connecteddale

This article is part of a series called, Surface Tension. The introduction article contains links to all other articles.

Most organisations operate with an implicit theory of leadership—unexamined assumptions about what constitutes effective leadership that shape everything from hiring decisions to development programmes.

These assumptions often go unchallenged: "Leaders must have all the answers." "The most confident and decisive people make the best leaders." "Leaders are born, not made." "Leadership happens from the top down." "Technical expertise qualifies one for leadership." "The best individual performers make the best leaders."

Such unexamined beliefs often perpetuate outdated leadership models ill-suited to today's complex environments, where collaborative intelligence, vulnerability, and systemic thinking frequently matter more than heroic certainty.

The DAC Model: A Practical Leadership Framework

The Centre for Creative Leadership's Direction-Alignment-Commitment (DAC) framework offers a refreshingly practical approach that shifts focus from individual heroics to the quality of leadership outcomes throughout the system.

It defines leadership not as a position or set of traits but as a collective activity that produces:

• Direction: Agreement on shared goals and vision
• Alignment: Coordination of resources and activities
• Commitment: Mutual responsibility for collective success

This deceptively simple model provides a powerful diagnostic lens. When reviewing any organisation, team, or initiative, three questions immediately reveal leadership quality:

1. Do people share a common understanding of what they're trying to achieve?
2. Are their efforts coordinated effectively?
3. Is everyone genuinely committed to collective success?

Revealing Leadership Gaps

The DAC model is particularly valuable because it reveals leadership gaps not visible through traditional lenses. For example, an organisation might have strong Direction (a clear strategic plan) but weak Alignment (departments working at cross-purposes).

Another might have strong Alignment (well-coordinated operations) but weak Commitment (compliance without genuine buy-in).

Netflix applied similar thinking when Reed Hastings reshaped its culture around "context, not control." Rather than directing specific actions, Netflix leaders focused on creating conditions where employees understood the context so well that they could make decisions aligned with the company's direction without explicit approval.

"Most companies spend enormous energy telling people what to do," explained one Netflix executive. "We invest that energy in ensuring everyone understands why we're doing what we're doing. Once that understanding is in place, the right decisions tend to follow naturally."

Diagnosing Leadership Challenges

The value of the DAC model is its clarity about what's missing when leadership isn't happening:

• When Direction is absent: People feel pulled in different directions, and there's inertia
• Without Alignment: Deadlines are missed, efforts are duplicated, and teams compete rather than cooperate
• When Commitment is lacking: Only easy tasks get completed, self-interest dominates, and people don't "walk their talk"

Implementation Insight: DAC in Action

This practical exercise brings the DAC model to life in your organisation:

1. Explain the DAC model to your team, introducing Direction, Alignment, and Commitment as essential leadership outcomes
2. Set up three flipcharts in a room, one for each component
3. Ask team members to stand at the flipchart representing where they believe the organisation needs to do the most work
4. Have each group discuss and document specific reasons why they chose that component as needing attention
5. Have groups share their findings with the whole team
6. Now pose a different question: "Which of these three areas do you personally need to work on to create better leadership in your organisation?"
7. Ask participants to move to the corresponding flipchart for this question

This movement across the room symbolises a critical shift from viewing leadership as external ("them/theirs") to personal ("my/mine"). It reinforces that leadership is not something that happens "out there" but something each person actively creates or diminishes through their daily actions.

The final step of sharing how individuals can personally improve leadership often reveals profound insights about the gap between organisational aspirations and individual behaviours. This personal accountability is what ultimately transforms leadership culture.

Case Study: From Friction to Flow

One technology company I worked with was struggling with persistent delays in product releases despite having highly skilled teams. Using the DAC model, they discovered they had strong Direction (clear product goals) and reasonable Commitment (motivated teams) but severely lacking Alignment.

Deeper exploration revealed that while executives understood the product roadmap, mid-level managers and individual contributors had fundamentally different interpretations of priorities and dependencies. This misalignment manifested as what appeared to be resistance or poor execution but was actually a leadership gap.

The solution wasn't another reorganisation or clearer directives but creating better leadership throughout the system. They implemented regular cross-functional planning sessions where teams explicitly discussed their understanding of priorities and interdependencies, revealing and resolving misalignments before they became execution problems.

Within six months, cycle times decreased by 40%, and employee satisfaction scores increased significantly—not because of structural changes but because leadership was happening more effectively throughout the organisation.

Conclusion: Leadership as a System Property

The DAC model shifts our understanding of leadership from a personality trait or position to a property of the entire system. This perspective explains why organisations with seemingly strong individual leaders can still struggle with execution—because leadership isn't happening consistently throughout the organisation.

By making leadership explicit through the DAC lens, organisations can diagnose precisely what's missing in their leadership ecosystem and focus development efforts on creating the leadership outcomes that matter most.

This approach also democratises leadership, moving beyond the myth of the heroic leader to recognise that leadership can and must happen at all levels for an organisation to thrive amidst complexity and change.

Looking Ahead: Bringing It All Together

Throughout this series, we've explored eight strategies for working with the unconscious forces that shape organisational life—from developing X-ray vision to creating containers for anxiety, from breaking through team dynamics to navigating polarities. The DAC model provides a practical framework for integrating these insights into everyday leadership practice.

In our final article, we'll explore how these eight strategies work together as an integrated system for strengthening the invisible force that holds your organisation together—transforming surface tension from a potential breaking point into a source of resilience and competitive advantage.