Strategy Activator

Here is the challenge - executives and business unit leaders easily fall into the trap of believing that taking ultimate ownership for the success and health of the business is up to the CEO. Certainly, they appreciate the importance of achieving targets and this is always on the agenda, but taking full and personal ownership for those targets is something else entirely. With the CEO plotting a course for strategic growth and building strategic alliances, the mandate for getting everyone to show up and take ownership typically falls to you, the COO.

You can pay someone to take on responsibilities, but you cannot pay them to take personal accountability for the results. This is a matter of personal choice, conviction and character. So how do you get your executive team on board with the strategic vision and inspire them to make the company mission their own?

“The COO job requires an individual who can step out of doing day-to-day, hands-on directing and leading of a business, and direct and teach and coach others.” Steven Reinemund, past COO at PepsiCo

Getting your leadership team to accept not just responsibility for strategic imperatives but also accountability for results, allows you the time to focus on more productive and less distracting activities. It is widely known that your company culture has the highest impact on achieving results (confirmed in this study by Partners In Leadership). Despite this, 74% of leaders admit to consistently prioritising strategy change over cultural change. Collective accountability is perhaps the most pivotal cultural change.

Getting your executive team on board to personally own the company mission is what makes a Totally Accountable COO - a true system leader.

What gives me the authority to make such claims? I’m a Strategy Facilitator and Executive Fellow of Henley Business School, specialising in taking business leaders on executive development journeys. Having worked with executives, business leaders and founders across industries for the last twelve years, I know that lack of accountability is the number one frustration.

Here are the five key challenges I will be expanding on in a series of emails I’d like you to keep an eye out for over the next few weeks:

Lack of Clarity

Your executives are all leading their teams in different directions, following their own agendas. Not because they’re intent on undermining the company, and not because they don’t understand the strategy. What they’re missing is the business DNA - the drivers that your brand is built on, that provide the key to commercially astute decisions in your business.

Typically, this is something the CEO gets intuitively but isn’t apparent to anyone else in the organisation, unless it’s encoded and collectively applied by the executive team.

Getting clear on your business DNA is the key to commercial acumen because it empowers informed decision-making.

Providing clarity takes time and effort - sometimes a lot of effort, says Brene Brown - but experience tells me it's the only dependable foundation for cohesion.

Inadequate accountability

OK, perhaps your executive colleagues really are clear on what matters most in your company. Now they’re all incredibly busy having strategic conversations, but you’re just not getting results and no one is taking ownership.

This is, simply put, inadequate accountability.

Unless you actively foster accountability, contracting upfront and then regularly holding up a mirror, your company stands to miss out on the exponential returns that may not be immediately apparent. This kind of accountability improves connection and engagement because it increases trust and transparency by unveiling expectations, celebrating wins and embedding consequences.

Accountability eliminates time and effort wasted on distracting activities and other unproductive behaviour, because everyone is committed to achieving results. The exponential return on your investment in accountability comes from the collective willingness across the company to pitch in and help others out, going the extra mile to get results, regardless of whose KPI is on the line.

Misaligned focus

Accountability is the key, but it doesn’t stop there. Now that you’ve opened the door to discretionary effort, you need to ensure that effort is focused on priorities that are going to make a difference.

What if you could empower each of your business leaders to get all their teams pulling in the same direction? A lot of attention is given to cascading strategy, but any strategy is typically obsolete within 3 months of the initial design. Your company operates in a volatile market buffeted by a turbulent environment, and what your people need is not so much cascaded strategy, as appreciation of the principles behind the strategy.

Then, they’ll be able to set what John Doerr calls the right goals, for themselves, instead of waiting for instructions.

And what will hold their attention over time? Certainly not the monthly wait for feedback from Exco. If your Exco sessions are anything like those I’ve observed over the years, then you’re spending valuable time wading through cleverly crafted defences of reports that were already a week old by the start of the session.

What your teams need is real-time feedback on the impact of their decisions, so that they can course-correct and invest their energy in more effective strategies.

Zero Energy

Agile companies run on productive teams. Productive teams run on positive energy. Positive energy comes from constructive leadership. An uncomfortable truth? I’ve attended countless team meetings over the years and, from experience, one can tell within 60 seconds if the meeting will be energising or draining.

This has very little to do with the company, the participants, or even the agenda. It’s down to the way the meeting is led.

Constructive leadership enhances the quality of thinking simply by paying attention to those who are thinking.

To translate thinking to meaningful action requires mindful leaders who spend less time barking out instructions and more time inviting their people into roles beyond their comfort zones.

I believe we’re all energised when invited to step into our potential and discover that we can make a meaningful contribution that not only adds value, but also is valued.

What's next?

Ultimately, your mandate is to get your leadership team pulling in the same direction and keep pulling until they get results. Without this, the rest of the company doesn’t know who to follow so they’re just winging it, hoping for a positive outcome.

But hope is not accountability.

If you need your leadership team to take as much accountability as you do - if you’re on a mission, let’s talk.