I live in a family of nerds! I’m surrounded by technical geniuses that are constantly inventing, building and tinkering with electronics of all kinds. One day the boys were stumped and when I kindly offered to help, they assured me that only a technical solution would be their answer. After a bit of my prodding, they explained their problem and I quickly saw a plan for an intermediate step that allowed them to overcome their obstacle…, am I a technical genius? No – I used other strengths that they didn’t have, and was able to look at the situation from another perspective. They were stuck down in the weeds, and my simple comment pulled them out and they were successful. The problem was solved with balanced strengths. Too often in business, we structure our company in silos. Engineering does their thing, Marketing does their thing and we dismiss the power of a true leadership TEAM that helps one another overcome obstacles. Here are some questions to ponder to see if your leadership team is working as a team or in silos.
Is Marketing using a message that Sales can’t or won’t use?
Is Sales making promises that Operations can’t keep?
Is Finance creating policies that create bottlenecks?
Are your Leadership Team meetings a bore and unproductive? Does your team find ways to avoid the meetings?
When there is an issue in one department, does the rest of the leadership team “check out”? Do you hear you hear phrases like “that’s not my job”?
Answering yes to the above questions indicates that you may have great producers in your company, but you do not have a team. If you are still getting fair or even good results from this type of environment, imagine what results you could get from a group of leaders that were truly a team? Using each others strengths to solve issues!
Here is your first step:
Get your entire leadership team in the same room for half a day and get them to answer (with lots of good discussion) the 8 Questions on the Vision/Traction Organizer. (email me if you don’t already have this tool downloaded – I’ll send you one right away). Being on the same page will start to solidify your team and get your company moving forward with much less effort.
Next – Start following the Level 10 Agenda in your meetings – saving at least half of the time for solving issues as a team using the IDS approach. (again – email me for digital versions of these tools as well!)
If you’d like to know more about how to implement EOS, your first session with me is always complimentary. This is a 90 minute workshop for your Leadership Team where I teach you the foundational tools of the Entrepreneurial Operating System that will change the way your company lives. Together, we’ll turn your staff, into a high performance leadership team and get you the business you envision!