A useful test of leadership is to imagine that the leader is suddenly unavailable.
Take a CEO, founder or business head out of the organisation for six months. Remove the informal calls, the quick approvals, the intervention when a difficult matter reaches the top, and the reassurance that often accompanies a senior leader’s presence.
Then look at what happens to the organisation’s judgment.
Do decisions continue to move? Do people know which matters require escalation and which they can resolve themselves? Can teams handle an unfamiliar regulatory issue or a difficult stakeholder conversation without waiting for someone senior to tell them what to do? Does the organisation continue to behave in a way that is recognisably consistent with its priorities?
The answers reveal more than the quality of delegation. They reveal how much of the organisation’s culture and judgment has actually been internalised by the people within it.
This is particularly relevant in the energy and power sector, where leadership decisions rarely exist in isolation. A regulatory position may have consequences several years later. A project decision can affect financing, execution and stakeholder relationships over a long period. A commercial compromise may have implications for reputation or regulatory credibility well beyond the immediate transaction.
In such an environment, experienced leaders accumulate considerable institutional knowledge. They remember why a position was taken, which stakeholder concern led to a particular decision, why a project was structured in a certain way, or why an apparently attractive opportunity was previously rejected.
That experience is an organisational asset. The question is whether the organisation has access to that asset without having to access the individual who carries it.
The organisation can appear stronger than it is
Many organisations perform extremely well while their most influential leader remains closely involved. Decisions are made quickly. Difficult issues are resolved. Stakeholders receive clear responses. Teams know that someone senior will step in when the situation becomes complicated.
There is nothing inherently wrong with strong leadership presence. The difficulty begins when that presence becomes the mechanism through which the organisation maintains clarity.
People learn, often without consciously realising it, that the final answer sits with one person. They become accustomed to seeking approval rather than exercising judgment. Middle layers get fewer opportunities to make consequential decisions. The leader, in turn, becomes increasingly involved because the organisation has become accustomed to that involvement.
The cycle can continue for years because it is rarely visible as a problem while the leader is present. The organisation looks decisive. In reality, some of its decisiveness may be concentrated in a single individual.
That creates a form of fragility which becomes visible only when the individual steps away.
Culture becomes visible when the script runs out
The most useful evidence of culture tends to appear in situations for which there is no ready-made instruction.
A regulator raises an unexpected concern. A project encounters a delay that creates competing commercial and contractual considerations. Two important stakeholders seek outcomes that cannot easily be reconciled. An investment opportunity appears attractive, although its risks fall outside the organisation’s previous experience.
At such moments, people have to interpret circumstances for themselves. They need to know what the organisation considers important, which boundaries it will protect, how it approaches risk and when an issue genuinely warrants escalation. They also need enough confidence in those principles to act when the leader who normally provides direction is not available.
This is where the difference between a stated culture and an internalised culture becomes apparent.
Values on a wall cannot resolve an unfamiliar problem. A well-understood way of thinking can.
A strong culture therefore has a practical dimension. It enables people to make decisions when the instruction has stopped and circumstances still demand judgment.
What leaders explain becomes part of the institution
Leaders often underestimate what their explanations leave behind.
Consider two ways of handling a consequential decision. One is to announce the decision and move on. The other is to explain the reasoning: why a regulatory position was defended, why a particular project risk was accepted, why a commercial opportunity was declined, or why the organisation chose to hold its ground when changing course would have been easier.
The immediate decision may be identical. What the organisation learns from it is very different.
When reasoning is made visible consistently, people begin to recognise the principles behind individual decisions. They start to understand how trade-offs are assessed and which considerations carry greater weight. With repetition, that understanding becomes a reference point for future decisions.
This is how leadership judgment moves beyond the person who originally exercised it.
It also explains why the narrative layer of culture matters. Organisations carry stories about important decisions, difficult moments and consequences that shaped later behaviour. Those stories give people context when they encounter a new situation that resembles an earlier one, even if the circumstances are not identical.
