Topperforming management teams

Not even the greatest superhero or the biggest of egos can do everything on their own. We simply aren’t built to do as many things, be in as many places or process as many thoughts as we would like to all at the same time. Our physical and mental limitations mean we are just not wired to solve all the tasks and challenges we come up against on our own. Instead we need to regularly coordinate our efforts with others. We need to help each other out, agree on things, discuss matters, share information and try and reach a consensus on solutions to all kinds of tasks and problems.

Managing an organisation, or part of an organisation (such as a department, region, service, etc.) is one such task that is often too complex for any one individual to take on. An organisation usually consists of a number of people, each one with unique yet not always fully compatible interests, personalities, opinions and abilities. Organisations operate in an ever-changing and often unpredictable environment, in which competitors fight over customers as well as talented employees. In this environment market forces often seem to have a life of their own, and the minute you think you’ve adapted to them with new work processes and strategies to reach your goals they shift again, and your hard work can almost feel redundant.

In this complex reality management teams operate by making decisions, discussing strategic and operational issues and gathering and disseminating information and resources. They symbolise leadership, give each other support, follow up on decisions and work processes and update each other – all the while coordinating the business and its various processes. A little later in this book we will take a closer look at what top-performing management teams actually do, both inside and outside of their meetings. We’ll also look at how important it is for management teams to be empowered to operate as just that – real teams. We will discuss how these teams should be formed and organised, the mindsets that are common in them and how it feels to work in a top-performing team. Finally we will look at what can be done to develop a management team. But before we move on to that we should start by talking about what teams actually achieve. Because, in the end, that’s what everything we’re going to talk about ultimately leads us to.

What do top-performing management teams achieve?

From time to time I ask the members of management teams I meet how they evaluate whether they have done a good job. The answer, remarkably, is often that they don’t. Not in any systematic way. Instead it is common to only follow up on how well the organisation is performing as a whole, and thus the management team’s performance is often associated and measured this way. This is, of course, an important metric to keep track of, and the management team absolutely has a role in influencing this. But organisational performance and results depend