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The voluminous research on leadership, along with multiple theories, makes it challenging for organizational leaders, managers, and trainers to keep track of and reconcile the different theories of leadership to derive benefits from them. We propose a leadership canvas as a meta-theory of leadership theories, integrating the major existing theories by highlighting the unifying principles that underpin these theories.

This paper has been triggered by students’ and executives’ questions regarding leadership theories and how they choose one over the other. In this paper, we have coded the leadership theories and plotted them on the two-dimensional framework using two dimensions: (1) the collaboration between leader and followers engrained in the theories, and (2) the leader focus, as implied by the different theorists.

Our proposed two-dimensional leadership canvas reveals that concepts in theories lower on the canvas are necessary conditions for theories higher on the leadership canvas. Thus, our framework illustrates how different leadership theories are part of a continuum rather than distinct from each other.

The proposed framework ensures a bird’s eye view of the theories, facilitating rapid comprehension of existing leadership theories regardless of readers’ prior knowledge. It also incorporates environmental complexity and leader focus in a single framework.

This study aims to examine the application of Wardley mapping on developing and implementing an information technology (IT) strategy in a small-scale business. This case study illustrates the potency of multitier analysis using Wardley mapping technique to explore capability gaps and areas to focus on before undertaking IT projects.

This study uses a single case of enterprise resource planning implementation and subsequent abandonment in a small-scale manufacturing company.

This study demonstrates that multitier analysis using Wardley mapping enables a comprehensive examination of organizational capabilities, including a granular analysis of issues that must be managed for successful implementation of an IT project.

While the findings of a single case study offer limited generalizability, this study sets out the approach that can be extended in more complex settings.

The approach to understanding the organizational capabilities required to execute IT projects, or any change management project, offers significant benefits to managers and leaders.

The authors make two distinct contributions: The Wardley mapping technique has emerged as a new tool for understanding business models, particularly in government projects notable in the UK. This study extends its application to the small-scale manufacturing sector. The second contribution is elaborating on multitier analysis, which allows a granular analysis of issues that can impair the IT project implementation, including an assessment of the organizational capabilities required to deliver a successful project.