Leadership · Direction
What we do · The Leadership Survey
Direction, evidenced
Often the real constraint is not in any one department. It shows up when the other four areas look fine on their own and the company still is not moving. The Leadership Survey reads direction and the team carrying it, through the people who actually live inside it.
What it is
The Leadership Survey is a structured read on whether the organization is pulling in the same direction. We interview the chief executive, three to five board members, and the layer of leaders immediately below the top, read the strategic plan, the org chart, and recent board minutes, and run a defining-success conversation with the top executive, because a read is worthless without an agreed target to measure it against. For a nonprofit weighing a campaign, a fundraising-readiness extension is available, scoped and quoted separately.
What you receive
- 01
Structured interviews
We interview the chief executive or executive director one on one, three to five board members, and the two or three people who actually run the organization day to day, immediately below the top. The gap between what the top of an organization believes and what the layer below it actually experiences is usually where the real finding lives.
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The document read and the defining-success conversation
We read the current strategic plan if one exists, the org chart, and board minutes or agendas across the last two to three cycles, to see whether the board is deciding things or only being informed of them. Then we sit down with the top executive to define what success actually means, because nothing after that conversation can be scored against a target nobody agreed to.
- 03
The nonprofit fundraising-readiness extension
For a nonprofit weighing a campaign or a major-gifts push, we add confidential interviews with prospects and donors, reading capacity, inclination, and connection. It draws on Joanna Wasmuth's own record, running campaigns from $10 million to $300 million and raising more than $30 million a year. This extension is priced apart, because a buyer with no fundraising question should not pay for interviews they do not need.
What it needs from you
- Access to the chief executive, three to five board members, and the layer below them
- The current strategic plan, org chart, and recent board minutes or agendas
- A defining-success conversation with the top executive, scheduled early in the engagement
- Confidentiality for the interviews, so people speak plainly rather than diplomatically
How it ends
The Leadership Survey ends with a written finding: an evidenced read on where direction, engagement, decision cadence, bench strength, and delegation actually stand today, and what is worth fixing first. You keep the finding regardless of what you decide next. Where nonprofit strategy, fundraising, or coaching is warranted, the proposal that follows names only what the evidence supports.
Where it fits
The Leadership Survey is the Leadership area's entry rung: whether the people and the direction can carry what the other four areas are capable of. It often follows a finding in another area that keeps circling back to the team. See How we work for the full Survey, Blueprint, and Build sequence, or the Leadership area for what else we look at here.
Where to go from here
Book an hour with us, no charge. Or take the Growth Check first, about fifteen minutes, to see where your own constraint sits before the call.