Leadership never had an operating system.
Until now.
Sales has Salesforce.
Finance has SAP.
Leadership has LEAD21.
LEAD21 — from 21 Leadership Codes to your own curated system. Your mechanism for strong growth and complex transformation under pressure — through alignment and synchronized leadership at every level.
LEAD21 Grand MasterClass
How leaders achieve in 21 hours what takes others years — the complete program.
and a capability that nobody else has.Dr. Charles J. Pellerin · NASA
What leaders and boards say.
Gerald Hüsch is one of the most impactful leadership trainers I have worked with in the past 20 years. And I believe I am in a good position to judge.
I have never seen the Huesch Evidence-Based Leadership System fail to deliver the highest performance in terms of efficiency, impact and results. When I don't apply it consciously — I need a very good day!
Excellent seminar! Turning teams into high-performance teams takes tools like these — reproducible and replicable. Purely intuitive leadership has reached its limit.
The same results. Your system. In 3 days.
What these voices achieved, you build yourself in the Grand MasterClass — not a theory marathon, but your finished leadership operating system to take home.
Join nowUp to 50 billion
leadership touchpoints.
Every single workday.
Up to 12.5 trillion per year. The largest human coordination challenge in the world — and to this day, largely left without a system.
500 million leaders worldwide. Every moment decides: clarity or confusion. Acceleration or delay.
Leadership moments on an ordinary working day — each one a fork in the road.
In exceptional phases the density doubles — exactly when every moment counts the most.
Extrapolated across the year. Most companies invest millions in strategy, processes and technology — yet these moments remain largely unsystematized.
What is left to chance cannot scale. What is systematized multiplies.
Leadership was the only business function
without an operating system. Until now.
Successful intuition — cast into a system.
21 methods. Plug & play. From day one.
A better Leadership for a better World.
TRANSFORMATION
Discover LEAD21 — arguably the world's most powerful operating system for leadership. Unmatched in delivering complex transformations under maximum pressure: budget, time, expectations. Transformation and alignment in record time: what normally takes months or years, LEAD21 achieves in 21 hours — across 7 weeks, or faster. We help you curate the 7 to 9 most powerful levers for your transformation. Precision-fit.
EFFICIENCY
"Our current level of efficiency got us here." — "What comes next demands far more from every leader and the entire organization." — LEAD21 closes that gap. Together, to the highest maturity level of efficiency. Explained step by step. Measurable immediately.
AUTOMATED
Successful intuition cast into a system — proven over years in highly complex projects. LEAD21 is evidence-based and gives you methods and mechanics that work instantly across hierarchies, departments and borders, because it positively automates the behavior of everyone involved. A new, appreciative high-performance culture emerges. We stay with you all the way to outstanding success.
HAIRLINE CRACKS
Complex ventures usually fail for two reasons: wishful thinking, and the overlooked hairline cracks that bring down even the largest dams. LEAD21 helps you act early — and carry great responsibility with great confidence, without negative stress spreading through the organization.
NEW PERFORMANCE DIMENSIONS
Break through the known limits of team and organizational performance. With LEAD21, you and your teams experience performance levels previously out of reach. LEAD21 supports, empowers and refines every system already in place: OKR, Agile, Scrum, leadership principles and values.
Scientifically accompanied one-year study with 567 professionals and executives at a European industrial group (78% response rate), independent study leads: Prof. Dr. Beate Hanson (clinical epidemiologist) & Dr. Branko Kopjar (University of Washington).
What professionals and executives expect — estimated improvement with consistent application:
Expectation survey of 143 professionals and executives from 9 organizations (2016–2019), 18 dimensions: estimated improvement with consistent application of the LEAD21 instruments (median — outlier-robust). Self-reported, not measured effects. Source: Huesch (2026), LEAD21 Tool-Impact Expectation Survey, Working Paper.
These numbers. In your organization.
In 3 days you build your operating system from 21 Leadership Codes — live, in a small circle, applicable from day one.
Secure your seatWhat LEAD21 is really worth.
Scale the logic to your company — the calculation structure stays identical.
¹ Estimated value/revenue potential with consistent application — not an investment calculation, no guaranteed effects. The amounts shown are based exclusively on independent external studies and do not constitute a guarantee of economic results.
