Boosting executive team alignment for strategic impact in global asset management
This global asset management organisation identified a need to align executive teams across multiple business areas to increase strategic impact and performance through collective leadership.
In close partnership, we identified certain objectives for these Leadership Team Effectiveness interventions: thinking systemically to clarify the team’s primary purpose and strategic and business priorities; driving change through effective team behaviours; working collaboratively to make progress on key strategic initiatives and to enhance decision-making and problem solving.
Focus
To enable leaders to move from functional to strategic leadership, we designed a series of events focusing on six key capabilities:
- Shared purpose: gaining clarity and alignment on strategic direction and goals and how teams contribute towards them
- Confidence: developing the confidence to step up to driving strategic change and performance in the wider business
- Relationships: gaining a deep understanding of relationships – no team will be effective without the foundations of connected, positive, trusting and intimate relationships between team members
- Curiosity: developing a broader, more curious mindset to explore enterprise-wide opportunities and move away from silo thinking
- Power of the collective: Developing relationships across peer groups of senior leaders to enable them to collaborate more effectively across boundaries
- Real impact: focusing on performance and commercial results and hold others accountable for their delivery
Action
We began with inquiry interviews to ‘deep dive’ into specific business problems participants were grappling with and then designed Leadership Team workshops that would feel ‘designed by the team, for the team’. We sought to blend team relationship development with experiential learning applied to real business pain points – our work is always firmly rooted in real working life.
In addition to developing the team’s vision and core objectives, and then contracting for more effective relationships, we worked collaboratively on key strategic priorities and building stronger connections with commissioning stakeholders between sessions.
Impact
In feedback interviews from both the Chief People Office and Exco members, there has been a notable increase in team cohesion and in the efficiency and speed of decision making. Through team coaching, we helped this organisation work in a more unified way across the organisation, delivering on their strategic need.
