Work through each pillar to find the alignment gaps.
Understanding what high performance requires is one thing; knowing what your leadership team specifically needs to do to create it is another. This session makes that connection concrete, working through each OTSP pillar in turn to identify where the team's collective leadership is creating the right conditions, where the gaps are, and where to focus first.
Each OTSP pillar depends on leadership alignment to function, and alignment is specific. Agreeing that strategy matters is a starting point. The more useful question is what this leadership team does, consistently and visibly, to ensure that the strategy is understood, owned, and acted on at every level of the organisation. That same specificity applies to teamwork, culture, and brand.
The small-group structure allows the team to go deep on each pillar rather than covering everything superficially. Groups work through three focused questions: what does full alignment look like in practice for this pillar, where is the current gap between that picture and reality, and what specifically would this leadership team need to do to close it? The questions are deliberately concrete. They push the conversation away from observation and towards accountability.
The share-back and prioritisation exercise is where the session produces its clearest value. By the time every group has presented, there is a comprehensive picture on the board: where leadership alignment is strong, where it is inconsistent, and what specific actions would make the biggest difference. Dot-voting prioritisation gives the team a shared view of where to focus, grounded in collective judgement.
Groups often find that the gaps they identify are in different places from where they expected. A team that came in assuming culture was their priority sometimes discovers that the bigger lever is strategic clarity. A team that believed its communication was strong finds that the way it models teamwork is more consequential. The session is valuable because it surfaces what is actually true, and gives the team something specific to work on.
Participants leave with a shared, specific assessment of how their collective leadership is landing across each OTSP pillar, a clear view of the current gaps, and a prioritised set of focus areas to carry into the Leadership Charter session.
Recap the OTSP framework, then put people into small groups to work through what full alignment on each pillar looks like, where the gaps are, and what this leadership team needs to do to close them. Bring it back together to prioritise and reflect on what to carry forward.
Recap the OTSP framework briefly. The five pillars interact: a strategy only functions when it is understood, culture only counts when it is lived, and a brand is only real when it is consistent. The leadership team is the mechanism by which all five pillars get translated into the day-to-day experience of the organisation. Ask: when you think about the gap between where you want the organisation to be and where it is today, how much of that gap is a leadership alignment gap?
Divide into small groups and assign each group one or two pillars from the four: Strategy, Teamwork, Culture, and Brand. For each assigned pillar, the group works on three questions: what does full alignment on this pillar look like in practice, and what would you see, hear, and feel in the organisation; where is the current gap between that picture and reality; and what specifically would this leadership team need to do to close that gap? Give groups fifteen to twenty minutes per pillar, then ask them to prepare a two-minute share-back.
Each group presents, and you capture the gaps and proposed actions on a board. Once all groups have shared, facilitate a prioritisation: given everything on the board, where would leadership alignment make the biggest difference right now? Dot voting works well, with three votes per person placed wherever they choose.
Name the outputs. The group now has a picture of where this leadership team's alignment creates the conditions for the rest of the organisation to function, and where the gaps are. A later session will turn that into a set of shared commitments.
Use Leading Through OTSP when a leadership team wants to see where its collective leadership creates alignment across the organisation and where it blocks it. Working through each pillar in turn, the group names the gaps and prioritises where to focus first.
Using this tool with a skilled facilitator means that discussions are focused, time is used efficiently, and the group moves toward consensus, making the session productive and impactful.
