I was in conversation with a friend who’s been around the block – and seen plenty of dysfunctional executive teams – about the most common types of dysfunctions. We landed on three.
(1) Solving for yourself or your people instead of the organization. The motivations are either selfish or tribal. These teams involve executives optimizing for their own position or protecting their team rather than doing what’s right for the whole.
(2) Inability to commit to a strategy with real trade-offs. Here, everything is important. Every initiative is a priority. The answer changes depending on which forum you’re in. A strategy without trade-offs, it turns out, isn’t a strategy.
(3) Inability to have hard conversations. Meetings end without clarity on decisions made and next steps taken. Forums for strategic conversations are used to discuss minutiae that doesn’t matter or to simply hear the sound of their own voice. Everyone leaves the room having said nothing of consequence.
The common thread: all three are forms of short-term comfort chosen over long-term health. And the cost is always paid by the organization.
A Learning a Day 