CEOs and Team Building
By admin | March 20, 2008
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Your success as a CEO will be largely tied to your team building ability. Not only do great CEOs understand how to recruit a top executive team, but they also understand how to build cohesion among team members by leading them from the front by example. Great CEOs realize the importance of being consistently and intensely engaged with their CXOs. They understand how to effectively deploy these highly productive and valuable team members to create tremendous leverage and velocity across the enterprise. In today’s post I’ll share the questions that great CEOs use to align the interests and focus the efforts of their executive team…
It is not uncommon when working with new clients that I find very fractured executive teams where team members more frequently work against one another, rather than with one another. I often observe ego centered conflicts among senior executives, which turn into a competition for turf, budget, power, influence, control, and ultimately survival. As a CEO you can either pit your executives against one another, or have them collaboratively engage in supporting one another for the overall good of the enterprise. An executive team that actually embraces the concept of collaboration will substantially out perform a silo-centric executive team focused on empire building.
I have found that one of the most effective ways for CEOs to lead their senior executives is by holding them accountable through the use of key questions, which align interests and areas of focus. I strongly recommend to all CEOs that they routinely ask team members the following questions:
- What specific steps can we take to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty?
- What can we do to increase the life-cycle value of an account?
- Which markets, partners, clients, or other opportunities can add significant value to our business?
- What specific steps can you take to increase your area’s contribution margin?
- How are you driving innovation, and what specific ideas do you have for creating disruptive growth?
- Does our business model and infrastructure translate into a viable growth engine?
- Do our new initiatives add value to our core business? How?
- Do all initiatives support our brand positioning and increase brand equity?
- Does your division/group/business unit/department effectively and efficiently support our values, vision, and strategy? How?
- Does your division/group/business unit/department contribute to performance targets and attainment goals? How?
- How can we create a sustainable and dominant competitive advantage through your function, and what strategies, projects, programs, and initiatives can you offer as validation of proof of concept?
- What are the key performance indicators for your function? How are we measuring them, and are you hitting your targets? If not, why not?
- Do you have the necessary resources (financial, technology, talent, infrastructure, etc.) to hit your objectives?
- How can we improve the risk management, governance, control, and reporting functions in your area?
- Why should we make this investment? How does it drive revenue, profit, brand equity, competitive advantage, etc. What are the potential risks vs. possible rewards and what is the downside of not making the investment?
- What are your biggest obstacles and barriers to success? What are your plans to deal with them and what do you need from me?
- Are all your resources properly aligned and connected?
- What are the weakest points in your area and how do you plan to deal with them?
- Who are your strongest leaders and how are you developing them to handle more responsibility?
- What are you doing to attract new talent?
While the aforementioned list of questions is clearly not exhaustive, it offers some insight into where a CEO should focus their efforts and attention…
Topics: Leadership, Talent Management |
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