A sled dog will only run if he wants to, if his motivation is intact: this quality in a dog is known as the ‘will to go’. The dog is part of the team and knows it and, for the musher, when the dogs are at the peak of their mental strength and ‘will to go’, that’s when he knows he has a dream team.
The same is true of the CEO and the Management Team.
Transparency, commitment and support
Management teams need to be the driving force in focusing energies on the objectives set by the CEO. It is vital to sustain their motivation and commitment, to give them a very real sense of their responsibilities, get them buying into the challenges and vision of their CEO, who will in turn be spurred on to success in his leadership role by a sense of confidence in their support.
Different behaviors and motivation
When setting up the management team, the CEO must also take into consideration the existing relations between each member of the management team. Not easy. It will require working on their behaviors, first individually and then collectively, as well as maintaining motivation in each of them.
Contrary to what many might assume, the way management teams operate is rarely optimal, and the word ‘team’ is wrongly interpreted… not to mention the fact that motivation tends to flag over the course of events.
The weak spot? Unity
When the CEO reaches a decision, how to go about not just ‘communicating’ that decision, but ensuring that every member of the team feels involved in it, to the point of prioritizing, on a daily basis, whatever is required to put that decision into action?
How can the CEO ensure that the decisions reached today are those best able to prepare the company for its future, that the emphasis is on looking ahead before the whole team is submerged by a rising tide of problems, and that strategy is refocused in the light of events?
No software in the world can provide an answer to these questions!
It is the men and women in your organization that have this ability to reflect and adapt accordingly… but first you have to create unity within this team.
The solution
It is not enough to convene the management team, because to convene means to bring together for the purpose of passing on information and communicating.
It is more about engaging in dialogue whilst creating a coherence (between the actions decided upon) that in itself takes account of the issues of each member of the team, all without losing sight of the strategic priorities.
We will need to improve – or even create – a culture of respect and trust, a culture of transparency, a culture of commitment, a culture of action… all ways of creating value with the aim of sustaining the ‘Will To Go”… the momentum of the management team.
I will end by concurring wholeheartedly with the words of Lars Rebien Sorensen, CEO of Novo Nordisk, ranked world’s best-performing CEO: “I’m leading a team that is collectively creating one of the world’s best-performing companies!”
Sources: (HBR nov.15 – https://hbr.org/2015/11/novo-nordisk-ceo-on-what-propelled-him-to-the-top )