They struggle to defend it.
You know your teams need to think better together. Decide faster. Handle complexity. Reduce friction. Retain talent. But when the CFO asks, “What’s the return?” the answer often drifts into stories, not numbers.
And stories don’t survive budget season.
So here’s the compassionate challenge:
If you can’t measure the ROI on team development, don’t run it.
But if you measure the right things, you can.
Most organisations measure development like this:
None of which move EBITDA.
Team development isn’t a “wellbeing” initiative. It’s a performance lever. If it doesn’t shift commercial performance, decision quality, or risk exposure it’s theatre.
The question can’t be “Did they enjoy it?”
The question needs to be “Did the team create measurable commercial movement?”
You only need three measures.
Pick the team. Pick one high-value process. Baseline it. Run one focused Team Development Journey. Track monthly movement.
How long does it take your leadership team to move from issue identification to committed decision?
If it takes 30 days to align on a strategic pricing move, and that delay costs £500k in margin exposure, that’s a performance tax.
If, post-intervention, that drops to 15 days, you’ve just unlocked velocity.
And that velocity compounds.
Choose one process that truly matters:
Let’s say your product launch cycle is 9 months. Through better alignment, clearer governance, and reduced internal friction, it drops to 7 months.
If that product generates £5m annually, launching two months earlier unlocks roughly £833k in accelerated revenue.
That alone can fund years of development.
This is where aiming for 100x ROI can become realistic, particularly when focused on your highest value process.
The cost of replacing a senior leader is conservatively 1.5 - 2x salary. Often more when you factor disruption and cultural impact for an organisation.
If improved team dynamics reduce regretted exits by even one critical leader in 12 months, the math becomes uncomfortable, in a good way.
Development isn’t soft. Attrition is expensive.
Most performance issues aren’t capability gaps, they’re sophistication gaps. As organisations grow, complexity grows. If the team’s ability to handle complexity doesn’t evolve, friction increases. Decisions slow. Politics rise. Energy drops. Development must be vertical, not descriptive. We see this all the time:
“I’ve done a Hogan” ... “I know my MBTI” ... “I’ve just had a 360” ...
But then comes the real question
“What do I do now?”
Or worse
“What does this actually mean?”
Descriptive assessments are brilliant at one thing, describing the situation. But they leave the hard part to you.
Developmental assessments go further. They show you where you are and where to go next.
Think of it like way finding. A descriptive assessment tells you which island you’re standing on. A developmental assessment shows you how to move from island to island. So when teams deliberately increase their sophistication, how they think, how they relate, how they regulate pressure, performance accelerates.
We see this repeatedly. One of our client quadrupled market capitalisation and saw a 254% rise in share price within 18 months of starting their Team Journey. Another added £110m profit to the bottom line in 18 months.
These are leadership teams committing just 64 hours per year.
Yet we regularly see what would traditionally take 5 to 6 years achieved in six months.
That isn’t magic.
It’s measurement combined with deliberate development.
(You can explore the case studies on our website if you want the detail.)
The risk isn’t investing in your team. The risk is investing without measuring the development.
If you treat development as discretionary spend, it will always lose to short-term pressures. If you treat it as a performance engine, and prove it, it becomes non-negotiable.
CPOs don’t need better stories. They need better metrics.
Baseline three numbers, run one developmental journey, show the shift.
If it doesn’t move the dial, stop.
But in our experience, it does.