Three Quarters of CHROs Don’t Have a Framework for Developing Innovative Leaders

Innovation doesn’t happen by accident. Neither does the leadership that drives it. And yet a striking 75% of CHROs report that they lack a clear, repeatable framework for developing the kind of innovative leaders their organizations desperately need.

That’s not a reflection of bad intentions. It’s a reflection of a genuinely hard problem. Developing innovative leadership isn’t like checking a compliance box or rolling out a new software platform. It requires a structured approach to building capabilities that are, by nature, difficult to measure — creativity, adaptability, strategic thinking, the ability to lead through uncertainty.

Without a framework, even well-resourced organizations end up improvising. And improvised leadership development produces unpredictable leadership outcomes.

The challenge isn’t awareness — most CHROs know they need a better approach. The challenge is that building a rigorous, scalable leadership development framework from scratch is a significant undertaking. It requires expertise in adult learning, behavioral change, and performance measurement that most HR teams weren’t hired to provide.

So what tends to happen instead? Organizations cobble together a mix of sporadic workshops, one-off coaching engagements, and self-directed learning resources — and hope the right behaviors emerge. Sometimes they do. Often they don’t. And either way, it’s nearly impossible to know why.

The absence of a framework doesn’t just limit development. It limits your ability to learn from the development you’re already doing.

At Leven Coaching, we believe that innovative leadership isn’t the opposite of structure — it’s the product of it. When leaders have a clear development pathway, consistent coaching touchpoints, and visibility into their own progress, they free up the mental bandwidth to think bigger, lead bolder, and perform at a higher level.

That’s the philosophy behind our Peak Potential Blueprint, and it’s why it works where improvised approaches fall short.

Turnkey curriculum, ready from day one. Built on Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Habits — one of the most rigorously researched frameworks in professional development — the Blueprint gives your leaders a proven, structured pathway without requiring your team to build one. The framework already exists. You just plug your leaders into it.

Structured bi-weekly coaching sessions that drive consistency. Innovative leadership isn’t developed in a single workshop. It’s developed through sustained, focused practice over time. Bi-weekly coaching sessions create the rhythm and accountability that turns a development program into lasting behavioral change — predictably, not accidentally.

Automated, goal-aligned metrics so you always know where things stand. This is the piece that transforms leadership development from a faith-based investment into a managed process. Progress is tracked automatically against goals that are aligned to your organization’s specific priorities and KPIs. CHROs get clear, timely visibility into development outcomes without adding a single new task to their workflow.

The goal of a great leadership development framework isn’t to produce identical leaders. It’s to produce reliably excellent ones — leaders who are consistently more self-aware, more strategic, more effective at inspiring performance in others, and better equipped to navigate the ambiguity that defines today’s business environment.

Predictable process leads to predictable growth. And predictable growth, at scale, is what builds the kind of leadership bench that gives organizations a genuine competitive advantage.

If your organization is among the 75% without a clear framework for developing innovative leadership, the good news is that you don’t have to build one from scratch. Leven Coaching has already done it.

The Peak Potential Blueprint delivers the structure, the coaching, and the metrics that turn leadership development from a well-intentioned initiative into a measurable, repeatable engine for organizational growth.