Case study
System-Level Insight with the X-Model
Using the X-Model to understand and strengthen leadership performance across a global organisation
How do we see what’s really happening in the joins between teams – and create the conditions for leadership to work as one system rather than a set of capable parts?
The context
As part of a wider organisational transformation, a global consumer-goods business wanted to understand how effectively its leadership teams were working – not only within their own boundaries, but as part of the wider system.
The company had grown fast, connecting functions and markets through new structures and priorities. Each team was operating with focus and drive, yet when pressure rose, decisions sometimes stalled, priorities overlapped, and energy scattered.
A system lens for team performance
Many organisations are conditioned to focus on evaluating individual performance – but aren’t sure how to assess the efficacy of their teams. Senior teams rarely have the tools (or time) to step back, identify, and address issues undermining their collective success.
The X-Model provides a simple, evidence-based way to read team health in under 5 minutes. Each individual completes a short diagnostic that collects responses on four interdependent domains:
- Task – clarity of purpose, priorities, and decision rights
- Trust – psychological safety and confidence in intent
- Team – collaboration, challenge, and shared ownership
- Traction – rhythm, follow-through, and delivery discipline
Because it takes only minutes to complete, teams engage easily and candidly. The output is a concise, data-backed picture of the team’s current state: where energy flows, where friction sits, and which habits make the biggest difference to performance.
It gives leaders a language for what is often invisible; the lived dynamics that shape execution (and it does so without adding bureaucracy or fatigue).
What we did
Scaling from team to system
When multiple leadership teams take the X-Model pulse, the insights compound. Individual diagnostics become a system map – revealing where collaboration holds firm and where interfaces between teams need attention.
Aggregating insights
At this scale, the data shows:
Organisation-wide anxieties and dynamics – recurring themes in how people experience risk, change, and authority, giving leaders insight into the cultural norms that either support or hinder the organisation’s strategic movement.
Patterns of alignment – where teams are clear, connected, and mutually reinforcing.
Friction points – where purpose or process diverge across boundaries.
Flow paths – how trust and traction move through the organisation.
Removing the friction
Because the tool is light-touch, it can be run concurrently across dozens of teams. The result is a living snapshot of the system of teams visualising how work, trust, and decision-making travel across the enterprise.
Used this way, the X-Model becomes both mirror and map: a mirror that reflects how each team really works, and a map that helps leaders see how the organisation performs as an interconnected system rather than a collection of silos.
What did we discover?
Viewed as a whole, the X-Model painted a picture of a capable, steady leadership system with some clear opportunities to organise effort even more effectively at scale.
The strengths came through very clearly. Across teams, leaders described and demonstrated:
Experienced, steady leadership
Seep functional and subject-matter expertise; calm and thoughtful in pressure and crisis.
Trust and practical teamwork
People step in for one another, share knowledge and keep momentum; psychological safety is strong in most leadership teams.
Bias to action when it counts
Robust problem solving and issue resolution when stakes are high. There’s a clear sense of responsibility and accountability for outcomes.
End-to-end perspective
Growing integration across procurement, manufacturing, logistics and planning; a broader system view is taking hold.
Collaboration and capability building
A genuine willingness to teach, coach and develop colleagues, not just deliver individual tasks.
Opportunities.
On top of this, the X-Model surfaced a set of shared development priorities – themes that appeared again and again in both scores and comments:
Prioritisation and focus
Too much in flight at once; clearer sequencing and “stop” decisions needed to protect capacity.
Decision speed and rights
Decision routes can be slow or opaque; leaders want sharper ownership on who decides, on what inputs and by when.
Cross-functional joins
Interfaces between functions, regions and central teams sometimes blur ownership; cleaner hand-offs would cut duplication and rework.
Challenge, simplification and bench strength
While people feel safe, the quality of challenge varies; simplifying reporting and meetings, and deepening the leadership pipeline, would free more time and resilience for execution.
Taken together, these insights pointed to a characteristic cultural pattern: a system that places high value on being supportive, thorough and dependable, and that is now working to balance those strengths with sharper focus, faster decisions and clearer joins around its strategic priorities.
Naming these dynamics gave the leadership a shared, non-blaming way to talk about how cultural norms influence delivery – where they actively support the strategy, and where they can occasionally pull attention away from what matters most.
Impact
The X-Model work has given the organisation a clear, shared picture of how its leadership system is operating: where strengths are concentrated, and where prioritisation, decision speed and cross-functional joins need attention. The insights are now shaping a focused development agenda, rather than a collection of disconnected initiatives.
Crucially, the findings are feeding directly into work with senior leadership. We are using the data to clarify their collective role, sharpen the rhythm of decision-making, and model the behaviours that will help the wider system move with more cohesion and pace. Repeat X-Model pulses will provide a light-touch way to track how these shifts land over time, keeping leadership practice under regular, constructive review.
What our client had to say
“The X-Model helped us move from individual stories to a shared view of how we lead as a system. It has been an incredibly valuable exercise.”
Senior leader, Global Consumer Business
