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How “The Boss” Can Constructively Lead Execution:
For enthusiastic collaboration to become the norm, the CEO must lead in a way that draws others into the process as thought partners. S/he can’t do that strictly by holding the mantel of positional authority. He or she can’t treat employees as if they were dependents. Achieving enthusiastic collaboration can’t be done by hording information. It can’t happen by the boss jumping into every crisis and personally directing everyone through the problem. It’s only by enrolling people to serve as business partners/thought partners that s/he optimizes the capabilities of the organization as a whole, and isn’t that what leadership is all about? The CEO can productively play the role of a player-coach on the company’s executive team.
You can use the coach’s posture to generate powerful results. It takes a concerted effort. It will take dedication and practice.
This usually requires a deliberate mind shift from your day-to-day approach.
Many CEOs, in the crush of daily business, accept shoddy thinking or inadequate preparation.
They get mad at their direct reports for mediocre performance, but they tolerate and accept it. Then in turn, they trust less, and give fewer people free rein.
Over time they display an attitude of impatience and intolerance. By indulging those feelings, they diminish the ability of the team to deliver effectively in the future.
Intellectual arrogance and simple bad manners can teach a team to under perform.
If you accept mediocre performance, complacency, and off the cuff performances, YOU are telling the organization that this level of performance is acceptable.
Even if you are obviously angry or frustrated about it, you reinforce shoddy performance by accepting it.
It’s the role of today’s CEO to optimize the organization’s thinking ---not to be the smartest person in the room.
Indeed, if the CEO always has and provides the answers, direct reports quit functioning as thinkers.
Without meaning to, these CEOs actually diminish the overall IQ of the organization.
On the other hand, when the boss treats the executive team as thought partners, holding them accountable for rigorous thinking about the business, better decisions ensue.
Unless these expectations become a part of the corporate culture, rigorous performance, if it ever existed, eventually fades.
A process supporting thought partnerships supports and sustains the intellectual standards required for extraordinary performance.
An effective way to introduce this thought partnering process is to frame it as a business review process.
The process is then enacted through ongoing business conversations within the context of the business’ game plan.
Whether the game plan is described as the business idea, or in terms of the company’s brand promise, the goal is to achieve agile performance that is aligned with the company’s strategic intent.
Many companies lose value or market momentum because individuals or specific units work to optimize their own success rather than the success of the organization as a whole.
Optimizing individual success is a leftover from the beginnings of the industrial revolution. It’s counterproductive in the current business environment.
In our fast-moving world, value creation is a complex endeavor, which requires seeing the big picture.
To create value and generate success, it is critical to understand how your role and those of your business partners have to be played together.
Building And Sustaining High-Powered Action Cycles:
Building extraordinary execution is all about people with a shared purpose working together to create the best outcomes for the organization as a whole. What’s involved?
Let’s look at how you can create and coordinate these elements. The diagram on the next page illustrates the process for high-powered action.
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