Team aligning for company success

Audit

Team aligning for company success

Exercising the position of general manager is complex. All the more so in this pandemic period. Regardless of the industry in which the CEO-led company operates, we find six common elements for fulfilling the role: implementing the strategy, aligning the company, leading the team of executives, cooperating with the board, mediating the relationship with stakeholders, and managing one’s own time and energy. Each of the elements has its importance in the equation of the success of the mandate of the general manager.

Of these, for this article, I cut out the alignment of the company for the essential reason of the importance of people in the success of any business. After all, for any private or institutional investor, the quality of the people is more important than the initial strategy when they decide to “bet” their money on that company. Systematic thinking about people and what role they play, what they can accomplish, or how they can work to increase their impact in the company is the trait of successful CEOs.

Matching people to roles

The best CEOs take a phased approach to matching talent with the roles that create the most value. The first phase is discovering the roles that matter most.

A methodic analysis usually produces results that surprise even the most experienced CEOs. Of the roles that create value in a given organization, about 10% report directly to the CEO, most of the roles that generate value being in the operational area.

What is even more surprising, perhaps, is that there are key roles that do not yet exist. So mapping key roles in the company helps. Once all these roles are identified, in the next phase the CEO coordinates with the other directors to see that these roles are managed with increased rigor and are occupied by the right people.

In the last phase, the emphasis is on training potential candidates, so that important roles are given to new specialists. Even the role of general manager is good to have in place viable internal candidates to ensure succession.

Organizational culture

Assessing the health of the organizational culture starts from aligning the direction and quality of execution to the ability of team members to learn and adapt. It has been observed that CEOs who insist on the rigorous measurement and management of all defining elements of organizational culture double their chances of their strategies being implemented.

To do this well involves carefully proposing the patterns of professional conduct to follow, integrated with internal communication, rewarding desired behaviors, and investing in the professional development of employees.

Often professional development comes as a reaction to a set of mistakes, lack of productivity, or undesirable behaviors. Rarely, however, is it seen as a soft power ingredient of the company that self-proposes to employees, suppliers, customers, or collaborators and is preferred by them to the competition. Employee professional development projects the promise of value to customers and updates the company’s promise to employees.

Organizational design

Successful CEOs increase the agility of companies, determining which features of their organizational design will be stable and unchanging. Such features could include a main organizational axis, several signing processes, and shared values.

It is essential to create dynamic elements that adapt quickly to new challenges and opportunities, such as performance cells, task assignment models based on priorities and prototypes.

CEOs have many challenges that they are struggling to overcome. They often succeed and even excel. In terms of company culture, it can be challenging for the desired values and behaviors to be followed, you can manage engagement or measure human resource satisfaction and make the transition to excellence when you explicitly manage all aspects of organizational efficiency.

In terms of organizational design, it can be challenging to prioritize the feelings of others over efficiency and effectiveness, to be able to define the main axis of the company, or to define roles and make the transition to excellence when you affirm and facilitate agility.