Bridging the Leadership Gap: Leadership-as-a-Service

Manish Sinha
Founder and CEO
Mondial Advisors LLC

In a study done in 2022, it was found that 75% of organizations struggle to find the right leaders to drive business disruption and digital transformation.

How can businesses fill this gap efficiently?

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations face increasing challenges in securing experienced leadership to drive business disruptions, digital transformation and innovation. LaaS is a strategic solution that provides on-demand, flexible leadership from experienced professionals, bridging critical leadership gaps. This article explores the concept of LaaS, its benefits, deployment scenarios, and challenges while showcasing how it bridges the existing leadership void in organizations.

Understanding Leadership-as-a-Service (LaaS)

LaaS is a dynamic leadership model that offers organizations the ability to access seasoned professionals with specialized expertise as and when needed. Much like traditional "as-a-service" offerings in technology, LaaS offers modular and adaptable leadership solutions, allowing businesses to access expertise as needed. It enables businesses to leverage executive, strategic, functional and/or technical leadership on an “interim” or “fractional”
basis, ensuring they get the right leadership at the right time in the right quantity needed. Often, organizations need specialized skilled professionals for certain leadership roles like

Data Analyst Strategists, Program Management or Security Professionals.

But why would anyone need Leadership-as-a-Service? Doesn’t Leadership shape the Culture and Strategy in an organization which are both long term assets and differentiators in the organization.

LaaS is needed in today’s organizations because today almost every organization is a digital organization, and in today’s digital organizations, leadership gaps have started to emerge from the unique business challenges and rapid changes driven by technology. These rapid changes have created critical leadership gaps in key areas.

The Current Leadership Gap

Modern organizations, particularly in digital sectors, experience significant leadership gaps due to various factors such as rapid technological advancements and the need for specialized expertise. Key leadership challenges include:

• Technology Fluency & Eliminating Technical Debt – Many leaders struggle to keep up with the fast-paced digital environment.

• Pace of Digital Business – Organizations must make quick, data-driven decisions but lack the leadership to guide them.

• Cybersecurity Expertise – A critical area requiring experienced leaders to mitigate cyber risks.

• Vision for Digital Business – A need for leaders who can align digital initiatives with overall business goals.

• Managing Remote & Hybrid Teams – Effective leadership is essential in distributed work environments.

• Fostering an Innovation Culture – Companies need guidance to create and sustain a culture of innovation.

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How LaaS Bridges the Leadership Gap

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LaaS addresses these challenges by providing leadership and skilled professionals in a
structured and targeted manner:

• Right Skills – Organizations access specialized professionals with domain expertise.

• Experienced Leadership – Industry veterans bring real-world knowledge and strategic insights.

• On-Demand Availability – Leaders are engaged when needed, avoiding long-term commitments.

• Flexible Capacity – Companies scale leadership resources based on project demands.

• Legacy Building – LaaS professionals will mentor and develop future leaders, ensuring long-term success.

Scenarios for Deploying LaaS

LaaS is particularly valuable in scenarios where organizations require temporary yet impactful leadership. Key deployment cases include:

• Interim Leadership Roles – Organizations can fill temporary leadership positions during transitions. Usually, leadership departures happen within a short duration but the hiring to fill that open position takes a much longer duration. This creates an opportunity for organization to keep the functions running smoothly with “interim” leadership.

• Fractional Leadership Roles – For smaller and medium sized organization, certain roles are not necessary to have a senior leader in a full-time capacity. These organizations can benefit from a fractional leadership from an experienced and senior leader in the necessary domain.

• Strategic Initiatives – Businesses undertaking digital transformation projects benefit from LaaS expertise. Experienced leaders can lead the strategic initiative till a point where it can be handed over to another leader who can keep it running.

• Startup Advisory – Growing companies can leverage experienced leadership without full-time executive hires.

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Why is LaaS Successful?

The biggest reason the LaaS model succeeds is that the LaaS leaders are in their Second Career and have different motivations. Many executives after exiting from large and medium organizations are becoming LaaS consultants. These are experienced leaders transitioning into advisory roles, bringing a wealth of knowledge without the need for job security.

LaaS is more effective than full-time hires when organizations require fractional or interim leadership. The model provides for cost saving, agility and effectiveness.

The other reasons for the success of the LaaS model are driven by the better alignment of motivation and incentives between an organization and the LaaS leaders. These same incentives and motivations are misaligned between regular consulting and organizations.

Figure below compares the incentive of any regular provider of consulting services with the incentives of the customer. There seems to be a few areas of misalignment, and these can be realigned between the customer incentives and the LaaS service providers and consultant. The primary reason for the alignment of incentives is that the LaaS consultants are not motivated by career enhancements and financial increments but by the desire to leave a legacy behind with their mentoring and coaching of other leaders.