Executive Teamwork Depends on the Executive First

With one of my clients, a start-up, we scoured the nation for the best and brightest -- real "top of the food chain" sorts of executives. And we were pretty darned successful, since we hired a bunch of 'em.

All brilliant, and at the top of their respective games.

All came from intense, successful, team-driven environments.

All clearly had incentives -- cash and equity -- to work together as a cohesive group.

Seems like a recipe for some serious kumbaya, doesn't it?? If it were, I wouldn't have a story for my blog today...

It was nearly a disaster.

You see, though as individuals, they clearly and personally believed in the team concept, and promoted it -- honestly -- to all that came near, the truth is, they were each accustomed to being in the center of their respective teams, not linked arm-in-arm in a big, egalitarian circle. Not that they were insincere, because they certainly were not. In fact, we were all confused in trying to determine "what's wrong with this picture??" It took a good deal of effort and introspection to discover the real issue.

So, the lesson learned is "don't hire best-of-the-best" executives?? Of course not. But realize that in doing so, if we want several "best-in-class" horses to run with each other as one, we need to identify the concerns and issues up front, and possibly take some unusual actions to make this thing work.

Because 6 of the world's best horses, pulling in 6 different directions, doth not a team make...

KB

Kevin Berchelmann
www.triangleperformance.com

Leadership Stengths, Weaknesses & Skills

Not too long ago, I worked with a group of division presidents for a fast-growing company. Two things struck me as interesting, and somewhat of a paradox: First, they were all reasonably successful in their jobs (and their jobs were substantially the same, just different geographic regions). Second, they were all incredibly different. Yes, they each had similar behavior characteristics, such as intelligence and work ethic. In other areas, such as sales, marketing, people management, organizational skills, strategy, planning, and do forth, they were all over the charts.

So what? Well, I'll tell you "so what." You hear a lot of garbage about understanding your "strengths and weaknesses," and then you're supposed to work on your weaknesses. Let's look at it differently. How about we assume that succeeding in a position can be done in any of several different ways, using a variety of skills. Using that reasoning, you don't have strengths and weaknesses, you have learned skills and skills you have yet to learn.

Wow!

So, then, we should then simply "learn more skills," right?? No, no, no... We should, instead, clearly identify our skills, since we know that we can succeed with them, and work on improving our strengths! That's right, improve our strengths, since we already know that they work for us. Learning new skills is time consuming, and depending on application, may or may not work for us the way they work for others.

Now, this logic assumes current success, so don't confuse this with those managers who are clearly unsuccessful, though I would argue this could help them with their improvement also. In other words, as Bum Phillips (retired Houston Oilers coach) would say, "Dance with who brung you." Use the skills you have -- improve and hone them to a razor's edge -- and continue your increasing levels of success. Over time, identify some additional skills you would like to pick up, and develop a aplan to learn them in a reasonable time and fashion.

But don't break what works...

KB

Kevin Berchelmann
www.triangleperformance.com