Viewed in BCG
A senior leadership team’s alignment and agility are crucial to a CEO’s success. When cohesive, this team effectively executes the CEO’s vision, but dysfunction can severely hinder organizational performance.
Talented individuals alone do not guarantee team success. The challenge lies in transitioning from leading a business unit to functioning as part of a unified senior team driving continuous growth and innovation.
The root of the problem often stems from qualities that propel managers to senior ranks.
Fostering heroes
These leaders are typically adept at achieving bold results within their domains, often prioritizing their team’s interests over the organization’s. Corporate cultures that reward individual “heroics” exacerbate this mindset, making it difficult to foster an enterprise-first approach.
Mentality shift
To build an effective senior leadership team, CEOs must instill a mindset that prioritizes the entire organization over individual domains. Standard team-building activities, while beneficial, often fail to create lasting change. A sustained enterprise-first mentality requires fundamental shifts in how senior leaders interact with each other and the company.
Key strategies include reframing decisions to align with the enterprise’s overall purpose, strategy, and priorities.
Organization benefit
Incentives should be realigned to discourage siloed thinking and promote actions benefiting the entire organization.
Senior leaders must be willing to sacrifice personal projects or positions for the greater good.
Heart, head and hands
The transformation requires embedding a holistic, human-centric approach, focusing on the “Head, Heart, and Hands” of leadership. This involves:
- Identifying Priorities: Clearly defining the team’s focus areas and delegating appropriately.
- Building Trust: Cultivating mutual trust, transparency, and support among team members.
- Fostering Collaboration: Empowering the organization to work collaboratively towards common goals.
Super teams necessitate ongoing self-reflection and commitment to unlearning old habits.
Adjusting behaviors
Senior leaders, despite their intelligence and talent, must consistently evaluate and adjust behaviors to enhance team effectiveness.
With the right approach, superheroes can indeed become a super team, driving sustained organizational success.
