By Ross Buchanan
What CEO would not admit to some degree of room for improvement from their leadership team? When working with CEOs, one of the questions that I often ask is, “on a scale of 0 to 10 where would they rate the effectiveness of their leadership team?” Typically the answers that I hear are in the range of 5 to 7. I have had CEO’s answer on the low end of the scale, sometimes as low as 2 or 3, but those cases usually involve a new CEO who has inherited the existing leadership team.
So what does a 5, 6 or 7 out of 10 really mean? To me it means a lot. And it is all good news. If you believe as I do that the success of the organization is a direct reflection of the effectiveness of the leadership team, then these kinds of scores speak loud and clear and highlight an incredible wealth of untapped potential.
As an example, a leadership team operating at a 7 could improve nearly 30% by stepping up to a 9. If in our example the organization is a business with annual revenues of $10 million that means an additional $3 million of revenue. If they were enjoying gross profit margins of 30 per cent, we are really talking about an additional $3 Million of profits.
The same kind of quantifiable impact is also available to organizations that do not use profits to measure success. Often in organizations that are not driven by profits, one of the areas that will be most impacted by leadership enhancement is in the reduction of stress and frustration in the workplace.
Is it time to ‘tune-up’ the performance and ‘tune-in’ to the potential of your leaders and managers? Some of the key questions that you might want to ask are:
1. To what degree is our team successfully executing on the strategic plan?
2. How well does the team work together collaboratively?
3. To what degree do the members of the team engage in the “real” conversations?
4. How limited is the team by historical conflicts between team members?
5. Is the team working “in” the business and trapped in the past or are they working “on” the business and focused on the future?
The answer to these five questions should give you a good indication of how much your leadership team could benefit from a tune-up...or not.
If there is one thing that I have learned over the years it is that leadership teams are like cars: complex machines that require regular maintenance, occasional new parts, and a certain amount of high-speed driving to keep their engines primed. Without these things, they break down or, like old cars, run rough, sputtering noisily, belching fumes and generally stinking up the neighborhood. Just like the price of ignoring maintenance on a car, CEOs and senior HR leaders tell us that the cost of ignoring the maintenance of your leadership team is just too high.
Gordon Houston is the president and CEO of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, an amalgamation of the three Lower Mainland port authorities. One of the first things Houston did was plan a session for the leaders that came from each of the three previous organizations. On its own the team would have gelled over time, but with the need to have the team working together as effectively as possible, as soon as possible, the intent was to accelerate the process.
Houston is a proponent of strong leadership teams being a product of evolution versus creation. “It takes time,” he says. “The more time a team can spend together the stronger they will be. I occasionally hear tell me that they are too busy to attend our regular Executive meetings, and at that point I know it is time for some maintenance.”
One of the key aspects of a leadership team tune-up that Houston sees great value in is “being honest with our peers and accepting that feedback for the purpose intended is fundamental to a strong leadership team. Having the courage to deliver and the humility to listen bonds a team.”
While the CEO is often the person in the organization who commits to taking action on enhancing the effectiveness of the Leadership Team, it is often the senior HR Leader in the organization who initially sees the need and is asked to orchestrate the opportunity for the team. Coleen Hunter of Pharmasave and Darcy O’Grady of Aspreva are two senior HR Leaders who have had experienced this first hand.
Coleen Hunter, the national director of HR for Pharmasave believes that “all teams, no matter how highly performing, can benefit from a tune-up from time to time.” While working with a previous employer, the team tune-up concept was used to melt the innovative and solutions-based focus of a California based technology group into the existing culture of the firm.
”Our challenge was how to incorporate the “best of the best” from their culture and knit it into the ‘rest of the best’ from our existing culture, without a culture meltdown,” explains Hunter. The result was that the optimum culture was achieved in a much shorter time frame than it would have taken if it was left to happen on its own.
Darcy O’Grady, the vice president of HR for Aspreva, organized a leadership team tune-up for his firm’s international leadership team that he believes “resulted in strengthening the cohesion of our global leadership team. The team tune-up produced a clarity and alignment around our strategic direction and core thematic goals, significantly improved accountability and execution, and confirmed trust, bonding and "esprit de corps" amongst the leadership team.” All of this from a two-day experience? In fact, for this firm the initial team tune-up worked so well that the next step was to make the same kind of opportunity available to the global management team.
One of the things that O’Grady strongly recalls about the experience is, “The lexicon of putting the "moose on the table". The moose is a symbol of the unspoken conversations that are critical to the success of the team - yet are not being had.
A successful tune-up should seek to build and enhance both the “leadership effectiveness” of individuals and the collaborative competency of the team. By targeting optimal, highly functional behaviour you are able to help the participants achieve their mission critical objectives. One of the primary purposes of the kind of a tune-up is to help people transition themselves from learned, self-limiting patterns of behaviour within their comfort zone to new styles of proven leadership that produce immediate and significant results.
While every session needs to be fine-tuned for the team and the individuals, the foundations of any program that work well includes the following:
1. The ability to understand, respect and appreciate diversity of style;
2. The ability to manage and utilize polarity of thought;
3. The ability to wade into the ‘real’ conversations in the face of discomfort and possible conflict;
4. The ability to build “rust in the workplace;
5. The ability to inspire and help others to release the untapped human potential and discretionary effort and talent that lies with them;
6. The ability to accelerate the performance of people and the productivity of the organization; and
7. The ability to work with others in a collaborative, cooperative way to create a synergy that becomes a multiplier of results.
Personally, I have found that self-knowledge, insights into human polarity, and effective communications are key components that need to be in place before an individual can optimize their leadership effectiveness, and in turn, enhance the effectiveness and success of the leadership team.
In addition to skill development, leadership team tune-up provides the opportunity to wade into revealing rather than concealing conversations. Rather than attempting to bury resentments, which are guaranteed to show up sooner or later, team members need to be encouraged to let their colleagues know what they need to do differently or what they need to stop doing if the team is to continue to prosper and grow together.
What kind of metrics should you expect from a leadership team tune-up of this nature? One of my favourite sayings is something along the lines of, “If everything is important then nothing is.” What is the one big thing that would have the most significant impact on the success of your organization? The determination of the key performance indicators is dependant upon the objective.
While the primary objective for one team might be to build revenue by 20 per cent in the next six months, for another it may be “a 10 per cent improvement in workforce productivity in 90 days” or for “to increase the percentage of employees who believe their managers demonstrate the desired organizational behaviours and communicate effectively by 50% in six months”.
While the goal and the key performance indicators may change what remains consistent is the need for one critical goal driving the team that is both of an urgent nature and quantifiable.
Without a doubt a big piece of the leadership puzzle is all about courage and perhaps no more so than when it comes to taking the lead on this sort of an initiative. The two comments that I most commonly hear from CEOs and HR Leaders who have acted on this kind of an initiative are “...we should have done this a long time ago” and “where were you 5 years ago?” The potential for rewards are remarkable but there is no doubt that it takes a leader with a huge amount of courage to take the lead.
.....................................................................................................................................
Ross Buchanan (ross@srigroup.net.) is a Vancouver-based Leadership Advisor who specializes in Strategic Planning and Leadership Team Tune-Ups through his company Strategic Results International.
Reprinted from PeopleTalk Magazine, Fall 2008