Newsletter: July 2009

9 Questions to Assess Executive Team Alignment

Is the executive team aligned? Do the team members understand the strategic vision of the organization and agree on what needs to be done to implement it? Do they understand their role as executives with responsibility for functional units within the organization and their role as executive team members?

Kubica & LaForest Consulting LLC has identified nine questions every executive team member should answer and discuss to determine alignment:

1. What are your biggest successes?

2. What are your biggest challenges?

3. Who are your customers?

4. Who are your competitors?

5. What are your differentiators? – How are you different?

6. How are your clients, customers, or patients better off because they work with you or receive service from you?

7. Are you on target?

8. What is your 3 to 5 year vision?

9. What are the organization's top 3 priorities?

Executive team alignment is critical to the success of the organization. No executive works in isolation.

One of our clients was the president of a publicly traded manufacturing company. He felt the company was well positioned for growth in its market niche. The new executive team was comprised of seasoned executives some from businesses with a similar product line. The strategic vision was well articulated in the company literature and on its web site. The president, however, was concerned that the team was not working well together and it was causing delays in implementing the initiatives required for growth.

Each executive, in a one on one interview, answered the nine questions. When the answers were summarized and presented to the executives, there was surprise. The biggest issue identified was the degree to which each executive operated independently from the other team members. The executives were doing a very good job within their functional area, but were not effectively coordinating their individual effort with the other members of the executive team. This resulted in an uncoordinated approach to the marketplace. The president took corrective action to improve team work and create team accountability for results.

A service company was experiencing a slowdown in its service offerings after seven years of strong sales and high customer satisfaction. They had one major client and a few smaller ones. Repeat business was generated by "walking the halls". The company was managed as a partnership with each partner living in a different part of the country. Their services were project based. They did not have the opportunity for daily contact that would exist if they were in one location.

After independently answering the nine questions, they found during the summary discussion that there was general agreement on the answers to the nine questions. What was revealing, however, was their answers to the questions on competition and differentiators. The discussion shifted to thinking about the company in different terms. While it was accurate that they completed projects for their clients, the partners realized that completing projects resulted in helping their clients position the client's products more effectively. They realized they were not a project company; they were a product positioning company.

In the examples, each executive team had an opportunity to see and understand how other executives felt about the organization. They were able to find common ground and identify areas where improvement, adjustment, or refocus, was needed.

Understanding how each executive views the organization, its challenges and its opportunities provides an important foundation for strategic and implementation planning. "Being on the same page" is more than an adage; it is essential for organizational success.

Copyright 2009 Kubica and LaForest.

For help in assessing your executive team alignment, look for our forthcoming Assessment Tool or call us.

Tony Kubica and Sara LaForest are Founding Partners of Kubica & LaForest Consulting LLC and the Growth without Sabotage™ model for performance and organizational improvement.

The information presented in this article is based on the ideas and concepts in their forthcoming book on the damaging effects of self-sabotaging behaviors in business.

We offer organizational and performance improvement services that result in:
  • Business Growth & Performance Improvement
  • Leadership Strategy & Development
  • Improved Client & Business Relationships
  • Brand Building & Impression Management
  • Transition & Succession Planning/Management

Is Executive / Performance Coaching for You?

Questions we often hear are: What is executive / performance coaching?; what can I expect?; how can it help me and my organization? If you have these questions, you are not alone. In this article we address these questions and introduce our executive / performance coaching services.

Executive / performance coaching is a short term, performance improvement process that is recognized as an important adjunct to leadership development. It is motivational and participatory by design and is highly customized and interactive so as to address the specific issues relevant to your situation. Examples include, reducing the time for achieving effectiveness during transitions (such as promotion within an organization), new responsibilities within an organization, or new position in a new organization (read: fast-track hire). Another coaching focus area includes improving performance effectiveness. This is a broad category that covers a wide variety of performance-related issues.

Coaching, by design, is a highly personalized service, and its success depends on the coach / client relationship. So, our first essential step in the coaching process is to insure compatibility between the coach and the client. Once compatibility is determined, we move forward.

We use the four coaching stages, common to best-practice:

  1. Assessment
  2. Individual Development Plan Preparation
  3. Implementation – Coaching Services
  4. Evaluation

During the Assessment, we discuss the purpose of the coaching initiative, identify areas to focus on, and review relevant information that we mutually agree will be beneficial to our work together.

From this information we will, working with you, prepare an Individual Development Plan (IDP) that outlines areas we will focus on during the coaching engagement. The Plan can outline a transition strategy or it can identify specific performance improvement tasks or behaviors to focus on. KLC’s coaching is situational and highly customized to address your needs and the issues important to you.

Implementation involves weekly meetings, either in person, telephonically or by video conference. We will maintain focus on addressing the issues outlined in the development plan and will do so in a highly interactive way. Working with you we will identify "hot spots" (past, current or future) and optimize teachable moments. "Hot spots" are issues that come up during the week that serve as real world examples relevant to your development plan. We will discuss how you handled or should handle these issues and we will provide guided feedback, thoughts and suggestions. We will reinforce a well handled situation, or we will provide thoughts and suggestions on how the situation could have been handled better. If the situation represents an upcoming event, we will guide you through options and prepare you for the event. Also, we offer unlimited access to us by phone or email during normal business hours. This provides an opportunity to contact us as a situation develops so as to get immediate feedback, advice and suggestions.

At the end of the engagement, we will mutually evaluate the results and outcomes from our work together.

What you can expect from us (as coach) is to: interactively assess and establish objectives, metrics and value, and to guide, reflect, provoke and encourage your growth; and, to facilitate a short-term, meaningful experience that directly results in a smoother and faster transition (accelerate the learning curve) or performance improvement in areas defined in the development plan.

You (as the client) can expect, depending on the focus of the coaching engagement, to: move faster through the transition period, clarify and build upon your strengths, focus on evidenced-based behaviors (manifest behavior—i.e. what others can see, hear, read overtly from you); identify and confront your limiting and self-sabotaging behaviors; learn and practice strategies for improvement; regularly reflect and self-assess (through written and verbal methods); and, be open to receiving behavior based feedback.

Executive / performance coaching will help both you and your organization. Examples of benefits our clients have received from coaching:

All of the examples above resulted in high value return in the form of revenue improvement, cost reduction, performance improvement and personal career advancement.

To learn more about Kubica & LaForest’s Executive / Performance Coaching services we invite you to contact us. It would be our privilege to support and promote your success.

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