MASTERING THE FUNDAMENTALS – CREATING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE EXECUTIVE FUNCTION

17 Oct MASTERING THE FUNDAMENTALS – CREATING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE EXECUTIVE FUNCTION

Posted at 11:00h in Blog, Coaching Skills, Leadership by

Mastering the fundamentals makes for an easier leadership life. Knowing the foundations are in place allows you to look up from the day-to-day reactivity and identify potential opportunities and risks. To have ‘composure on the ball’. To be proactive about creating the future.

When I’m working with executive teams one of the first things I look for is how well established the foundations are. How ready the executive team is to move towards high performance. To move from functional expertise to collective leadership responsibility for the organisation.

And the maturity of executive function is a determining factor in how well the executive team functions overall.

How well developed is the executive function in each of the members of the executive team. Those critical high-level cognitive abilities that support planning, organising, focus and decision-making, amongst other things.

Being a member of the executive team means being able to contribute to the collective and shared responsibility for the outcomes of your business at all levels. Commercial outcomes, CSR responsibilities, team and people support, stakeholders and shareholder commitments, as well as vendors, clients, and so on, will not be delivered by people in your executive team who are only smart or innovative.

They need to also offer a well-developed level of individual executive function. The ability to lead their teams with clarity and purpose, to have ways of creating an organised approach, to have a plan or way of making progress, and to be able to make key decisions when required, to execute what needs to happen.

What I notice when I am out working with CEOs and their executives is that some of these foundations are not in place:

  • How to focus their time and energy on the right things, rather than trying to do everything.
  • How to organise themselves to be efficient and effective.
  • How to focus on the big picture while still making sure that the operational and tactical requirements and responses are being delivered on.
  • How to create a plan at a high level that can then be chunked down into packages of work at business unit, team and even individual levels.
  • A way, or several ways, to make decisions. Decisions that may require a lot of information when not a lot of information is available, or decisions that need to be made even though it’s risky.

 

How equipped are your executive team members with these foundational executive functions?

 

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Stephen R. Covey

Without getting the foundations right, how does the executive team create time and space to lead, individually and together? To focus on the way forward, on the future, on the opportunities not just in front of them but into the future.

If the foundations for executive function are not well set up, then your executive team is playing defence. Likely being highly reactive, highly responsive, focused only on what is right in front of them today. Rather than being able to look up, look around, have the space to think, to create, to have a more developed leadership approach because the foundations, the executive functions, are in place already.

Your executive team should not be distracted by “How do we make a plan?” or “How do we make a good decision?”. Your executives should be focused on what they need to do, the things that only they can do in their unique position in the organisation, as a member of the executive team.
Your brain needs space to think, not more tasks demanding attention.

Felecia Etienne, High-Performance Success Coach & Author

So, look around and assess your executive team:

  • How developed is the executive function in each of your executive team members?
  • How well is this supporting them to deliver in their own portfolio?
  • How well is this supporting them as a member of the executive team leading your organisation into the future?
  • What is the gap in executive function?
  • How will you close any gap, so each executive can perform at the level that is needed, as a member of your executive team?

 

I’d love to know your thoughts.

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