IMF.
Influence — Momentum — Field. A diagnostic for senior leaders entering new accountability surfaces. Used to assess what kind of authority a leader actually carries inside a system before any intervention is designed.
Authority, located on three axes.
Authority is not the same as title. A leader who has just been promoted may carry less actual influence than they did six months ago in their previous role. IMF measures three orthogonal dimensions of working authority and locates the leader on each.
Five steps to locate the leader's actual authority.
Map influence
Who, in this system, actually does what the leader asks? Names. Not titles.
Measure momentum
What is the rate at which the leader's decisions are converting to action? Track it.
Assess field strength
How far does the leader's authority radiate? Two reporting layers? Five? Beyond the firm?
Plot the IMF triangle
Three coordinates. The shape of the triangle reveals the leadership posture.
Choose the imbalance to address
Most leaders have one weak axis. Strengthen it before strengthening the other two.
Three anonymised cases.
New SBU Head with high title, low momentum
Decisions weren't converting because the leader was over-consulting before deciding. IMF diagnosed momentum gap.
Decision-to-action time cut by 60%. SBU revenue ramp accelerated by a quarter.
VP whose field was shrinking
Leader's authority radiating only one layer down — peers no longer treated him as influential. Field rebuild via targeted stakeholder work.
Peer-influence score 41 → 78 in 8 months.
Independent Director on a board with low influence
Influence axis weak despite formal authority. IMF surfaced that the director's voice was respected but not deferred to.
Board influence repositioned. Director invited to chair the audit committee within 6 months.
Cases anonymised by sector and seniority. Numerical outcomes are exact and locked in the engagement scorecards.
RE:CODE™ integration.
IMF runs inside RE:CODE™ Step 1 (Diagnose) — to locate the leader's actual authority before designing the engagement.