Tag Archives: leadership team

Get Aligned, Get Clear, Manage to Lead

How Core Leaders get clear about what problem their organization solves for whom.

Core Leaders who all describe the problem their organization solves for whom in the same way are apt to provide more consistent guidance and direction and so increase the odds of better performance across the board.

To get clear or to test for clarity, invite each Core Leader to:

  • Collect and consolidate input from each leader.  Note points of alignment and departure.
  • Convene a Core Leadership Group session to share and discuss collected input.  Encourage leaders to iterate to a consolidated articulation; possibly over several sessions.
  • OPTION: Submit consolidated statement for review and comment by select certified IntelliVen students, clients, and followers by filling out and submitting theabove template.
  • Share consolidated articulation with Management Team.
  • Edit to reflect refinements based on input from managers.
  • Review with All Hands in written and stand-up presentations to inform, guide; solicit reaction and collect suggestions for improvement.
  • Revise as appropriate after review with Core Leaders and Management Team.
  • Finalize and publish for use in internal and external communications as a constant reminder, and to re-enforce clarity about, what the organization does for whom and why as well as to be clear about what the organization does not do.
  • Review and revise annually to reflect updated and expanded thinking in the face of experience

See also:

Grow, People Matters

How organization leaders can make important changes while also developing the next generation of leaders.

Leave a comment

Every organization has room to improve.  Most organization leaders know improvement is needed as well as how specifically they would like to evolve but do not have the time or energy to bring their clear ideas to fruition because they are short on leadership capacity.

There is almost always a great deal of untapped capacity right under their noses embodied in those in their organization who are itching for a way to make a difference and who are ready to step up and lead the way to making things better.

Action Committees are a great way to both develop future leaders and to implement needed change.  Below are listed key elements that if embraced will put Action Committees on track to success. Continue reading How organization leaders can make important changes while also developing the next generation of leaders. →

Focus, Manage to Lead, People Matters

How to make sure every top team member does one thing right.

Leave a comment

CEOs should consider the following when assigning tasks to leadership team members:

  • Members of the leadership team are likely to be the most capable people in the organization and therefore among the most important to deploy optimally.
  • Each needs to be especially clear about what is most important for them to do and then spend the lion-share of their time doing it.
  • If something is important to do, then someone important ought to be in charge of getting it done.
  • Each member of the top team ought to be in charge of something important.
  • It is not possible to be personally responsible for more than one or two important things at a time.

The idea is to ensure that at least what well-deployed leaders focus on goes well and to model how things should be done for the rest of the organization. Think of it this way: leadership team members don’t have to get everything right, but they each have to get something right.

The Problem

Most people, including even most top leaders, instinctively choose to spend their time doing many more than one or two things, possibly because in their minds:

  • Doing many things increases the odds that something will go well.
  • Having too many things to do gives a great excuse for not being successful at any particular thing.
  • The need to think hard about how to spend time is replaced by the much easier rule to spend time based on demands of the next email, text, tweet, phone call, conversation, knock on the door, etc.
  • Having so many things vying for attention makes a leader feel powerful and busy, often to the point of having a “Hero complex”.

On the other hand, having many things to do means the most important people do not meet their goals because:

  • Each task gets too little time, attention, and effort.
  • Each leader works hard, but gets little done, gets tired, loses confidence, and feels ineffective yet has an inflated sense of self importance.

The CEO’s job is to make clear what is most important for each leadership team member to do and to arrange for them to do it, and little-to-nothing else, even though it may cause leadership team members to feel a greater risk of failure.

The Solution

To solve the problem, the CEO should:

  • Work with each leader to rank their assignments in priority order.
  • Ask if the odds of success on the most important task would go up if the leadership team member were to spend more time on it.  The answer will likely be “Yes”.
  • Tell the leader to spend all their time on their top priority task until the odds of success would not get any better with any more time on it.

Most leaders will shudder at the thought of having so little to do as they realize it is now incumbent on them to be successful at just one important task. It occurs quickly that they might not be successful.  When they ask: “What if I fail?” the CEO should express so much confidence that the leader will succeed that s/he will absolve her/him of such risk and promise to assign yet another important task should she/he fail at this one.

The CEO should add that if the leader puts everything into completing an assigned task, but fails on six different tasks in sequence, then, and only then, maybe it will be time to discuss whether there is good fit with the organization.

The intent is to put the fear of failure far into the future to free the the leader to concentrate on the task they have been asked to do and not on the downside consequences of failure. The fear of failure thus moves from the leader to the CEO who is then highly motivated to provide assistance, resources, governance, and incentives to maximize the odds of success.

Related Points

  • When a matter comes up for discussion, ask if it is important.  If it is, then ask who is in charge of making sure it goes well.  If no one comes to mind then assign someone or second guess its importance.
  • When speaking with someone on the leadership team, ask what important thing they are responsible for completing.  If nothing comes to mind then it is fair to wonder why they are on the leadership team.
  • If something is not important then no one should even be thinking about it.
  • The points presented in this post align well with Steven Covey’s parable about Big Rocks. and the first three principles of his 7 Habits for Effective People: end in mind, first things first, and be proactive.
Get Aligned, Manage to Lead, People Matters

Form a Core Leadership Team to guide and drive peak performance.

No one leader, and not even any two, has the breadth of competence and depth of capacity to do anything of much significance alone. Successful organizations usually have a core leadership team of three to seven top executives who are diverse in terms of skills, perspective, and experience yet aligned in an unyielding pursuit of specific goals. They are, in short, a diverse, cohesive, cooperative leadership unit.

The odds of success go way up when the top team has at least three players with different, complementary strengths that are all important to the success of the organization and who have:

  • Established relationships in that they know and understand each other well and enjoy working together.
  • Extraordinary desire, drive, capacity, and competence to accomplish their collective goal.
  • Instinct and innate drive to work with each other and on what they can do to help the organization succeed.
  • Agreed to give credit for any and all success to everyone else so as to not compromise the odds of organization success by vying among themselves for individual credit or praise.
  • Committed to grow and empower others over time to behave and perform as they do.

When a core team grows beyond seven in number, successful organizations find a subgroup, again of three or so, evolves to provide direction and guidance to the larger team.

The inner circle can be called a core leadership group, an executive committee, a steering committee, an executive leadership team, or any other name. Whatever it is called, it is best to keep it low-key so other leaders do not stress about whether they are part of the group or not. It is simply a group committed to keeping everything moving in the right direction no matter where they happen to be in terms of organization function, hierarchy, or seniority.

The group meets regularly to keep things on track using the following  agenda:

  • Set and manage the leadership team agenda.
  • Outline and guide the evolution and adoption of the organization’s target mission, vision, purpose, culture, strategy, annual plan, policies, and core processes.
  • Identify key areas needing attention and drive to be sure they are addressed.
  • Set operating priorities.
  • Set intent and key parameters to guide core processes (e.g., assignments, incentive compensation, goals, performance appraisals, promotions, salary reviews, staff development, governance, metrics of performance, communications, etc.).
  • Prepare and communicate goals, direction and status to the stakeholders including employees, directors, investors, lenders, clients, and partners.
  • Consider and act on recommendations from Board of Directors, investors, and advisers including investment decisions.