, without appreciating the elements that lie between behaviours and impact. The Leadership Impact Chain can help!

When the elements of the chain (including the conditions for success) work together and are incorporated in the design, tangible business impact can be achieved. And that’s exactly what Cisco experienced.

By investing in leadership through our Leadership Breakthrough program, it helped leaders understand the conditions for success so they could create the right environment to drive transformation through their teams. The program aligned teams with strategic goals, improved performance by 30%, and enhanced communication and collaboration.

Put simply, when performance and the conditions for success are aligned, they create a powerful engine for business success. It’s not just about setting the right targets but ensuring the environment and support are in place to achieve them. When leaders actively manage and adjust both, they create a sustainable path for growth and impact.

Challenges in creating the conditions for success

Putting the right conditions in place isn’t always straightforward. Leaders can face a few common challenges when trying to create the ideal conditions for their teams:

Resistance to change. Some leaders face resistance when trying to shift the environment. Employees and teams can resist change, especially if the current conditions are considered “good enough” or there’s fear of the unknown. This can make it difficult to implement the right conditions for success.
Limited resources. Creating the right conditions might be challenging due to insufficient time, money, or resources. For example, a company may want to implement new machinery or upgrade its technology, but budget constraints might make those changes challenging.
Unclear roles and responsibilities: There may be confusion about who is responsible for what. If individuals or teams don’t have clearly defined roles, it can cause conflict, frustration and affect morale, making it harder to build a supportive environment.

To address challenges, leaders should involve team members. When individuals are engaged in discussions, they feel more ownership and responsibility for creating the right environment, which can reduce resistance to change.

Next, leaders must be transparent and help everyone see the bigger picture. This will make it easier to get buy-in. Employees may disengage if they don’t understand why certain things are put in place or how they link to performance.

Finally, leaders need to foster a culture of continuous improvement. This means checking in regularly, spotting problems, and changing to keep everyone on track. By staying open to feedback and quickly adjusting, leaders can ensure that everything stays on course.

Set your leaders up for success with LIW

Leadership isn’t just about goals and targets - it's about shaping a culture that values collaboration and growth. Leaders who understand the importance of creating the right conditions are better equipped to drive performance and make a real impact.

LIW partner with clients to design leadership development that is tailored to each organisation's unique context and delivering their desired business outcomes.

Because we know no two organisations are alike, our leadership development is customised to fit your organisation’s unique goals. Instead of offering off-the-shelf, generic solutions, we create bespoke programs that address your challenges and culture for meaningful leadership development.

But don’t take our word for it. Kate Simpson, Managing Director of Merck ANZ, says,

“The change in the business and the CLT is remarkable. In a short period of time, we have set a clear and compelling vision for the business, defined strategic objectives for which we all feel accountable… We have the right team leading the business now with energy, authenticity and confidence in their ability to deliver results.”

If you want to know more about our frameworks and how we help leaders and teams create the right conditions for success, contact us to find out more

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