How Executives Build Strategic Teams

Over time, the nature of the executive suite has evolved in terms of strategic and operational roles along with the work to be done. The design of senior leadership and management teams has become more focused on matching the company’s strategic agenda, talent platforms, and cultural agenda. While that may sound obvious, the struggle for senior executive traction is real: most organizations report serious concerns with strategy engagement and strategic leadership.

Strategic teams can be viewed as agents of making strategy happen, equipped with capable, well-matched talent, reflected in corporate culture that is a foundation for and an expression of standards, values and principles. While there are, perhaps, 20-plus kinds of strategic teams, at the enterprise level, the focus here is corporate challenges related to enterprise:

• Growth and Adaptation

• Performance Edge and Advantage

• Change and Advancement

Those involved with forward planning and decision making gather their knowledge, perspective and judgment through team efforts that inform strategy direction, integration and execution. Strategic team conversations inform risk management and problem solving, and they bring focus to the cause-and-effect imperatives for making strategy happen.

CEO and Board Attention: Strategic Teams and Their Focus

Governing boards are naturally focused on the work plans and charters of the CEOs they hold responsible for the creation of strategic and economic value. Given the nature of organizations today, have a powerful interest in the caliber of strategic teams that are designed and equipped to advance the work of making strategy happen.

The functional experience, temperament, subject matter expertise and engagement of strategic team leaders shape the everyday thought and behavior of their combined team members. Strategic teams can express a focus on compliance and standards. They can show a collective knack for integration. They can also present a capacity for exploration, discovery and innovation. Strategic teams with a more dual-dynamic focus are better equipped to find the balance of near-term and long-term concerns, along with evolving core business, versus adjacent business development themes.

When designing teams to work as agents of making strategy happen, the CEO and the Board need to be on the same page with the answers to three questions. This requires ongoing strategic conversation, regular debate, constructive skepticism, insight management, perspective and the open exchange of ideas that address the everyday work of making strategy happen.

• Does the enterprise have a valid and intentional Strategic Agenda, one that effectively engages, connects and conveys strategy direction, integration and execution?

• Does the CEO demonstrate that the assigned Talent Platforms and Resources of the organization, the talent supply chains … are matched with the Strategic Agenda?

• Does the enterprise have a purposeful and interactive Cultural Agenda that serves well as a foundation for, and an expression of, the evolving Strategic Agenda?

What About Those High-Performing Strategic Teams?

The modern organization’s work to be done is naturally dependent on teams. Teams have become the backbone of enterprise structure, across the landscape of the business world. But what makes some teams better, smarter, stronger or faster than others? Who serves on these teams? How do these teams become better than the sum of their individual parts? What enables, motivates and engages people on teams? These and other questions are part of the overall Strategic Team design and development journey.

High-performance teams are built with context, and with attention to purpose. They are thoughtfully designed, thoughtfully assigned, and take into consideration resources, functions, priorities, needs and challenges. They exhibit higher levels of engagement, because they are built on diverse experiences, discretionary effort, project commitments and other devices. High engagement also reflects in systems thinking, collaboration, interpersonal respect and influence, and a practical sense of order and arrangement. These are key elements of strategic team readiness and resolve that comes together at different stages in the crucible of experience.

Strategic Team Design and Development

Effective strategic team design brings together strategy, talent and culture in ways that drive both potential and progress. In a design-driven sense, strategic teams should be prepared and resolved to advance the work of making strategy happen with a sense of:

• The Purpose, Vision and Mission of the Organization

  • ongoing reflection, discernment

• The Conditions, Boundaries, Challenges, Factors in Play

  • ongoing attention, assessment

• The Availability and Readiness of Talent Supply Chains

  • continuous development, review

• The Objectives, Context for Success and Progress Markers

  • definition and navigation, measures

• The Development, Management and Governance Practice

  • ongoing accountability, control

Talent is the raw material for making strategy happen. While executives and leaders may talk talent all day, are people truly matched-up with the organization’s strategic agenda, in terms of competence, motivation, relationships and confidence? Strategic teams represent collections of individual talent, carefully blended together for the broader strategic work to be done. Less focused and thoughtful teams tend to lack these traits, or mismatch their capabilities and goals.

Talent Blocks and Beams

Beginning with a critical focus on different types of competence and work temperament, we can think about the range of talent gathered together in strategic teams.

Technical – Subject matter knowledge and mastery

Analytic – Data sensing and data system connections

Creative – Constructive imagination, idea management

Resource – Effective management of critical assets

Solution – Deconstruction and resolution of problems

Relational – Bringing out the best in others, groups

These may seem like common perspectives and groupings of capacity and competence. However, these individual Talent Blocks come together as structural and behavioral assets, and as context for development. The purpose-driven match of Talent Blocks and the blend of individual and group temperament and behavior is critical.

The Talent Blocks and Beams idea surrounds these six talent sets with “vertical” experience and category expertise, as well as a range of “horizontal” perspectives that reflect character and motivation, awareness and confidence, influence and appreciation, and other aspects of maturity and social capacity. These are the organization’s Soft Skills and Hard Skills, cultivated together.

Culture as a Platform and Informant of Strategy

 At one level or another, corporate culture is a foundation of strategic and economic value. Culture can be explored as an expression that conveys stakeholders “what we stand for and where we’re headed” as an enterprise. These speak to the everyday thought and behavior of people who are responsible for making strategy happen. Culture can be viewed as an informant of the company’s Strategic Agenda, and as a platform for team engagement. These themes provide goal posts for the leadership of strategy and culture, and make people more or less capable, more or less motivated, more or less inspired, and more or less engaged in making strategy happen.

Other factors influence the specifics of strategic team design and development. The nature of the enterprise, the conditions of the marketplace, the norms of executive leadership and management, the nature of strategy engagement across the enterprise all serve to temper how strategic teams operate. The deliberate practice and maturity of the enterprise also have a part in senior leadership team design and development. There are other indirect influences as well.

 Takeaway Challenges and Comments

 The depth and reach of an organization depend more and more on strategic teams in different forms. These serve to power growth, performance and change. They rise beyond the functional views of the organization’s structure and they focus on the real elements of collaboration, speed, trust and accountability. The CEO, and the Board, have some positive frontiers to navigate with strategic teams that are prepared, highly engaged and resolved. This is important at the senior leadership team level, and throughout the organization.

Read more: Leading and Inspiring Executive Teams In Times Of Change