This year, we’ve been focusing on uncommon growth – how to unlock, create and execute it. Our latest insights confirmed something we’ve always known: leadership is fundamental to successful, sustainable growth. But the wrong kind of leadership can be disastrous.

Take WeWork, for example. Poor governance and erratic leadership resulted in poor decision-making, ultimately costing the company $1.9 billion in revenue. At the Royal Bank of Scotland, a lack of banking experience and attention to risk led to a balance sheet that ballooned to £2.2 trillion (larger than the GDP of the UK) before collapsing.  

On the flip side, Adobe’s leadership transformation sparked innovation, doubling its stock performance between 2018 and 2021. Shantanu Narayen’s vision and the capabilities of his team led to continuous improvement and growth. Similarly, LEGO’s focus on culture and capabilities turned an $800 million debt into $600 million in profits. Even in sports, the All Blacks’ leadership has driven them to win 75% of their games. 

The takeaway? Leadership impacts an organization’s performance more than anything else. However, most are “teams of leaders” rather than true “leadership teams.” Our research shows that to drive sustainable growth, organizations need cohesive leadership teams, not just individual leaders. After years of working with teams at all levels, we’ve distilled key insights on how to shape effective leadership teams that can sustain growth.

1. Leadership Teams Need Continuous Nurturing and Development 

Leadership teams, like people, are living systems that require constant care. Our annual Catalyst Change research found that successful transformations are built on true collaboration, where enterprise and individual interests are integrated. Effective teams shift from an individual focus to a shared team mindset. Figure 1 illustrates this shift from a “team of leaders” to a “leadership team,” with shared goals and genuine collaboration at its core. 

Figure 1: Moving from a team of leaders to a leadership team 

In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, leadership teams must understand their needs and ensure their mindset, purpose and goals remain aligned with organizational and stakeholder needs. Our research reveals that leadership teams failing to champion collaboration and shared goals risk fragmentation and siloed operations, leading to a 3.5-fold increase in the time it takes for strategic decision-making compared to teams with integrated structures. Gallup research also found that leaders who focus on development and use their strengths effectively are 6x more likely to be engaged, 7.8% more productive and 3x more likely to report a good quality of life. It was with this understanding that we helped the executive team of a 2,000-strong leading agricultural vehicle manufacturer optimize performance by shifting from an “I” mentality to a “we” mentality, driving success through effective teamwork that bridged functional divides and fostering both internal and external growth.  

2. Address All Dimensions of the Human-Centered Leadership Team Effectiveness Model 

Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model (HCTM) is a proven holistic and people-centered approach to driving growth across organizations. The model is built on the idea that organizations reflect the same makeup as a human including the DNA, mind, body and soul. Effective leadership teams need to follow a similar model that not only builds trust and effective ways of working but aligns individual members to a shared enterprise goal. The Human-Centered Leadership Team Effectiveness Model (Figure 2) shows that addressing all dimensions of the human system is essential for empowering effective outcomes.

Figure 2: Prophet’s Human-Centered Leadership Team Effectiveness Model 

Questions that should be asked include:

• DNA: What is our focus and shared ambition that drives the work of our team?​
• Mind: What new skills are required for the team to drive change?​
• Body: What might need to change in our operating model to enable team performance?​  
• Soul: How might we ignite belief in the change to foster trust and productive relationships?​  

As Figure 3 illustrates, if any of these elements from the model are missing, this has a knock-on effect on leadership teams, increasing the risk of falling short on goals due to a lack of commitment, poor focus and low-quality work. 

Figure 3: What happens when part of the leadership system is missing 

3. Sustain Leadership Team Effectiveness Through Actionable Development 

Continuing with the human system analogy, leadership team development requires establishing “healthy rhythms” of working and meeting. Figure 4 shows how these rhythms can propel an existing leadership team towards high performance and effectiveness. 

Figure 4: Actionable approach to leadership team development  

This approach combines both “art and science” to shape team dynamics, capabilities, identity and culture of the leadership team. It involves:  

1. Conducting a leadership team diagnostic to help the team (and other stakeholders) identify opportunities for improvement based on how the team currently functions.   
2. Early alignment of the team’s purpose, ambition and role within the wider organization, so it can provide both clear leadership and staff empowerment by knowing its distinct contribution to success.   
3. Ensuring psychological safety through trust-building workshops. The team narrative and behavior workshops help teams build trust through sharing their whole selves, the meaning they derive from their work and committing to the behaviors to sustain trust.    
4. Prioritizing trust, healthy conflict and accountability to align the team’s success over individual ego. To uncover this a team strengths and priorities workshop helps sets OKRs and leans into the strengths of the leadership team.   
5. Systematically defining ways of working and decision-making processes. In a session around ways of working, the team can shape the purpose of leadership meetings, how decision-making works and define an effective cadence of meetings.   
6. Focusing on both individual and team learning to sustain growth and development. This typically involves team check-ins (potentially with an observer to feedback on process), re-running of the team diagnostic, team and individual coaching and continuation of individual development.  

