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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?

  • Do executive team members agree on the biggest successes?
  • Do they define success as functional unit based or organizationally based?
  • Do they define is as a sentinel event (i.e. starting the company, hiring a key employee, acquisition of a new client or another company)?

2. What are your biggest challenges?

  • Are challenges defined in terms of the organization or in terms of each executive's area of responsibility?
  • Are the challenges defined in broad general terms such as "we need to grow"?
  • Are they described in specific terms such as "we need to reduce our cost of production by a certain percent to be more competitive"?
  • Are they based on assumptions rather than on data, information and analysis?

3. Who are your customers?

  • How is the customer defined?
  • Are customers segmented into logical categories based on the nature of the business?
    • Demographic
    • Gender
    • Buying Habits
    • Psychographic
    • Socio-economic
    • Industries
    • Sectors within industries
    • Buyers within sectors within industries
    • Other condition relevant to your marketplace
      • In healthcare this would be something like all patients who require hospitalization within a 10 miles radius of the facility, or all patients who need open heart surgery
    • Service providers

4. Who are your competitors?

  • Do all team members agree on the competitors?
  • Do any executives answer: we have no competitors?
  • Do any executives give the same answer for competitors as they did for customers?
  • Are competitors mentioned by name?
  • Are competitors defined as organizations in the same business or are they defined as organizations that provide a different product or service but compete for limited buyer funds.
  • Do they define units within the organization as competitors?

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

  • Do executives answer this question with more detail than they answered the question on competitors?
  • Do they understand and articulate differences but are unclear on whom they are different from?
  • Do executives list differentiators in broad general language?

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

  • Do executives respond to the question using the concept of value provided to its customers?
  • Is the response functional unit focused?
  • Is the response organizationally focused?
  • Is the response framed in broad general terms?
  • Can the executive provide specific examples of how clients, customers or patients are better off?

7. Are you on target?

  • How do executives interpret on target?
  • Is it in financial terms, market share, customer satisfaction or other terms?
  • Can the executives provide examples of why the organization is on target?
  • Is the answer focused on their functional unit or on the organization?

8. What is your 3 to 5 year vision?

  • How similar or different are the interpretations of the future for the organization?
  • Is the future defined in terms of the functional unit and its future impact on the organization?
  • Is the future defined with specific details or in generalities?
  • Is the future defined as:
    • New product development opportunities
    • Gaining market share using a new strategy
    • More growth and higher profits
    • To be the best in our market

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

  • Do the executives agree on the top 3 priorities?
  • Is there any agreement among the executive team?
  • How do the executives' priorities compare to the CEO's priorities?
  • Is there a written plan or readily accessible document that identifies the organizational priorities?
    • Did the executives refer to the plan when identifying the top 3 organizational 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.

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:

  • Accelerated transitions – from learning to contributing
  • Improved management skills
  • Improved project management effectiveness
  • Improved work flow and productivity
  • Improved relationships
  • Reduced team dissention and improved team performance
  • Improved employee retention
  • Decreased stress and improved life balance skills
  • Improved executive presentation (impression management skills)

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.