Leadership is not just about how you lead—it is about what you choose to lead. What leaders focus on, what they ask for evidence of, and what they hold the organization accountable for ultimately shapes performance.

In many organizations, strategy sounds compelling but its impact is hard to prove. Activity increases, initiatives multiply, and progress is discussed; yet leaders lack clear evidence that strategic intent is translating into real-world results.

Evidence-Based Leadership (EBL) is a practical program that helps leadership teams prove and improve strategic impact. Grounded in the principles of the PuMP method, EBL enables leaders to design strategy and leadership work so that evidence of progress is intentionally created, not inferred after the fact. Results, not activity, become the basis for steering.

Who It’s For

EBL is designed for leadership teams—including founders and small leadership groups—who want greater confidence that their strategy is working in practice. It is especially relevant when:

• Strategy is broad or intangible, making impact hard to measure
• Initiatives do not clearly show how they contribute to strategic goals
• Leadership discussions rely heavily on belief, experience, or effort
• The organization is busy, but strategic traction is uncertain

EBL is for leaders who want to move beyond intention and assumption, and lead with evidence without turning leadership into a reporting exercise.

How It Works

EBL applies evidence-based performance management at the leadership level. It helps leaders clarify direction, establish evidence, and guide execution in a coherent way. Through a guided, hands-on process, leadership teams learn to:

• Define strategic direction as a small number of measurable outcomes
• Decide what evidence will prove progress toward those outcomes
• Focus leadership attention on what truly drives impact
• Shape priorities and decisions so evidence emerges naturally from execution

The emphasis is not on leadership style or communication technique, but on the discipline of choosing what matters, measuring it meaningfully, and using evidence to guide leadership judgment and learning over time.

What You Get

From the outset, leadership teams gain shared clarity about what success means and how it will be recognized. Strategy becomes easier to explain, debate, and steer because outcomes are explicit and evidence-based. Over time, leaders build the capability to:

• Lead strategy with focus and confidence
• Replace assumption with shared evidence
• Make better strategic trade-offs as conditions evolve
• Improve impact without adding complexity or noise

Leadership shifts from managing activity to deliberately proving and improving what matters most.

Why It Matters

Without evidence, leaders are left guessing. Activity becomes a proxy for progress, and strategy becomes difficult to test, adapt, or sustain.

EBL matters because it gives leaders a practical way to see whether strategic intent is being fulfilled, and where it can be improved. By grounding leadership conversations in outcomes and evidence, organizations move from guessing to knowing, and from knowing to performing. This creates alignment, accountability, and a culture where learning replaces opinion.

How It Fits

EBL works at the leadership level, shaping what leaders pay attention to and how they guide the organization. It does not replace strategy frameworks, OKRs, dashboards, or execution systems. It strengthens them by ensuring strategy is outcome-oriented and supported by meaningful evidence.

As a starting point, EBL establishes the leadership habits required for sustained performance. It creates the conditions for evidence-based execution, aligned decision-making, and continuous improvement across small teams, startups, and complex organizations alike.