Nothing organisational is good in the abstract, only relative to the demand a specific plan creates.
Why it matters when the plan changes
Leadership is usually assessed against a standing idea of what good looks like, which is stable, comfortable, and does not track the plan. A team can be strong by that measure and unsuited to what has just been approved, because the real question is not whether the strategy is good or the people are good, but whether the two hold together at the interface between a role and its mandate. Judging fit against the plan makes the assessment perishable, which is inconvenient and is the only version that predicts anything.
The tension is that the plan is the thing most likely to change, and stated priorities are widely believed to be under-resourced, which is what a plan meets when leadership capacity was assessed against something else. Assessing against the plan means accepting a conclusion with a shelf life and a review date, rather than a permanent verdict. Organisations prefer permanent verdicts about people, which is part of why the abstract version persists.
In practice
A leadership team rated strong in an annual review is asked to execute a shift from regional autonomy to product lines. The same team is now required to make trade-offs across boundaries none of them owns. The review measured them against the previous demand, accurately, and says nothing about the one in front of them.
Evidence
Stated priorities are widely believed to be under-resourced, which is what a plan meets when leadership capacity was assessed against something else.
Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull, Why Strategy Execution Unravels and What to Do About It, Harvard Business Review (2015)A score predicts an outcome only for the use it was validated for, so a general leadership judgement is not evidence about a specific plan.
Predictive validity, Wikipedia (2026)
What it cannot tell you
Leadership fit against the plan says nothing about whether the plan itself is sound, only whether the people in place can carry it. It also does not compare individuals to a general standard of capability, so a reading of poor fit against one plan carries no verdict about how those same leaders would fare against a different one.
Questions
A leadership assessment describes a person against a general standard, similar to a test score reported without reference to a specific criterion. As the Wikipedia entry on predictive validity from 2026 notes, a score predicts an outcome only for the use it was validated for. Fit against the plan asks about this specific demand.
The fit conclusion is out of date and needs revisiting. That is why a fit judgement carries a review date and why a material change in the plan, the ownership, the operating model or the pressure triggers a fresh reading rather than waiting for an annual cycle.
Usually not. Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull found in 2015 that only 11% of managers believed all their company's strategic priorities had the resources needed for success. A plan can outrun any leadership, however capable, and the arrangement is usually the cheaper half to change.
Only loosely, and the looseness should be stated. A plan that is still moving produces a fit reading with wide uncertainty. The useful version waits until the plan is defined enough to say what it will demand, which is also when the reading can still change the commitment.
The person who owns the consequence of the plan, with the reasoning and the counter-evidence attached so they can disagree with it. It is input to their decision rather than a verdict, and the decision about any individual remains theirs and is taken by a named person.