ASSEMBLING MUTUALLY SUPPORTING TEAMS
Excerpts from “WINNERS ARE NOT LONELY AT THE TOP”
THE TRUE JOB DESCRIPTION OF THE CEO: ASSEMBLING MUTUALLY SUPPORTING TEAMS ESSAY 3
THE TRUE JOB DESCRIPTION OF THE CEO is a series of five white papers highlighting the “Five Star Process” that a CEO needs to focus on to drive a team to peak performance. These white papers correspond and mirror the main chapters of the book “Winners Are Not Lonely At The Top” by Carl Phillips.
The book describes and highlights the use of the “Five Star Process” by Garland Group who as a result of the process, delivered an EBITA improvement of 175%, a cash flow improvement of 254%, an employee
satisfaction of 85%, a reduction in absenteeism of 16%, an improvement in safety of 54%, and an organic sales growth of 52%.
This is the third of five essays entitled “Assembling Mutually Supportive Teams”. The Five Essays are listed below and each one represents one of the five stars in the Five Star process to which peak performing CEOs must adhere, and to which provide the framework for The Real Job Description of the CEO.
Star 1 – Start Operating In The Real World
Star 2 – Articulating The Common Vision
Star 3 – Assembling Mutually Supportive Teams
Star 4 – Creating A Disciplined Culture
Star 5 – Seek and Seed Leaders
We hope you enjoy the essay and be sure to read all five essays, and if you are a Board Member or CEO looking to drive your team to peak performance please reach out to us on CEO@tpgleadership.com
ASSEMBLING MUTUALLY SUPPORTING TEAMS
Star 3
“A top management group qualifies as a team to the extent it engages in mutual and collective interaction. More tangibly, this is gauged by quantity and quality of information exchange, collaborative behavior and joint decision making”- Donald Hambrick
The CEO has to squarely face reality regarding the organization – Star 1, and then help the organization articulate the common vision and mission statements – Star 2, and then concentrate on assembling mutually supporting teams to implement the vision and mission – Star 3.
What does this mean?
One of the most successful companies to effectively establish the power of teams is the Toyota Motor Company.
Despite the fact that the company started way behind the leading American car producers GM and Ford, by 2011 Toyota’s sales was 100 billion dollars compared to GM at 34 Billion dollars and Ford at 38 billion dollars. How did Toyota do this? Toyota achieved this level of success by concentrating on building mutually supporting teams.
What is a mutually supporting team?
A Senior Executive of Toyota’s North American Operations was advised by his Japanese mentors to “manage as if he had no power.” They explained this by the fact that they encouraged leaders to push decision-making down to the lowest possible level to involve as many people in making decisions. Leaders are encouraged to learn from all levels and to keep their personal biases, egos and subjective thoughts out of their final decisions. In other words, the central responsibility for building a team lies with the leaders.
Here again the CEO has to lead the way.
As a leader you are constantly being critically studied by all the people in an organization. It is a fact that the majority of CEOs seldom seek feedback on how they are perceived by the people in the organization. More often than not when feedback is sought by a CEO, the people who give the feedback sugar coat their dialogue for fear of being singled out by the CEO who can easily make them pay a price for their opinions.
People normally react to leaders based on their personal perceptions of the leader. Leaders who do not know how they are perceived will not only be missing the mark in communicating with the people of the organization, they will not grow personally.
To help people change their culture to that of a mutually supporting team, Sir Peter Bonfield, CEO of British Telecom says it very clearly, “Change must start with me and my management team.” Lee KUN Hee, Chairman of Samsung Electronics, “To effect change in groups,’ he said, “We must initiate change within ourselves.” Lee knows that change must come from the inside out. He says, “You have to know yourself well, your habits, strengths and shortcomings. Questioning yourself thoroughly is the beginning of change.”
Most leaders tend to view themselves as they would like to be perceived in the future. Most people view that same leader as they see the leader perform in the present. Hence, there is often a gap in these two perceptions. The fact is that people react to the leader based on their personal perceptions of the leader. The leader’s perception of his/herself is not easy to change unless the leader is prepared to honestly deal with the advice given by leaders such as Sir Peter Bonfield of British Telecom and Lee Kun Hee of Samsung Electronics above.
Dennis Eck, CEO of Coles Myer Ltd, Australia, one of the largest retail companies in that country knows what it takes to get people to see themselves as others see them. When Eck took over as CEO, the company was rapidly losing market share. According to Eck it was because the company’s customer service was poor among other things.
Despite the fact that this issue was high-lighted in several meetings, nothing seemed to change. Eck took action and installed videos trained on the customers as they approached the customer service desk. These recordings were then viewed by the relevant customer service person. What the customer representative saw was that the reaction of the customer changed based on the way they were treated by the customer service person.
If the customer service person was cordial and friendly, the customer behaved in a similar manner. On the other hand, if the customer was formal and abrupt the customer was not very happy. By doing this process for a period of time, Eck noticed a marked change in the customer service department’s behaviour to customers, which made a major difference in the company’s performance as customer service personnel started self-correcting their behaviours towards the customers.
The above example explains how hard it often is to have leaders see themselves as others see them. This has to be addressed when feedback is sought in a 360 feedback program.