With time, the organisation develops an internal understanding of how it thinks.
That has consequences outside the organisation as well. A regulator is more likely to have confidence in an institution whose positions are reasoned and consistent over time. An investor can assess management credibility more readily when decisions reflect an identifiable discipline. A stakeholder can place greater trust in commitments when those commitments do not appear to depend entirely on the individual occupying a particular position.
Institutional confidence is built through this accumulated evidence.
The most effective leader can become the least replaceable
This is one of the more uncomfortable paradoxes of leadership. A highly capable leader can resolve difficult matters faster than anyone else. The organisation therefore keeps bringing difficult matters to that person. Each intervention produces a useful outcome, which reinforces the habit.
Eventually, the organisation becomes better at escalating problems than resolving them.
The leader may believe they are empowering the team because people are being given responsibility within their areas. But if important judgment continues to return to the same individual, autonomy remains limited.
The more effective the leader is at being the final source of clarity, the harder it can become for the organisation to function independently. Breaking that pattern requires a degree of discipline from the leader.
Important decisions need to be explained rather than simply communicated as outcomes. Genuine non-negotiables need to be made clear enough that people can apply them in unfamiliar circumstances. Teams need opportunities to exercise judgment before they are confronted with the most consequential situations. Some short-term inefficiency may have to be accepted while that capability develops.
Most importantly, leaders have to become progressively less central to the routine exercise of judgment.
This does not require withdrawal or invisibility. It requires the leader to make the function of leadership transferable. This distinction is particularly important for succession.
Succession is often treated as the identification and preparation of the next person. But it addresses only one part of the problem. An organisation also needs to preserve the quality of judgment that allowed the previous leader to navigate complexity.
A successor can inherit a position. The institution has to inherit the thinking.
Institutional memory needs somewhere to live
Every organisation develops stories around the decisions that mattered.
A project may have taught the organisation why a particular risk deserves careful attention. A regulatory matter may have established a principle that continues to guide future positions. A difficult stakeholder relationship may have demonstrated the value of patience. A commercial decision may have created a boundary that the organisation still respects years later.
Such stories are more than corporate folklore. They are a form of institutional memory.
They help people understand why certain behaviours are valued and why certain choices are made. They also allow new members of the organisation to acquire context that would otherwise take years to develop.
This becomes increasingly important as energy businesses grow. New leadership layers emerge, teams become larger, businesses enter unfamiliar markets, projects increase in scale and regulatory relationships become more complex.
An organisation cannot rely indefinitely on a small group of people carrying its history in their heads. It needs shared understanding.
That understanding develops through the explanations leaders provide, the decisions they make consistently, the boundaries they establish, the behaviour they recognise and the stories the organisation continues to tell about itself.
When those elements reinforce one another, leadership begins to travel through the organisation without requiring the leader’s physical presence.
The real test of leadership
Business performance will always remain an important measure of leadership. Growth, execution, capital allocation, regulatory outcomes, stakeholder relationships and financial performance all matter.
There is another measure that becomes visible only in the leader’s absence.
How much sound judgment remains in the organisation when the person who usually supplies it is no longer there?
If people continue to make considered decisions, understand their priorities and navigate difficult situations with confidence, the organisation has absorbed something valuable from its leadership.
If decisions slow down, routine matters are escalated and people wait for instructions, the organisation may have developed dependence around an effective individual rather than a durable culture.
For energy and infrastructure businesses operating through long investment horizons, regulatory exposure, complex stakeholder relationships and periods of rapid transition, that distinction has consequences well beyond leadership succession. It affects execution, governance, stakeholder confidence and the organisation’s ability to maintain institutional trust when circumstances change.
A leader cannot remain the organisation’s memory forever. At some point, the organisation has to carry its own judgment. That may be the more demanding measure of leadership: whether the quality of thinking that shaped the organisation continues to guide it when the person who shaped it is no longer in the room.
The six-month absence is only a thought experiment. The underlying test is real.
If you stepped away tomorrow, would your organisation still make decisions the way you would?
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