Do you agree that the effectiveness of your executive team unavoidably affects the culture of your organisation?
Or that the negative or positive influence of the executive team on mid-level managers, flows right down to the lowest team of staff?
There is indeed an alarming, direct correlation between the values, beliefs, behaviours and principles upheld, rewarded and criticized by the senior leadership team and what the organization becomes known for, its year-on-year performance and profit-generating ability.
Yet many business owners and organizations remain oblivious to this fact.
The business world today is more volatile than ever. Resources are spread out more thinly with Talent ruling the market. Mergers & acquisitions are the new order of the day. Technological disruptions and globalization are leading to the collapse of traditional markets.
And, in the midst of all these, organisations are expected to achieve more results with less while employees’ performance and productivity levels keep dropping.
So what is the way forward?
How can business owners save their company from ruin?
What can be done to ensure that business leaders do not get carried away with the external noise and instead, focus on developing their in-house capability and competitive advantage?
How can the executive team build up the effectiveness, efficiency and efficacy of the organization from the inside-out?
How to Improve the Effectiveness of Your Executive Team
Focus and Align Business Goals to Performance Metrics
One of the ways in which the leadership team can continuously and consistently influence the workforce to get the desired business results, over and over again, is by focusing on the business and aligning their strategies, plans, and accountabilities with the desired business outcomes.
Most business executives get caught up in the rat race of living in the moment and engrossed with the trivial, day-to-day issues and stressors as they arise.
While the day-to-day running of the business is essential, it is also vital for them to remain clear on the strategic direction of the company and align their performance metrics to the most important goals which directly move the organization forward.
Tips
- Divide the overall organisational strategy into quarterly goals that can be tracked weekly and allocated to each individual in the organization.
- Assign a number to every expected deliverable/result across all roles in the organization. This number becomes an objective measure that can be assessed at any time
- Communicate clearly to every employee on how their role/responsibility directly contributes to the overall organizational strategy.
- Track performance metrics with results instead of activities.
Get Rid of Resource-Hoarding Once and For All
Resource-hoarding is a phenomenon that is quite peculiar to the executive team. Frequently, leaders of the best-performing teams/departments are rewarded based on the results they generated internally instead of their contribution to the overall goals of the organization.
This often forces leaders to keep the best talents, hoard customer knowledge, and do all they can to advance, even when it is detrimental to the overall success of the organization. It becomes a survival mechanism.
While survival mentality is needed at all costs, especially with the unsettled business environment of today, this should be outward-facing.
This behaviour will help an organization push ahead of its competitors in the marketplace, but if endorsed internally can lead to conflict, resentments, tension and ultimately affect the productivity, engagement and performance of employees.
Tips
- Freely share organisational knowledge. Collaborations will only make the business stronger and not weaker
- Embed the all-for-one and one-for-all mentality. The overall business goals should always supersede individual departmental goals.
- Motivate every individual in the organization to freely share their ideas, opinions, suggestions, and contributions.
- Encourage more inter-departmental interactions and organization-wide meetings to promote a message of community and unity
Encourage Delegation
Your executive team should imbibe the practice of delegating tasks so as to avoid burnout. In many cases, the executives, in an effort to get things done fast, take on a lot more work and then end up being distracted from their actual roles.
Executives should not be afraid to have other team members take care of certain jobs when they have a busy schedule.
Tips
- Assign tasks to team leads and high performing employees
- Avoid micromanaging supervised employees
- Effectively communicate expectations on tasks given to team members.
Make Effort To Build a Team
Ninety percent of what we do in the world of work happens through a collaborative effort. Executives must understand that having a team and encouraging teamwork is a strategic imperative.
It is important to take steps to ensure that the executive members of staff in your organisation are aligned and working towards a single goal. Implementing team development initiatives helps to deliver sustainable development and effectiveness.
Tips
- Give time to tackling real issues for the team. Don’t waste time on unnecessary things
- Make efforts to make team size smaller. The biggest issue in failing to deal with team size is communication overload. The more members in a team, the more communication channels required to keep the team informed.
Take 30 Minutes to Get Started with Building an Effective Executive Team… You’ll be Glad You Did
One of the costliest mistakes an organization can make is having a patch-work and sleepwalking approach to executive team and leadership development initiatives.
Tips
- Hire the right people to join the leadership team from the get-go. People make the company, and likewise, the wrong people can destroy the organization. This is the very first step. Trust us; we wrote the book on hiring right.
- Have a clear succession plan. Having one wrong person on the leadership team is tantamount to having three evil competitors on your executive team.
- Prioritize team structure and strategy over routine day-to-day disturbances.
- Invest appropriately in executive team development. It should be seen as a continuous long-term investment instead of single out-of-the-blue events that do not drive the business goals and objectives.
- Encourage communication among the team members.
With over 15 years of experience partnering with Business Executives to build & sustain high performing organisations, Workforce Group has developed unrivalled expertise in the area of Leadership Development, People Management and Executive Team Effectiveness.
We have successfully developed and deployed turnkey solutions that have helped to address and correct the costly mistakes plaguing executive teams while implementing strategies aimed at developing & fine-tuning leadership capabilities across the board.
For more information about our Executive Team Effectiveness learning solutions, please send an email to learning@www.workforcegroup.com or schedule a free 30mins consultation with the Head of the Learning & Performance business here.
Ensure you implement these tips to boost the effectiveness of your executive team. If you enjoyed the post, please leave a comment and share with your colleagues.
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