Top Teaming is about the conversations and practices that extraordinary leaders and their teams have that differentiate them from usual high-performing" teams, and make them exceptional, high-caliber Top Teams. Simply put, it is about how good teams get even better to become great teams in an increasingly complex world". -Marshall Goldsmith In today's complex and volatile world, the importance of building executive teams that understand how to manage the "Now, the New, and the Next" is perhaps the most important criterion in achieving both operational success and strategic advantage. This guidebook is written from the viewpoint of an experienced practitioner-someone who has been a trusted advisor to CEOs and executive leadership teams for twenty years across a wide range of industries and geographies. Larry understands how great leaders develop and thus develop their Top Teams. Profit from Levin's experience and learn: * how to harness the "power of a collective future" * how to create "trust over peace" to address the issues that matter most * how to drive the "fierce urgency of now" * how to navigate the critical intersections in any organization * how to build key teams 1-3 levels down * how to move beyond classical "high performing teams" to become a Top Team By learning from the case studies and insights in Top Teaming, you'll drive the alignment, collective intelligence, and focus needed to influence your company's direction, mindset, and performance. Whether you're seeking to make a struggling team good or a good team great, you'll find the guidance you need in Top Teaming: A Roadmap for Leadership Teams Navigating the Now, the New, and the Next.

TOP TEAMING

A Roadmap for Leadership Teams Navigating the Now, the New, and the NextBy Lawrence S. Levin

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Dr. Lawrence S. Levin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-3677-6

Contents

Foreword...................................................................................xiAcknowledgments............................................................................xiiiIntroduction...............................................................................xvChapter 1—Setting the Cornerstone: Being Truly For Something.........................1Chapter 2—Aligning the Stars.........................................................12Chapter 3—Focusing on the Now and the New............................................25Chapter 4—Wrap Your Head around Change...............................................39Chapter 5—Essential Navigational Skills..............................................51Chapter 6—The Art of the Advance: How Good Teams Get Even Better.....................67Chapter 7—Growing and Sustaining Top Teams...........................................90Chapter 8—Being "That" Person: Great Teams Need Great Leaders........................106Chapter 9—The Power of Integration...................................................124Chapter 10—Being Fully in the Game: Building the Top Team............................141Appendix...................................................................................151Bibliography...............................................................................173

Chapter One

Setting the Cornerstone: Being Truly FOR Something

David was named general manager of a highly profitable division of a large manufacturing firm. A very ambitious and forward–thinking leader, he wanted to reshape the historic command–and–control culture and build a leadership team that could use its collective intellect and experience to grow the organization by reshaping its business model and leadership approach. He inherited a culture that was, by most external standards, quite successful and profitable—never having missed a promise to the company or to stockholders. The team was smart, hardworking, and proud of their operational excellence. David's questions for himself and his team were: "How can this team get even better? How can we grow in global reach, innovation, and profitability? How can we begin to think more strategically and more globally?" And, "How can we `raise the bar' of our performance?"

Working with David, our firm decided to schedule an "Advance" (not a Retreat) for his team of direct reports. (Read more about how to plan Advances in chapter 6.) We began this process by interviewing each team member and performing a thorough diagnosis to measure how well the team thought it was doing. We began the actual Advance by presenting data from the interviews to the assembled group. People were surprised at the level of agreement and the passion within the team around their real desire to be more strategic, to think together more deeply, and to take the team to a new level. They knew that it would not be easy and that it would require changes in their dynamics and their willingness to surface and resolve real issues. They understood that it would challenge the very culture that had given them a track record of success.

This Advance was the start of a journey that would, over the next eighteen months, dramatically change the nature, dynamics, accountability, ownership, performance, and even the definition of the team as its members moved from operating as a great collection of individual performers to operating as a Top Team.

Being Truly for Something: The Power of a Collective Future

There is always a beginning. Even for experienced teams that have worked together for years, there are those times when the team must step back and re-ask the fundamental and significant questions about their direction—where they are headed. This is not an uncommon practice on the surface, as virtually every team and organization has a "vision" and strategic plan. What is uncommon, however, and what represents the first critical waypoint in a Top Team's journey, is the articulation of a uniting common purpose and a clear and agreed vision of a desired future—in other words, what the team is truly for.

This is the key aligning principle of a Top Team and the start of its journey as it begins to define the intersection of leadership direction, organizational concern, and current reality. To be sure, this is a very different process from writing a typical vision or mission statement, which often becomes more of a slogan than a deep source of gravity, focus, and commitment. To go through a process of defining what a Top Team is for requires honest, deep, and ongoing dialogue among the members of a senior team and throughout the organization about current realities, real possibilities, and what must and must not change in order to secure the future of the organization.

Everything must be on the table as teams redefine success and survival. As Mickey Connolly writes, "The source of teamwork is a common future" (Connolly and Rionoshek 2002, 145).

So we began the Advance with David's team by asking them what they were really for. This sounds like a simple question, yet the dialogue lasted four hours. We revisited strategy. We talked about what had changed, what was changing, and their ability to control their own destinies. We looked at the business while wearing an "enterprise hat." And they asked themselves whether they should, or even could, raise the bar of their performance as an executive team.

In the course of the dialogue, something broke open—and the team began to define what the future could and should look like. Again, this was happening within a company that prided itself on hitting its numbers and operating with the reliability and operational excellence that would make a Six-Sigma black belt proud. This was a different dialogue that redefined the future. It was not an "either/or" but a "both/and" dialogue that spoke to how the company could dramatically make the changes that would allow it to realize a competitive difference and a different future. This would allow it to not only survive but also to prevail in the marketplace while not missing a beat in its core business.

As David described after the initial session:

"We realized that we had to do more than just make our numbers and build the best product every moment of every day. We became very clear that we were a "growth engine" of this firm, that we are for 30 percent growth, integrating all our global businesses and collaborating across geographies, developing the next generation(s) of leaders, and continuing to drive operational excellence and safety within all our plants. We are for building this team and those that report to us and creating the culture, behaviors, and individual commitment to significantly change our approach to our business."

When Vision and Reality Collide

There is an old saying (von Goethe, Wolfgang, date unknown) that "love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the ideal and the real never goes unpunished." And so it is with the collision between vision and reality. Vision is an idealized state—something to which companies aspire. Vision is formed when the senior team goes on an off-site and envisions the desired future of the firm. It is, by...