Foundations of an Effective Executive Team

As well as a clear focus on interdependent accountabilities (see The role of a true Executive Team) the best leadership teams adhere to three sets of norms and expectations that differenciate how theyn operate, from functional teams. In essence, these involve putting the collective goals of the team ahead of their individual functional goals:

1.    Check Your Hat at the Door

The role of the Executive team is to manage the strategic and operational activities of the organisation. When you’re acting as a member of an Executive team, your role is exactly the same: to manage the strategic and operational activity of the organisation.

When you’re in an Executive meeting, you’re not there to manage your department, you’re there to manage the organisation, you run your department the rest of the time. The simplest way to look at it is this - when you come into Executive team meetings, you take off your functional hat at the door. Of course, you may have to put it on again if there are specific decisions which require your subject matter expertise, or special insights that you can give because of your functional knowledge but you’ll find that this is less frequent than you might expect.

The consequence of this is that  you can expect to see the following in Executive team meetings.

• Everyone is expected to contribute to everything discussed, not just those matters that fall into their functional ambit

• Everyone  is required to help reach decisions that are for the better good of the organisation as a whole, not just ‘good for you’

2.    Thinking Laterally, Not Vertically

Until becoming an Executive team member, your key relationships in the organisation are typically vertical: upward to your manager, and downward to your direct reports.  From the moment you join an Executive team, your key relationships shift from the vertical to the horizontal. As of then, your first and overriding commitment will be to your peers - the other members of the Executive team.

Why?

Because your key role will be to make decisions that are for the best of the organisation as a whole, not just for your functional group. There will on occasion be conflicts between what is good for your functional area and what is good for the organisation as a whole, and when those conflicts occur, your commitment must be to the organisation as a whole - represented by your Executive team members - not to your specific functional area.

This, of course, does not mean that you can no longer be loyal to your functional group. It also doesn’t mean that you cannot lobby  for their best interests or represent their needs; indeed, you are expected to do just that.

Being an effective member of an Executive team frequently means using the word ‘AND’ instead of the word ‘OR’.

For example:

• Keep all the existing loyalty you have to your functional team AND add an overriding commitment to your Executive team members

• Focus on delivering the key deliverables of your functional team AND place achieving organisational goals above all else

3.    Cabinet Solidarity

Executive dialogue is vigorous and robust. People say what is on their minds, challenge each other and the ideas presented, sometimes it gets heated AND when the discussion is done and a decision is taken, the dynamic changes.

A cornerstone of the Westminster system of government for centuries, Cabinet Solidarity means that no matter their personal position on an issue, once a decision is made by the Executive team it is issued and upheld collectively. You can voice all your concerns and objections on any issue while it’s being discussed behind closed doors, but when a final decision is made, it’s made by all of us. When Executive team members leave the meeting room, they stand side by side on decisions, indivisibly, jointly and fully supportive of the decisions they make as a team.

The implications of this are important:

• You don’t get to second-guess Executive team decisions. You don’t get to go into a colleague’s office (or worse still one of your own team) after a meeting and pick apart any decision that has been made. You don’t get to complain about or undermine any decision that has been made, to anyone outside the Executive team meeting.

• You don’t get to obstruct, ignore, sandbag or avoid implementing any decisions or their implications or consequences.  

• You do get to be a role model in implementing agreed decisions - swiftly, fully and with enthusiasm, whatever your stance was when the decision was being debated

This doesn’t mean that Executive teams are infallible, or that people have to act like robots and persevere with the consequences of poor decisions. Executive teams make mistakes: sometimes a decision proves to have been the wrong one. When that happens, any Executive team member can bring evidence that a decision needs to be re- thought - but only after an agreed period of supportive endeavour, and only in a scheduled Executive session.

In summary, a key transition from senior functional management to Executive team membership involves going ‘meta’ to what was previously your primary concern, the successful fulfilment of your functional responsibilities. When you’re acting as part of the Executive team, you should check your functional hat at the door, work laterally rather than just vertically and ensure you model and uphold Cabinet Solidarity on the decisions of the team.