If every member of an executive team is more concerned about how decisions will impact their own group rather than the overall organization, it is inevitable that collective decision-making will suffer.  ~Patrick Lencioni

Patrick Lencioni, author of a number of books including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage has consulted many organizations (large, small, for profit, non profit, etc.) and this is one of the “issues” he highlighted in The Advantage.  It’s a challenge I’ve come across as well, more often than I’d expect.

Here’s what it looks like.  The executive team shows up to a meeting to present what their area/division is doing.  If anyone questions anything, it then turns into a debate (not a dialogue) because everyone shows up to represent their group.  They tell each other what decisions they have individually made; consequently, very few decisions, if any, are made collectively with the focus being on the good of the overall organization.

For these executive teams, their Team #1 is their own group that they lead/oversee, not the executive team that’s ultimately leading the organization.  That means many organizational decisions are made to support one piece of the organization which may, or may not, be the best decision to support the organization as a whole.

Lencioni suggests three ways to create, and maintain, Team #1.

• Remind everyone that the executive team is Team #1 before making critical decisions.  When they walk into the executive team board room, they are now wearing their executive team hat; not their functional area hat.
• Demand (yes, Lencioni says demand) that team members prioritize the executive team over all others.  He says that “their ability to face difficult challenges with confidence further bonds the team and models unity to the organization.  This requires an absolute, unwavering commitment to Team #1.”
• Acknowledge and describe how the executive team’s direct reports will be impacted.  If there is not complete cohesion among the executive team members, it many times results in “unwinnable battles that those lower in the organization are left to fight.”

Thank about it.  An executive team member many times puts their team/group first, but that doesn’t mean the organization will thrive or for that matter succeed; even though their team/group does well.  So in the end, who really wins?  No one.

Why don’t more executive teams thrive?  I think it’s because they’re so focused on their own silo, they’ve lost sight of the fact that their silo’s success may actually be at the expense of other silos, resulting in overall poor performance for the organization as a whole.