Leadership teams are the driving force behind an organization’s performance, especially in today’s rapidly changing world. The key challenge lies not just in the competence of individual leaders but in the collective effectiveness of the leadership team. Like individuals, leadership teams require nurturing and careful development. Breaking free from functional silos requires a rhythm that fuses a human-centered approach with both art and science, creating a sustainable and highly effective team.

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We’ve all been there. We start the year with the best of intentions, convinced that this time will be different. However, as life’s demands and our ingrained habits exert their influence, our resolve weakens. Despite multiple attempts to restart, within a few months, we find ourselves reverting to familiar patterns.  

And it’s no different in the workplace – in fact it’s much harder. Beyond the demands of their job, employees must also fight against the pull of the organizational system. A pull that is so strong that eventually most change efforts are pulled back to ‘the way things are done around here’ and ultimately fail. An IMD global study of 500 executives found that only 50% of attempts to change employee behavior are successful. So, in short, change in a busy, complex organization is hard. 

So how do you overcome these powerful forces to successfully change behavior and build new habits? 

We believe that change happens through doing, not talking. Moving from words to action. You can’t just click your fingers and suddenly become more innovative, creative and collaborative. Humans don’t work like that. You must poke a stick into the organizational system and be intentional about creating change.  

The first step in this magical process is to start really, really small. 

Behavior Kickstarters Formula 

Behavior Kickstarters are rapid experiments designed to activate new behaviors and catalyze cultural shifts. Using a mix of behavioral science and experimentation techniques, our Behavior Kickstarters create a safe space for people to experiment with, and ultimately adopt new behaviors and build new habits. They establish the right conditions for people to try, fail, learn and grow. 

While people are wonderfully different and unique, human behavior has followed consistent patterns since the dawn of time. Not only are we programmed to follow the path of least resistance, but our endorphins also encourage us to seek out the things that are satisfying. And we’re social beings, where the pull of the crowd can have a significant impact on our behavior and decisions. In other words, we only change our behavior when it is easy, feels good or when people we admire are doing it.  

Our Behavior Kickstarter formula ensures the right ingredients are present for driving behavior change.  

• Trigger – Make it obvious – Something that signals the need to start, gets your attention and shows the need to take action. 
• Motivation – Make it attractive – Create an image in the mind of the user that makes them want to change. 
• Ability – Make it easy – The easier a behavior is to do, the more likely it is to be done.  
• Reward – Make it satisfying – If it feels good and has a satisfying ending, we’re more likely to repeat it in the future and form a habit. 

While this formula helps us change in the immediate term, we also need to consider how we form new habits to embed the change. This is where experimentation comes in.  
 

Unlocking Organizational Change Through Experimentation  

Experimentation isn’t reserved for labs or innovation teams – it can be a powerful mechanism to drive sustained organizational change. Teams can use it to become more adaptive and to create a safe environment that allows people to try new behaviors and fail, and to apply learnings from their failures to change their approach and try again. Supporting this idea, our Catalysts research, How to Build an Adaptable Organization that Thrives During Uncertainty, identified ‘lowering the cost of experimentation’ as one of the five ways to build an adaptive organization. 

The concept of experimentation is deeply ingrained in all of us. We just don’t apply it in an organizational context. Dave Snowden, founder and chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge, sums it up beautifully, “The engine of all life on this planet has always changed in the same way. We try things, notice positive and negative patterns, amplify what’s working, minimize what isn’t.” Yet, despite being ingrained in us, the number of people who use experimentation is comparatively small. People seem to struggle to apply it to their day-to-day lives, meaning its potential is often left untapped. Michael Schrage, author of The Innovators Dilemma, uses a wonderful model for driving its adoption whilst solving real business challenges. Teams of five, each generate and test a solution to solve one of five challenges, over five weeks. The winning idea receives financial backing to be taken forward. Along with generating great ideas to solve real problems, this approach creates a fun, engaging way to understand the power of experimentation. 

Like Schrage’s method, putting experimentation into practice with our Behavior Kickstarters is simple. We recommend a timeframe  (~2-4 weeks) and at the end of that period, we reflect on how it went, what went well and whether we achieved the desired outcomes – using this data to define what could we do differently next time. Then, if needed, we make changes to the Kickstarter and go again!  

A Kickstarter can take many forms. Ideally, it will be designed so it fits seamlessly into the employee’s day-to-day world – as part of existing meetings or a regular routine, like a morning cup of coffee, for example.  

