How to use our Leadership Canvas

We had a request this week from one of our followers, Kevin Wakuze, Head of Learning and Development at Zipline, who asked us some great questions on how to use our Miro Leadership Canvas, so we thought we’d write a blog post in case more people are interested. 

‍

The Leadership Programme Canvas

As an external provider, our role is to quickly get to know our clients, their leadership challenges and ambition for their programme so we can make recommendations for the solutions that’ll best deliver the outcomes they’re looking for. To bring some structure to those conversations we created the Canvas. We hope you find the Canvas equally valuable when briefing and planning leadership programmes internally. 

The goal of the canvas is to create a one-pager view of your programme and encourage you to answer all of the questions necessary to effectively plan your programme and get stakeholder buy-in. 

The canvas is broken down into five sections:

1. The Core Purpose‍

The problem you’re solving for and the behaviours you want to see instead

2. Impact & Success‍

The outcomes and measures of success that your stakeholders and the business cares about. 

3. Audience & Needs

‍Who the programme is for, their needs and why they will be engaged in this programme

4. Context & Culture‍

The internal and external challenges, changes and forces which are impacting your leaders and need to be considered as part of the design

5. Scope, Scale, Constraints

The structure, style and approach you’re suggesting for the programme, including any resource constraints that you’re working with. 

‍

An Example Canvas

If you’ve not seen the Canvas yet, take a look at an example one we’ve filled in here: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVGtGnJL0=/?share_link_id=710600361106

If you’d like to download your own version, then you can get a clean template here from the Miroverse.

‍

‍

How to use the canvas

As with any Canvas approach, it can be used to support a workshop with your team where you fill in the blanks. 

Or ditch the post-its and write full sentences into text boxes, and it can become a one-pager presentation to share as a pre-read for your stakeholders. What’s important is that you answer all the questions and have clarity on what you’re prioritising (and not). 

The reality is that you’re unlikely to get all the right people in the room at the same time to answer all the sections. And some of the sections, like the Learner Needs, require some deeper analysis. Some pre-work is required to get the best out of any workshop using this canvas. 

We recommend that you do a combo of:

• 1-1 interviews with senior stakeholders, HRBPs and managers of managers to identify the themes for Impact and Success and the Core Purpose. Ask these questions and summarise their themes and answers in this section.
  ‍
• Learner Needs Analysis: Pull your pulse survey data, run lite focus groups, segment your leadership community so you’re solving for the biggest pain points. Again, do this pre-session and summarise the findings. 
  ‍
• Team Exploration: Use a team workshop to identify Learner Motivation, Context and Culture and then decide your Scale, Scope, Constraints.
  ‍

If you want more details on how to do each of these sections, then request access to the first two chapters of our latest book, The Six Dimensions which goes into a lot more detail on each of the questions to answer to create a comprehensive plan. 

The better the plan, the better the alignment with stakeholders and that protects your programme from outside pressures. You can also use the template to brief your preferred learning partner (ahem… you can book some time in with us here!). 

We’re still waiting for that full circle moment where we have our own template presented back to us. Make our day!

‍