Leadership Dialogue for CEOs: what is really going on, before you decide

The more senior the position, the less likely feedback is to arrive unfiltered.

Between you and the front line sit three or four layers of hierarchy. Each one smooths things a little, until only the tame version reaches the top. In the Leadership Dialogue, your employees and managers write anonymously what they think about your strategic questions and weigh each other's contributions. A town hall where everyone has a voice. Only no one has to stand up and expose themselves.

After 21 days you know whether your plans have support. And what stands in their way.

Proven with more than 60 clients across business, administration and politics. On average, our clients did not know 8 of the 10 strongest contributions.

What you get

1. Blind spots: You see the issues that never made it to your desk, together with the arguments behind them.

2. A ranking no one predetermined: Not a pile of individual opinions. At the top is what prevailed against everything else in thousands of comparisons.

3. Where you have backing: The decision matrix shows priorities and consensus at a glance: where implementation will be easy and where resistance is waiting. Before the budget is committed.

How it works

• Strategy workshop: Three hours. We arrive with a finished concept and sharpen the two or three questions that matter with you.

• Launch: Within 48 hours the dialogue space is ready in your design. We write the invitation, you send it.

• Dialogue: Three weeks, moderated daily. We check every contribution before it goes live. You follow along live.

• Result: Report, a one-pager for the board and a ready-to-send response to your people. The decision is yours.

Why BrainE4 is different

• No career risk: Whoever contradicts in a meeting takes a risk. In the anonymous dialogue they don't. That's why you hear about problems while they are still small.

• Weight, not volume: In workshops the same people always talk. In the Idea Duel it's not who says it that counts, but what convinces.

• More than a survey: An employee survey gives you bars and scattered comments. Here you get the strongest arguments in your people's own words, and how many stand behind them.

• Insight Guarantee: In the strategy workshop we record six assumptions per question: what you expect. We mix them covertly into the contributions. If on average at least five of the top 10 are new to you, your knowledge has doubled. Otherwise we refund the dialogue.

For whom

• CEO and executive board: when you want to check whether your picture of the situation matches the one at the front line.

• New CEOs: when you want to learn in your first 100 days what nobody would otherwise tell you.

• Board of directors: when you want to assess culture and execution risks before the numbers move.

In practice

Uster Hospital: After a financial crisis, CEO Martin Werthmüller wanted to take his managers from survival mode to shaping the future. 85 of 115 managers contributed their own theses, including uncomfortable ones such as «senior management is too far from the base». This led to a new conversation format with the CEO and a dedicated leadership programme. Read the interview

«Some of my hypotheses were replaced by better statements from management.» Martin Werthmüller, CEO

Medartis: A new CEO, a global workforce, nine open questions in every local language: 1,340 arguments and 95,961 Idea Duels, condensed into the issues that really move his people. Read the interview

«It's a direct line to your employees.» Matthias Schupp, CEO

Ideal for:

New CEO · Strategy execution · Transformation · Merger and integration · Reorganisation · Mission statement · Board retreat

Frequently asked questions

How do I find out what the organisation really thinks?
Your people write anonymously what is on their minds and judge each other's contributions. You follow along live and receive a ranking with reasons. In more than 60 dialogues, clients did not know, on average, 8 of the 10 strongest contributions.

Am I inviting unrest?
The issues are there anyway. Better that you know them first. Every contribution is moderated in advance, with no names and no stage. The results reach you first, and you decide what to communicate.

What stays under my control?
You don't determine the answers. But you determine what is being answered. We set how narrow or broad the questions are in the workshop. Off-topic content stays out.

How much of my time does it take?
Three hours in the workshop and one approval of the communication. Your employees need about ten minutes on average, spread over three weeks.

All questions and answers

See more

Video: The Leadership Dialogue in brief. Watch the video

Leadership Dialogue: Use cases from new leadership to merger. Learn more

Try it yourself: An Idea Duel from your employees' point of view. Experience the Idea Duel

Your people know more than the reports show.
Ask them before the market does.

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