The Six Steps
Agreement with the Standard is rarely the obstacle. The work lies in turning agreement into consistent leadership behaviour, sustained under pressure, in the ordinary routines of organisational life. The Roadmap sets out six steps through which a leadership team builds the five Disciplines into how it actually operates.
The Roadmap begins with a decision to commit, and that decision has to be an informed one. No leadership team should commit to a standard before it understands where it stands. Diagnosis comes before prescription: surface issues are traced to their underlying causes before any intervention is chosen.
Part of that diagnosis is the seven Pre-Conditions for Implementation, the foundations that need to be in place before the Standard can be meaningfully adopted. A team that cannot yet say yes to them should close those gaps first. Adoption on weak foundations will only surface the problems it cannot fix.
Key actions
- Check the organisation honestly against the seven Pre-Conditions
- Conduct the RESOLVE Leadership Diagnostic
- Examine where pressure is most likely to expose weaknesses in leadership behaviour
- Review what the Standard will demand of the team's time, attention and resolve
- Confirm the team has the capacity and resources to see adoption through
Outcome
The leadership team knows enough about where it stands to commit honestly. The commitment itself is Step 1.
Nothing else on the Roadmap works without visible commitment at the most senior level. The people whose behaviour the organisation watches most closely have to own, practise and model the Standard. It cannot be delegated to HR or handed to a development programme.
Key actions
- Secure genuine agreement to the Standard at board or executive level
- Agree what each of the five Disciplines requires of this leadership team specifically
- Begin practising the Disciplines visibly in senior forums
Outcome
The organisation's most senior leaders demonstrably operate by the Standard they are asking others to adopt.
A private commitment between leaders can be quietly dropped when it becomes inconvenient. A public one is much harder to walk away from. Visibility creates accountability.
Key actions
- Adopt the RESOLVE Leadership Charter as the formal, signable declaration
- Communicate the commitment across the organisation, and invite the organisation to hold its leaders to it
- Reference the Disciplines in leadership communications, board reports and internal messaging
Outcome
The organisation knows the standard its leadership team has committed to, and can see whether the commitment is being honoured.
Adoption becomes operational where leadership decisions are actually made: board meetings, executive sessions, strategic reviews and investment committees. None of this needs a wholesale redesign. Small, deliberate adjustments bring the Disciplines into the rhythm the team already keeps.
Key actions
- Build discipline questions into the agendas of existing leadership forums
- Apply the Disciplines to live decisions: risk surfacing, priority alignment, decision deadlines and enterprise-first framing
- Practise until the questions become habitual rather than scripted
Outcome
The Disciplines shape the quality of leadership conversations and decisions, week by week.
A standard is only as strong as the willingness of leaders to challenge each other when it is breached. Without peer challenge the Standard stays aspirational. This is the hardest step, and the one that decides whether the Standard survives.
Key actions
- Agree explicitly how challenge will be raised and received
- Establish the norm that a challenge is met with "thank you" rather than defence
- Use the shared language of the Standard, so that a challenge refers to a collective commitment and does not land as personal criticism
Outcome
Breaches of the Standard are named and corrected by the leadership team itself.
Given long enough, organisational systems beat individual discipline. The Standard needs structural support in the formal mechanisms that oversee leadership behaviour, so that it survives changes of leadership and long stretches of pressure.
Key actions
- Assess leadership behaviour against the five Disciplines in leadership performance reviews
- Include the Standard in board-level oversight of leadership effectiveness
- Run periodic self-assessments of adherence, returning to the Diagnostic to measure movement
Outcome
The Standard is embedded in governance rather than dependent on individuals.
The Standard starts with the leadership team, and it does not stay there. Nobody mandates the cascade. The next layer of leaders watches how the senior team behaves and copies it, which carries further than any training programme. Modelling, recruitment and promotion take the Disciplines outward over time.
Key actions
- Let consistent senior modelling set the pattern for the next leadership layer
- Reflect the Disciplines in how leadership potential is assessed, hired and promoted
- Keep the timeline realistic: cultural embedding takes years, while early gains in meeting quality and decision speed typically appear within the first quarter
Outcome
The organisation develops a leadership culture that selects for the Disciplines.
Where to focus first
★ Priority step
The six steps do not carry equal weight. Commit and Challenge do most of the heavy lifting. Without visible commitment from the top nothing else survives, and without peer challenge the Standard stays on the wall. A leadership team introducing the Standard for the first time should secure those two before perfecting the rest.
The long-term result
Once fully embedded, the Standard becomes part of the organisation's leadership operating system. Leaders keep their clarity, integrity and accountability when circumstances are difficult, and the organisation sustains performance under pressure. Adoption needs no central authority and no certification. The Standard is adopted by choice and sustained by its own results.
