Building Leadership Success Profiles: The 60/40 Principle

In a previous blog I argued the best way to maximize the uptake of competency models/success profiles is to anchor them to business value.

A related and general rule I use when building models is the 60/40 Principle. That is, when building enterprise leadership success profiles, I try to build them with capabilities in two categories: Fundamental and Core Value.

Fundamental leadership capabilities are relatively generic and applicable to a wide variety of situations. For example:

Strategic Vision. The ability to articulate a coherent and winning market- and customer-driven, short- and long-term strategy for growth.

Change Leadership. The capability to lead complex business and organization changes or transformations; typically to operationalize a strategic plan.

I generally aim to include about 60% of these types of capabilities in enterprise models.

Core Value capabilities are directly linked to the core value the company must create to grow or evolve. These can be both current- or future-leaning. They are essential to the most strategic challenges the organization needs to manage to continue to thrive. For example:

Scale for Global Growth. Capability necessary for growth if the organization is expanding to new geographies that require greater sophistication in things like supply chain management or regulatory/market access knowledge.

Digital Savvy. Relevant if the organization needs to become more digital to remain competitive, meet new customer requirements, or enable innovation.

On average, enterprise leadership models should have about 40% of these capabilities.

What the 60/40 Principle Looks Like in Practice

Consider a mid-size enterprise software company in a competitive growth phase. A well-constructed profile might include ten capabilities. Six are Fundamental: Strategic Vision, Business Acumen, Change Leadership, Operational Excellence, Talent Development, and Communication & Influence. Four are Core Value: Customer-Led Growth (translating deep enterprise customer insight into product and commercial decisions that differentiate against competitors); Cross-Functional Speed (aligning product, sales, and customer success to integrate and move fast without sacrificing quality); AI Integration Leadership (guiding teams through the adoption of AI tools that fundamentally change how internal work gets done); and Scalable Talent Strategy (building the bench needed to grow from 500 to 2,000 people without losing execution capability).

The Core Value capabilities won't appear in a competitor's leadership model in the same way. They differentiate and are driven by the business imperatives of the moment. The Fundamentals are longer term and likely won’t change very much when the model needs to be refreshed in 3-5 years. However, Core Value capabilities will change more significantly in 3-5 years when the organization is facing a new set of challenges.

Connecting Both Categories to Business Value

Connecting both categories to business value determines whether a model gets used or sits on a shelf. Leaders engage with models that speak to the challenges they face. The more explicitly each capability is tied to a specific outcome the business needs to achieve, the more traction the model will earn with the people who matter most: the managers and leaders who put it to work.

For examples of what this sounds like in practice and conversationally, see the bottom of this blog.

Building the right model is key to good people practices; it's the anchor for selection, development, and promotion decisions. The 60/40 ratio matters because it forces a discipline many models miss: leaving enough room for the capabilities that are specific to the organization's moment. Both are important: Fundamentals will always be needed, while Core Value are essential for the here and now.