Transforming Global
Logistics
This is an illustrative scenario, not a case study. The company, people and events below are fictional. They are a composite of patterns that FIVE LENS practitioners commonly encounter in leadership teams going through integration and growth. No real client is described, and no outcomes are claimed. The purpose is to show how the framework is applied, so you can judge whether it fits your own context.
Two divisions, one leadership team, no shared rhythm
Imagine a logistics business that has combined its freight-forwarding and warehousing divisions under one leadership team, to sell integrated services to large customers. Eighteen months later, the strategy still makes sense. Execution does not.
The commercial director is winning integrated contracts, sometimes on terms operations has not seen. The operations director is protecting service levels and pushing back on every promise that adds risk. The finance director wants margins understood before anything launches. The new head of solutions, hired to design integrated services, spends most of their time brokering between the other three.
The symptoms are familiar. New service lines take far longer to launch than planned. Escalations to the managing director are rising. Each function has built its own customer reporting. Two strong regional managers have left in the past year, both citing "politics at the top" in their exit interviews.
Everyone on the leadership team is capable. Everyone agrees with the strategy. The problem is what happens between the agreement and the work.
What the framework makes visible
In a scenario like this, a FIVE LENS practitioner would profile each member of the leadership team, then look at the patterns across the team as a whole.
The Enneagram: what each leader avoids
Suppose the profiles show the commercial director drawing heavily on the Achievement and Results pattern, which avoids failure and moves quickly toward visible wins. The operations director draws on Vigilance and Security, which avoids being caught out and plans for what could go wrong. The managing director leans on Harmony and Stability, which avoids conflict and smooths disagreements over. The finance director draws on the Pursuit of Quality, which avoids being wrong and holds out for the right answer.
Put together, this explains a great deal. Commercial promises fast. Operations sees risk in the promise. Finance wants it done properly. And the managing director, whose instinct is to keep the peace, lets each of them leave the meeting believing they won. The decision is made three times, in three different ways.
Social Drives: which needs the integration threatened
The integration changed who reports to whom and whose expertise counts. The warehousing leaders, now inside a larger group, feel their standing has dropped, an esteem need under threat. Middle managers from both divisions are unsure whose processes will survive, a security need. Under threat, energy contracts into territory, and the separate customer reports are the visible result.
Energy Centres: how decisions are being made
Commercial is action-led. Finance is analysis-led. Operations is split between the two. Nobody on the team is paying much attention to the emotional centre, which is why the departure of two respected regional managers came as a surprise to the leadership team and to nobody else.
Four steps
- Individual debriefs first. Each leader receives their own profile privately before anything is shared. Senior people are more open in a group once they have had time to recognise themselves in the results.
- A Team Discovery Day. The leadership team sees its combined map. The most useful moment is often when the managing director sees that keeping the peace has been leaving decisions unmade, and the others see that their colleagues' resistance is self-protection rather than obstruction.
- Three practical agreements. Using that shared language, the team might agree named decision owners for new service launches, a rule that no integrated contract is signed without an operations review, and two shared goals that no single function can deliver alone, reviewed before functional updates at every leadership meeting.
- A Team Performance Process. Over the following months, the practitioner works with the team on the specific friction points: how to disagree openly in the room, how to make a decision stick, and how to bring the emotional centre back into the conversation.
Decide what success looks like before you start
Because this is a scenario, we report no results. If you ran something similar, these are indicators worth baselining first.
| Indicator | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Time from approved idea to launch | The clearest measure of whether the leadership team can turn agreement into action across functions. |
| Escalations to the managing director | Fewer escalations suggests functions are resolving issues with each other directly. |
| Decisions reopened | Count how many leadership decisions are revisited without new information. A falling count means decisions are sticking. |
| Regretted management leavers | A lagging indicator. Exit interview themes are as useful as the numbers. |
| Two-levels-down priority check | Ask a sample of managers to name the top three priorities. Track how closely their lists match each other. |
Questions for your own leadership team
- When a decision is made in your leadership meeting, does everyone leave with the same understanding of it?
- Who on your team keeps the peace, and what does that cost in unmade decisions?
- Since your last reorganisation, whose standing or security has been most threatened?
- Which of the three centres is missing from your team's decisions?
Download the full scenario
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