When strong leaders struggle to deliver

Spending most of my time in boardrooms and with C-suite teams, I’ve come to a point where I need to challenge my own thinking. There is one area I have undervalued for too long.

Much of my work has focused on capability — ensuring the right leader or board member is in place, with the right experience, skills and a cultural fit. But increasingly, I find myself asking a different question:

Why do strong leaders — in operations and in the boardroom — still fail to deliver, even when everything on paper looks right?

What I see more clearly now is this: it is not primarily about the individual.

Because what looks right often isn’t enough. It is about the system they step into. Even the strongest leaders can’t perform at their best when the conditions for execution are missing.

When roles and mandates are unclear, accountability is diluted, or unresolved infighting between owners sits below the surface, performance slows down.

Culture sets the ceiling for what even the strongest leaders can deliver, in operations and in the boardroom alike. It shows up in decisions, in how conflict is handled, in who takes responsibility — and in what gets rewarded, and ultimately how shareholder value is created.

Yet this is where many boards still underestimate their role.

Culture is often treated as a “soft” topic. Something to be observed and discussed — but not owned.

Boards expect disciplined reporting on strategy execution, financial performance, and operations. But when it comes to culture, expectations are often vague, delegated, and rarely followed up with the same rigor. It is handled “somewhere else”.

This is a governance choice.

And it creates risk — because culture ultimately determines whether strategy can be executed.

In periods of AI-driven transformation, this becomes even more critical. When the pace increases and decisions need to be taken faster, culture will decide whether transformation succeeds or fails.

And that raises an uncomfortable question:

If we agree that culture drives execution — why is it still not treated as any other performance metric — at board level?

This is exactly where I see a shift starting to happen. From discussing culture — to managing it. Not as a “soft” topic, but as a performance driver.

Which is why culture belongs on the board agenda.

One simple test:

When a strong leader under-delivers, do we ask “what’s wrong with them” — or do we also examine the system we put them in?