• Trying to make your teams feel recognized? Thank You Thursday: Every Thursday, send a short thank you note, acknowledging the efforts of an individual or team for that week (for something big or small). 
• Trying to increase psychological safety? Poke Holes in This: Before sharing an idea, ask the team ‘Please poke holes in this’, opening yourself up to helpful feedback and encouraging vulnerability. 
• Trying to increase collaboration? Don’t Rush Into it: At the start of your weekly meeting,  spend five minutes with everyone sharing what they did over the weekend, building relationships outside of just work commitments. 

Prophet’s research tells us that, by targeting the “Soul” of the organization, we can activate and accelerate key transformation levers, such as ‘Developing meaningful mechanisms to enable employees to adapt.’ We mentioned earlier that beating the organizational system is difficult and most organizations don’t have these change mechanisms in place. Behavior Kickstarters do exactly that, equipping employees with a powerful method to grow, adapt and thrive in the ever-changing world we now find ourselves in.  

The crucial part of this comes not in running the Kickstarter, but in equipping your teams with the permission and ability to constantly repeat it over time to embed the new behavior until it becomes a habit. Wendy Wood, author of Good Habits, Bad Habits estimates that we spend 50% of our time unconsciously repeating actions we’ve already taken. By intentionally repeating the Kickstarter, you train your brain by practicing new behaviors and building the pathways needed to create daily habits. For this instance, fake it until you make it – or in behavioral terms, fake it until you become it. 

The idea of ‘fake it until you become it’ is not new, in fact, it is over 2,000 years old. Aristotle believed that people could not simply know, or study, how to be virtuous. To be virtuous, they must practice virtuous actions: first by imitating others who demonstrate virtuous actions and then turning those imitated behaviors into habits by performing them every day. You practice the behavior you want and then one day you turn around and discover you’re not performing the behavior, you’re living it. 

The beauty of this transformational process is its ripple effect, fostering further change not only with individuals but also throughout the broader organization. On an individual level, the success of initiating the first Behavior Kickstarter inspires you to do it again (following our Behavior Kickstarter formula: we only change when it feels good). If you’re trying to get fit, and you feel good after your first 5km run, you might try 7km, or 10km and then maybe eventually a half marathon. At an organizational level, it can quickly become contagious. The stories of others successfully changing their behavior become the currency of change, creating a sense of envy that motivates others to do the same. Just like when we witness a good deed, like someone helping an elderly person with their shopping, we’re far more likely to carry out a good deed ourselves later that day.  

“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision”

James Clear, Author of Atomic Habits 

To fuel a change movement across the organization,  it’s helpful to share stories of how others are running their Behavior Kickstarters to reinforce these successes with recognition and celebration. This inspires others to initiate their own Kickstarter, setting off a chain reaction that swiftly builds into a potent force for change.  

Change shouldn’t be isolated to those with ‘people’ or ‘culture’ in their title, or limited to company offsites and launches for new corporate values. The beauty of Behavior Kickstarters is that they’re accessible to everyone. Facilitating the adoption of new behaviors is a sure-fire way to accelerate change across your organization. 

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The past few years have felt like anything but a game – unless that game is Monopoly and you’re losing to your older sibling after landing on Park Place for the eighth time. In this case, the taunting sibling has more teeth: global pandemics, social reckonings and war. 

All of these factors have shaken people’s sense of safety, identity and trust. And these challenges have required companies in every industry to accelerate transformation—something that’s difficult in an environment where people are exhausted, frustrated and, at times, scared.  

Fortunately, many companies are heeding the call to take care of their people with 90% of employers reporting an increase in investment in mental health programs (come on, the other 10%!) according to Wellable Labs’ “2022 Employee Wellness Industry Trends Report.” 

And while holistic well-being is incredibly important, work itself still lacks the humanity (the human beings in “well-being”) needed to sustain change. But that’s where play comes in. Forgive the pun, but it plays a part in the transformation.  

What is Play and How Does it Tie Into Transformation? 

Prophet’s Change Fitness Model reflects the different starting points for how companies see and address change, ranging from the transactional belief that “change is an obstacle to overcome” to the transformational state of play where transformation can be a sport to be enjoyed. 

You can think of play as “batteries not included.” Because, given the constant nature of change, those who have achieved play can spend less energy overcoming each effort and more time being fueled by it.  

So how do you get to the state of play? Exactly—you play!  

Scientists Meredith Van Vleet and Brooke Feeney define play as: A behavior or activity carried out with the goal of amusement and fun that involves an enthusiastic and in-the-moment attitude or approach, and is highly interactive among play partners or with the activity itself.  

Applying this lens to work clarifies the opportunity–making work that people enjoy, that brings out enthusiasm and deepens connections.  

