 |
|
"The term "team" to describe some
top management groups is a misnomer...what often
exists is a set of executives who operate quite
distinctly from each other."
|
|
"Fragmentation
and Other Problems CEOs have with their Top
Management Teams."
D.C. Hamrick, California Management
Review, Spring 1995 |
The
working styles and habits of senior executives typically
make them excellent individual performers. Unfortunately
though, those styles are counter-productive when it comes
to working on an executive team. A collective
group of individuals does not make a team. Despite
this knowledge many executive "teams" exhibit
behaviors that speak to their lack of collaborative work:
- Meeting
too infrequently to accomplish the critical
requirements of the
leadership of an organization.
- Meetings
that are perfunctory information exchanges that
focus little on the
"bad" news that may be
confronting the organization.
- A
lack of trust of colleagues that manifests in an
unwillingness to share the
real issues confronting their
functional areas of the organization, thus
preventing the team
from ever creating solutions that
may stave off disaster.
Dynamics
of Executive Teams
The
results of interviews with CEOs of major companies
supports our experience with top-level teams. CEOs'
identify five areas of concern related to executive
team performance:
-
Harmful
internal rivalries.
-
Inadequate
capabilities of a single executive.
-
"Groupthink"
or excessive like-mindedness.
-
A
common shortcoming of several members of the
entire team.
-
Fragmentation,
manifest by executives pursuing their own
agendas with minimal collaboration.
|
| Emersus
will provide services to create top-level teams
that are focused in their efforts, honest in their
interactions and productive as they truly
collaborate. |
|
