Most leadership programs lose momentum almost immediately
after completion. A familiar pattern plays out: organizations fly managers into
conference rooms, deliver high-quality workshops, provide comprehensive
materials, and capture photos for internal communications. Yet within days,
those same managers return to the identical pressures, routines, and
environments that made the training necessary to begin with. Because the
surrounding system remains unchanged, new behaviours fail to take hold. The
issue is not a lack of effort or capability on the part of the learners — it is
the absence of a supportive operating system around them.
Across EdBridge’s work and current doctoral research at the
University of Pennsylvania, a consistent finding has emerged: leadership
training underperforms when the system leaders operate within remains
unaltered. Shifting from episodic leadership programs to comprehensive
leadership systems is essential for sustained behavioural change.
A review of global research underscores this imperative.
Harvard Business Review has long noted that despite significant investment —
hundreds of billions annually — organizations often see minimal long-term
improvement. Most employees revert to prior habits once re-immersed in their
working environments. Studies on learning transfer show that only 10–20 percent
of training content is applied consistently on the job. Meanwhile, the World
Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 indicates that employers expect 39
percent of workers’ core skills to shift by 2030. This represents structural
disruption, not minor adjustment.
The paradox is clear: leadership demands are rising,
learning investments are increasing, yet behavioural transfer and cultural
change remain minimal. This signals a system challenge rather than a training
challenge.
Leadership continues to be approached as an event rather
than an operating system. Traditional practices still frame leadership
development as a program, curriculum, cohort, or budget line item. However,
research from institutions such as Wharton and Harvard shows that culture,
behaviour, and performance shift when organizational systems — not simply
individual capabilities — are redesigned.
Wharton’s Applied Insights Lab demonstrates that meaningful
change occurs when organizations redesign the conditions, routines, and signals
that guide daily behaviour. Harvard Business Publishing’s work on “Leadership
Fitness” highlights how pressure to change, without system support, can reduce
leaders’ willingness to adopt new behaviours. When expectations rise but the
surrounding structures (meetings, incentives, metrics, workload) remain static,
the result is frustration rather than transformation.
Organizations continue to launch leadership programs into
systems perfectly designed to neutralize them.
A leadership system is a structured, integrated
architecture that makes high-quality leadership expected, possible, visible,
and measurable. Effective leadership systems, including those evaluated through
the EdBridge Ecosystem Index (EEI), typically include five interconnected
components:
1.
Strategy and standards
Clear, context-specific definitions of effective leadership linked to
organizational strategy and values. These standards must guide hiring,
promotion, performance, and decision-making — not exist as generic statements.
2.
Roles and routines
The actual work of leadership: one-on-one conversations, decision-making
protocols, performance discussions, conflict navigation, and team rituals.
These everyday routines are where leadership behaviours are reinforced or
eroded.
3.
Culture and signals
The norms that govern what is rewarded, tolerated, or discouraged. People
respond to the real cultural signals around them, not slogans.
4.
Measurement and
feedback
Mechanisms that ensure leaders understand the impact of their behaviour.
Measurement must extend beyond engagement scores to include outcomes such as
retention, psychological safety, quality of execution, and internal mobility.
5.
Infrastructure and
learning architecture
Ongoing supports such as coaching, nudges, communities of practice, digital
tools, and embedded learning moments that enable continuous experimentation and
reinforcement.
Formal training is only one part of this structure. Without
the remaining elements, even the most effective program functions like
installing a high-quality application onto a malfunctioning operating system.
This context also reframes how the common “70-20-10”
learning model is interpreted. While organizations understand that most
learning occurs on the job (70 percent) and through social interaction (20
percent), investments remain heavily concentrated in formal programs (the 10
percent). Without intentional design of the work environment (the 70) and the
social learning ecosystem (the 20), programs alone cannot counteract systemic
forces.
To move from leadership training to leadership systems,
organizations — particularly CLOs, CHROs, and Heads of Talent — can adopt
several practical shifts:
1.
Shift from program
selection to behavioural design
Begin with a precise understanding of where leadership behaviours currently
break down and in which routines they manifest. Redesign meetings, rituals,
decision processes, and feedback mechanisms. Embed simple tools into those
touchpoints. Use training to support these redesigned behaviours rather than
relying on generic case studies.
2.
Position managers as
co-architects, not participants
Transfer research consistently shows that supervisor and environmental support
determine whether learning is applied. Engage real line leaders in shaping the
leadership standards, routines, and system supports. Provide data to help them
understand how their actions influence outcomes such as engagement,
performance, and retention.
3.
Measure leadership with
operational discipline
Establish 3–5 system-level indicators such as development conversations
conducted, cross-functional decision speed, regretted attrition, or internal
mobility. Track these metrics with the same rigor applied to financial or
operational data. When leadership becomes measurable, its strategic value
becomes visible.
The World Economic Forum identifies leadership and social
influence as core future skills. As workforce transformation accelerates, the
role of the learning function will evolve. The future Chief Learning Officer
will operate less as a training provider and more as a capability architect —
someone who designs integrated systems that enable leaders to perform under
changing conditions.
By shifting from episodic programs to sustainable
leadership systems, organizations can ensure that effective leadership becomes
the default outcome of their operating environment rather than the fragile
byproduct of a workshop. This system-level approach is where learning leaders
can generate the greatest impact in the coming decade.