The skeptic will say, “We don’t have time for play – we have work to do!” But those ahead of the curve see the intrinsic need to link the two. Better play means better work. In fact, in a 2019 study by Brigham Young University, teams that played video games together were 20% more productive than others.  

That’s because play unlocks creativity, helping people tap into new sources of inspiration and ways of thinking—which creates better solutions.  

And, especially at a time when the universe is playing chess with humanity, play creates sustainability and safety, encouraging people to enjoy what they’re doing, so they’ll want to do it more. And it deepens skill building, encouraging trial and growth in new ways. Checkmate. 

Of course, play is easier said than done and toxic environments will reject it. People can’t experiment if they believe their job or reputation is at risk. They won’t be themselves if they don’t like the people they’re working with. And they won’t prioritize play if they’re getting mixed or conflicting signals from leadership.  

Play shouldn’t be isolated to an innovation team, a single brainstorm, an occasional company outing nor the funniest person in the room. Play needs to take place across all levels and contexts – across a company’s culture, teams and individuals. Each reinforces the other with a company’s culture making it easier for teams to be able to play, and individuals bringing their whole selves to both innovation and the everyday.    

How to Create a Culture of Play Within Your Organization  

So how might you best implement a culture of play? We couldn’t not use the SMILE acronym, could we?  

Safe 

No one wants to play “the floor is lava” with actual lava. People need to feel safe in their environment. That means feeling confident that they can make mistakes and learn from them, not be punished by them.  

According to Peter Temes, founder and president of the Institute for Innovation in Large Organizations (ILO), “that hasn’t changed since we began this work 15 years ago, and probably hasn’t changed from decades prior to that—this idea of lowering the cost of failure.”  

Leaders can create safety by modeling and being transparent about failures and growth opportunities. Most importantly, leaders’ actions must speak louder than words – when individuals fail, they need to celebrate those learnings, not focus on the implications. 

Leaders can also help create a sense of safety through joy and levity in the workplace. Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, authors of “Humor, Seriously,” have shown that companies that embedded humor in their culture had employees who were 16% more likely to stay at their jobs feel engaged and experience satisfaction.  

Meaningful 

By nature, games have stakes and meaning – it’s what makes them exciting and, as defined above, creates the enthusiasm that creates play. Giving meaning to play can take many forms.  

One way is through reinforcing an organization’s purpose, helping people see why their work matters. Some companies create meaning through competition – whether individual incentives, team challenges or by focusing on external competition.  

One company created an internal fantasy league, resulting in an 18% increase in outbound calls and an increase in morale. Making play meaningful like this can be a great cause for celebration and recognition as well—reminding people about why they need to be invested in what they’re doing. Of course, “meaningful” must be rooted in safety – if people fear the stakes are too high, that fear can hold them back.  

Individual 

Everyone’s favorite radio station is WiiFM – “What’s in it for me.” Ask someone about a project they’re working on, and they might smile. But ask them what they did this weekend, and they’ll light up—even more so if they get to talk about personal hobbies or passions.  

Create more ways for people to light up, and you’ll create more ways to unlock that joy and translate it into their work and relationships. At a systemic level, consider how you’re fostering individuals’ passions and making them feel heard and represented. And at a team and day-to-day level, find ways to share them.  

Linked 

On the other side of the “individual” see-saw is the need to bring people together. Often, people have more fun working with other people, and collaboration creates those all-important feelings of togetherness and belonging. Prophet’s 2022 Catalysts research: The Collaborative Advantage finds that employees achieve better outcomes personally and professionally when they collaborate – 65% of respondents cited higher levels of productivity as a result.  

In hybrid environments, it becomes more challenging, where it may seem like people are working together on endless transactional Zoom calls. In reality, there is a shrinking emphasis on true connections which require smaller group interactions and a mix of both work-related and non-work-related focuses.  

Exploratory 

People need new inputs to get to new outputs. Trying a new dish can be more fun and exciting than eating the same meal for the fifth time this week. Consider how to fuel people’s joy and creativity by putting them in new situations, hearing from new voices or thinking about things in new ways. Then, use that space to give people a chance to get their hands dirty, safely.  

Build in the flexibility for exploration. A global airline used the power of play to teach the organization its seating pricing strategy. Leaders used a game of “The Flight is Right,” taking the principles of “The Price is Right” and applying it to the complex principles that airlines face. By approaching the learning in a new way, and allowing people to play and participate, the message stuck.  

LEGO’s serious play methodology is another great example of encouraging exploration to envision challenges in new ways while tapping into the joy of being a child.  

The creativity expert, Edward De Bono, describes “Rivers of Thinking” – the building nature of experiences that help us to unlock new solutions. When we fill our rivers with the same water, it becomes difficult to explore new ones.  

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