The Chemistry of Strategy. John W Myrna

The Chemistry of Strategy

alt="images"/>Competence: knowing what they are best at and seeking help with what they want to improve.

Caring: understanding and considering what is important to each of their teammates, their company, and their customers.

Bill, the CEO we met at the start of this chapter, focused on building Friction PR’s executive leadership team and it paid handsome dividends. He replaced several executives with strategic thinkers. He held everyone accountable for behaviors that were consistent with the meeting rules and roles. They were able to leverage their new client to change the status quo and put the company on a clear path to turning their vision into reality.

A healthy executive team requires a mix of counterbalancing advocates.

The invisible chemistry

There is one additional characteristic of a healthy executive leadership team, diversity of passions.

Gary was at it again. “We need to order the additional press now or we will be unable to meet our commitment to customers later this year.” The team members nodded their heads. Gary was always pushing to increase capacity at Specialty Printing, the company where he worked. The CFO turned his attention to the Sales VP: “Our VP of Manufacturing wants us to invest another $1.5 million dollars, is the pipeline strong enough to warrant that?” After reviewing the current and expected business, the decision was made this time to place the order. This was a fortunate choice, as the company would otherwise have been crushed by the surge of new business that arrived later that year.

Gary proved to be a reliable steward, making sure that the company remained able to deliver on its customer commitments. He also developed a very capable second in command, Ben, who took over when Gary retired. Production continued to run smoothly under Ben’s leadership, except for one major thing. Ben decided to skip the frustration of constantly having to push for new capacity. He’d just wait until he was asked before proposing any new investments. Finally, about a year after Gary had retired, the company lost two major customers because it suddenly found itself unable to meet their delivery requirements. The team hadn’t recognized that when Gary retired, they lost an essential element of their successful chemistry – a passionate advocate for capacity.

A healthy executive team requires a mix of counterbalancing advocates. There must be an advocate constantly pushing for more aggressive growth balanced by an advocate for control and profitability. There should be an advocate pushing to explore new products and technology balanced by another pushing to fully exploit the current ones. Take stock of how the mix of passions changes whenever the membership of your executive team changes. Make sure that the company’s decisions don’t become too conservative or risky because a counterbalancing voice has been lost.

The next chapter outlines a proven strategic planning process. The planning process can be more important than the plan itself. It’s likely that any of the members of the executive leadership team could create a reasonable plan. But, for a plan to be implemented, each member of the executive team has to understand, agree, and internalize not only what the plan is but why they’re taking this particular course (and not the many possible alternatives). The process is the catalyst that activates the plan.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The Chemistry of an Executive Leadership Team

What are the major concepts in this chapter?

Each team member must develop trust in each other’s character, competence, and caring.

Each team member must provide strategic leadership, effectively communicating what the strategy is, why that is the strategy, and coaching people on how to implement it.

Each team member must understand, support and defend each other within the team and outside it.

The executive leadership team is also characterized by their balance of competing passions. There must be advocates pushing the strategic themes of growth, risk, sustainability, and productivity.

The executive leadership team needs to be a balanced group of five to twelve members with sufficient strategic and tactical understanding of the business to shape strategy.

Why are these major concepts important?

Everybody in the company contributes to success.

Failure is the exclusive responsibility of leadership. (Doing the right things adequately will always let you outperform those who are doing the wrong things well.)

How can you apply these major concepts?

Commit to a formal strategic planning process that fosters team development and chemistry. For example, “we will utilize a formal strategic planning process with regular follow-up.”

Identify key new strategic executive positions that need to be filled over the next five years as the company evolves. For example, “we will recruit/develop senior executives in Finance – CFO, Marketing – CMO, and International Sales.”

Practice what you preach by insisting on following the roles in strategic meetings.

Participants’ Role

1.Look at the organization through the eyes of the CEO.

2.Represent the organization, not yourself, not your people, not your department, not your function.

CEO’s Role

1.Act as a participant, not as the “omniscient individual.”

2.Suspend your usual problem-solving and “time-saving” operating mode.

Practice what you preach by insisting on following rules that develop trust, consensus, and commitment in strategic meetings.

Abide by the ten rules for productive meetings

1.Listen actively.

2.Speak up and say what needs to be said – there are no sacred cows.

3.Focus on solving problems rather than placing blame or being defensive.

4.Respect differences of opinion.

5.Avoid cheap shots.

6.Stay focused.

7.Add only new information to the discussion. Don’t flog a dead horse.

8.Permit only one discussion at a time.

9.Silence implies understanding and agreement.

10.Finish with consensus and commit to action.

1A note about lists. Too often

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