360 feedback programs have to be done on all the senior leaders to start the program. This feedback process must be done by a professional who interviews each participant, questioning in confidence what the respondent really means in the feedback. Often people give a clearer picture of their comments on paper on further questioning by a professional in confidence.
The summary of the feedback is then given to the leader and a development program is created that is rigorously enforced. The purpose of the process is not to do a drill but to get genuine information that will help a leader improve. This process is then followed by the next level of leadership and so on.
The above process is then followed by an off-site meeting of the senior leaders of every department where the leaders define the values and principles of their company’s operating style to implement the vision and mission of the company. They would be doing this with the backdrop of the 360-degree feedback program that each of them has undergone. Consensus is then sought to define the operating style of the company, which should include the following:
- Leaders understand and accept the fact that they must always be transparent in all that they do.
- Have total commitment to the vision and mission.
- Have mutual respect between members of the group.
- Have a mutually agreed upon value system in the group.
- Have a mutually agreed upon work approach in the group.
- Have a mutually agreed upon reward system.
- Each member in the group must agree to leverage the strengths of each other and accept mutual responsibility and accountability for all actions undertaken by the group.
- Agreement to a rigorous follow up process with clear cut milestones defined and accepted on the above issues, with well- defined consequences if the milestones are not met.
- Each leader then follows through on the same process with his/her group to achieve the same results.
One of the common mistakes that organizations make is that they assume once consensus is achieved that promulgating rules and disseminating these rules through formal channels is sufficient to ensure that the rules will be followed. The fact is that the informal channels of communication are much more powerful than formal channels.
Often I have witnessed a leader being surprised by how strongly opposed the majority of the direct reports feel about a particular rule of the company, or how several rules are not followed. This happens only in organizations where the leader depends on formal lines of communications only.
Informal communications get things done because people get closer to each other, and the more they know each other the more they trust each other and become more interdependent; this is the best vehicle for embedding transparency throughout the organization.
The CEO should encourage informal gatherings such as coffee and doughnut meetings in an informal setting away from the office. Leaders should feel that they can take off their formal rank identifying hats and mingle freely so that people are free to express themselves and reveal their true feelings. Here is where the CEO and the leaders get a feel for the true pulse of the organization which will help the leaders reinforce the excitement and energy of the team towards the achievement of both personal and company goals. Lastly the feedback from all these meetings is incorporated into the final version of the company’s operating principles for execution.
The most important aspect of creating and sustaining a powerful team in an organization is coaching and mentoring programs by leaders. The best athletes in the world need mentors and coaches to improve their performance. Why should good performers in an organization not have the same benefit? Most leaders need to spend at least 15 to 25 percent of their time concentrating on the improvement of the performance of their people.
During implementation it is critical that follow up is enforced meticulously by the CEO by personally supervising it. One of the biggest drawbacks is that the follow up becomes lackadaisical after a period of time and it is incumbent on the CEO to constantly and consistently enforce the agreed upon plan as things slow down.
If these plans are not being followed, there should be visible consequences. There is no doubt that there will be a handful of people in the organization who will refuse to get on the bus of change; these people are better off moving on. If not, the change sought will gradually be eroded by these disgruntled and unhappy people and the mutually supporting teams will not be achieved.
As can be seen from the above, the CEO has to spend a good deal of time creating a culture of mutually supporting teams in the organization. In several organizations some semblance of team building is done, mostly by the Human Resources Department with limited time spent by the CEO reinforcing these efforts.
It should be clearly understood that this action is not a minor part of the CEO’s responsibility, in fact, it should be a critical aspect of the CEO’s Job Description. Effective exploiting of markets, products and financial results are achieved by mutually supporting teams.
Once this phase is underway, the CEO then moves on to Phase 4, wherein the CEO rewards and encourages a disciplined culture among all the team members.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CARL A. PHILLIPS
Chairman, The Phillips Group
Location: Toronto, Canada
Carl has been consulting to CEOs and Leaders for over forty years. He is an Industrial Psychologist, an Entrepreneur, and an Author who has written two books on leadership. Carl was the Head of Global Organization Effectiveness for Watson Wyatt Worldwide, which is now called Willis Towers Watson, one of the largest management consulting companies in the world with over 14,000 employees.
Carl Phillips is a Certified Management Consultant who has created several assessment instruments and tests on leadership which he has been applying effectively on a variety of global companies located in North America, Europe and Asia for over forty years. Carl’s book, “Winners Are Not Lonely At The Top”, is a live case study of the proven application of his “Five Stars” model for experiencing exponential, sustained growth in an organization.
Carl has co-authored a book called “Global Literacies”, published by Simon and Schuster, New York. The book is a summary of his interviews with seventy-five global CEOs located in twenty eight countries wherein the lessons learned by these CEOs on the challenges for running a successful global company are documented in detail.
Carl Phillips has been keynote speaker in several international conferences on leadership and he has written a number of articles on The True Job Description of the CEO, a unique insight into the critical force in an organization that is often neglected.
SHANE PHILLIPS is Carl’s son and is currently the CEO of The Phillips Group based in Dubai, UAE.
The Phillips Group has been helping companies align, focus and build their leadership teams since 1984. Driving organisations and individuals to peak performance has been our raison d’etre for two generations.
Please contact us for your CEO Assessment Guide at CEO@tpgleadership.com
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