Gerald Huesch has had the privilege of training and accompanying more than 30,000 managers. In 30+ countries, carrying more than €550 billion in cumulative responsibility. Participants from some of the largest and best-known companies and corporations in the world, across a remarkable range of industries — including pilots and physicians, as well as ambitious start-ups and scale-ups.
LEADERSHIP — STRATEGY — BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Gerald Huesch's leadership system LEAD21 delivers far more than multiplied performance — it brings more humanity and appreciation into the world, through a new, more precise, more efficient and systematic way of leading and working together. Gerald is able to align an entire corporation within 21 hours — across 7 weeks, in 1.5-hour online sessions — like never before. Unique in the world.
This endless pursuit is my life — to positively change, in every way I can, how we lead in the future. A better leadership for a better world.
Why systematic leadership works measurably —
in dimension, in euros, in your own team.
For your own evaluation — 9 evidence-based questions · about 10 minutes · result instantly on screen. Free — and you'll see in black and white where your team stands today and where the biggest lever lies.
Evidence & Research on Transformation and Performance Climate
George H. Litwin & Robert A. Stringer (1968) · Spencer & Spencer (1993) · Gerald Huesch (2019–2026)
David C. McClelland (1961)The father of modern motivation research
McClelland, D. C. (1961). The Achieving Society.
McClelland, D. C. (1973). Testing for Competence Rather Than Intelligence. American Psychologist, 28(1), 1–14.
McClelland, D. C. (1987). Human Motivation.
McClelland showed that neither intelligence nor personality alone determines success, but above all three motives: achievement (need for achievement), influence (need for power), belonging (need for affiliation). His research launched the paradigm shift from 'What does a person know?' to 'What drives a person?'
Motivation is the foundation of every performance climate. Without activated motives, neither peak performance nor sustained engagement can emerge.
McBer & Company (from 1965)The bridge between science and leadership practice
Founder: Dr. David C. McClelland
With the founding of McBer & Company, the systematic translation of motivation research into the practice of leadership, personnel selection and organizational development began for the first time. McBer developed the first competency models, explaining top performance not through intelligence but through observable behavior, motives and competencies.
'Performance doesn't happen by chance — it happens through the right competencies in the right leadership environment.'
McBer thereby laid the foundation for evidence-based leadership systems.
George H. Litwin & Robert A. Stringer (1968)The discovery of performance climate
Litwin, G. H., & Stringer, R. A., Jr. (1968). Motivation and Organizational Climate. Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.
Litwin and Stringer were the first to demonstrate experimentally: leadership changes organizational climate. And this climate directly influences motivation, performance, innovation, collaboration and ownership of responsibility.
'Leadership creates climate, and climate drives motivation and performance.'
Performance climate is no accident. It is created by day-to-day leadership behavior.
Spencer & Spencer (1993)Competence makes performance reproducible
Spencer, L. M., Jr., & Spencer, S. M. (1993). Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance. John Wiley & Sons.
Building on hundreds of McBer studies, Spencer & Spencer developed the world's best-known competency models. They showed that top performance is observable, measurable and developable.
'Competencies are underlying characteristics of an individual that are causally related to superior performance.' (Spencer & Spencer, 1993, p. 9)
Competent leaders create a performance-enabling climate. This makes performance systematically repeatable.
Gerald Huesch (2019–2026)Closes the gap between measuring performance climate and shaping it systematically.
Huesch, G. LEAD21 Meta-Study (ongoing evidence collection and meta-study).
Huesch, G. LEAD21 Leadership Climate Study (cross-company leadership and climate research).
LEAD21 is the first to combine motivation research (McClelland), organizational climate (Litwin & Stringer), competency research (Spencer), leadership psychology, decision research, meeting research and transformation research into one integrated Leadership Operating System. Not individual leadership tools, but the entire leadership operating system, developed measurably.
'Leadership is no longer taught. It is installed.'
Recalibrating the dimensions: LEAD21 shows that performance climate is not only measurable but systematically shapeable. Repeatable leadership routines turn good leadership into a lasting high-performance climate. LEAD21 — Leadership as an Operating System, as Category Owner for Leadership and Human Coordination at Scale.