The Senior Leadership Team is the crux to successful strategy execution within any organization. A great team can take a flawed strategy and turn it into something really exciting, but a dysfunctional team can wreak havoc on the best strategy in the world. In CMOE’s 30 years of experience in helping organizations around the world, we have seen that a quality leadership team is the catalyst that drives change and propels the organization through difficult or seemingly impossible obstacles.
A senior leadership team that is in sync can and will adjust to changing market conditions, competition threats and can navigate the organization through a sea of uncertainty. In fact, effective strategy execution requires active and courageous leadership at many levels (they instill a “can do” spirit through courageous coaching, feedback and accountability). Talented leaders will create an environment that makes it easier to achieve innovations, improve productivity, and fuel superior value proposition for customers. The key to this is:
• information flow
• information about customers
• opportunities
• innovative ideas
• competitor moves
• operational problems
The leadership team has to sponsor vertical and horizontal information flow across functional silos. A successful vertical information flow allows everyone in the organization to understand, contribute, and hold each other accountable for completing tasks required to accomplishing the strategy. Leading horizontal collaboration and connectivity unleashes motivation and growth ideas as well as cost, quality, and process concepts to truly keep your organization on top of the heap and differentiate you from your competitors.
The senior leadership team has to work in unison to have successful strategy formulation and execution. Unfortunately, many senior groups are made up of high-performing individuals who haven’t learned how to be a high-performing team.
In order to add value to the organization and create long-term sustained growth, senior teams must have the following:
1. A deep level of trust and openness when ideas and data are being exchanged.
2. Willingness to collaborate and network within the team.
3. A seniorlead group who is willing to examine how it solves problems and makes decisions.
4. A group who supports the organization’s core rules and procedures.
5. Members who actively support the team consensus on key issues and do not undermine the group’s decisions.
6. Members who are comfortable with conflict and differences.
7. A willingness to give and receive feedback from each other.
8. Flexibility and sensitivity around the needs, personalities and thinking styles of the various members; members must understand and appreciate the unique nature of each member.
Achieving success with any strategy is a significant achievement.
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