Executive team alignment is critical to company performance. And the same is true of division, departmental, and functional leadership teams and their staffs’ results. In fact, both IPM’s practical experience and exclusive research tell us that the more methods teams use to stay aligned, the better they tend to perform.
Assessing, improving, and maintaining executive team alignment is not without its challenges. We are human, after all, with strengths and weaknesses, empathy and bias. Following are three common barriers and how to overcome them, because the results will be worth the effort.
We Have Egos, Motives, and Ambition
A recent survey revealed that only 30 percent of senior executives agree there are no hidden agendas on their team. And only 14 percent say members of their team are comfortable disagreeing with each other.
The solutions are in finding ways to enable transparency, honesty, trust, and healthy conflict.
- The CEO of a consumer products company said, “Our team sets aside time for team-building activities fostering strong relationships and a shared understanding of our mission and values.”
- A COO at a medtech company said, “We made a treatise that said we have an invitation to challenge each other. We have an invitation to have tough conversations with each other. And we do that without our CEO, and we do that with our CEO. Without our CEO, we are we really are able to call each other out much more deliberately and be really honest.”
- At another medtech company, “we got an executive coach for our team,” the CCO said. “She did interviews with each of us and then reported out results anonymously, kind of highlighting where there are a lot of distrust and gaps, and how people are working as a team. She got us each to write a user manual outlining each individual and how we all work, and to talk through that to try to build trust.”
Alignment Takes a Lot of Time and Effort
Many executives believe that it’s too bureaucratic and time-consuming. They want to be fast and nimble. And there’s often worry about losing power in their own function.
Refer to the research data: 76 percent of those who say their executive team is fully aligned increased revenue last year vs. 42 percent of those who are not fully aligned. Those who are aligned are also more likely to accomplish their strategic initiatives.
Some People Have a Short-Term Focus
Investors want continuous gains, new executives want to show results quickly, and many industries face disruptors and competitors, demanding immediate response. In the executive survey, we asked those who said they were not fully aligned why improving alignment was or wasn’t a priority. One said: “The executive team feels that alignment isn’t a high priority because they believe that short-term results are more important than long-term cohesion.”
Remember that a long-term perspective builds sustainable value, not just fleeting wins. Short-term results often come at the expense of customer trust and employee engagement. Long-term thinking is strategic and builds resilience.
To learn why leadership teams become misaligned easily, how to recognize the leading indicators of misalignment, and what to do to sustain alignment, download You’re Not as Aligned as You Think You Are.
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