A management team should come together with a sense of strength in numbers knowing that they are more powerful and effective pulling together than pulling apart.
Management team meetings are not a time for dissension and disruption - they're a time for entertaining diverse opinions and different perspectives, yes, but more importantly they're an opportunity to focus the company's resources effectively to solve problems and make progress toward collegial goals. It's not a time for holding back, it's a time for giving: how can I contribute to solving this problem or issue?
They are not a time to establish territorial fiefdoms or wage turf wars.
Imagine how miserable it would be walking along a pleasant path in the woods on a bright sunny day if someone just ahead of you kept throwing railroad ties and large boulders in your way every few steps. Ridiculous, you say? I've seen many management team meetings where participants did just that. "That will never work." It's too expensive." "We tried that 6 years ago and it didn't work." "The people in my department won't like that."
Look for facilitators...people who smooth the way, suggest reasonable alternatives, and ways to work around obstacles instead of creating them.
Be on the alert for people who, after a reasonable debate of the issues, work for closure and execution. These are the get-it-dones every company needs. People who push for positive action are the real movers.
Don't Play It Again, Sam
Effective management teams solve things once.
When we audit senior executive meetings we often hear complaints that the same ground is being plowed again and again. If the same mistakes are being made over and over -
if the same discussions are held again and again - there's something very wrong with the decision-making abilities of the attendees.
There's no excuse for that kind of behavior on your management team. Imagine an airline pilot repeatedly crash landing the plane, or a football player who always goes left when the play is 42-Right.
In the Navy if a series of mistakes or accidents occur repeatedly over a short period of time, they "stand down" - all operations are halted, leaves cancelled, and everyone focuses on retraining to eliminate deficiencies so the organization can go about doing its job with alacrity and skill.
Maybe that's what more agencies need: stand down days were everything stops for 24 hours and everyone discusses how to improve, how to stop making the same mistakes.
Can We Just Be Friends?
The best management teams are the ones which always agree. . .but only at the end. They are made up of diverse opinionated people who argue to see their point of view adopted because they honestly believe theirs is the best. They enthusiastically debate the merits of what they're for, and then, when it's time for resolution, put aside any differences and emulsify all emotion which might be poisoning their thinking.
Then they arrive at consensus.
Consensus is not compromise. Compromise is when you come to a point sort of halfway between your position and the other guy's. That might be OK for some situations (politics comes to mind) but it's not good in the life or death arts like medicine, warfare, or advertising. Compromise dilutes and weakens both sides. . .and all too frequently what's left is the worst of both positions.
Consensus on the other hand is when everyone agrees to accept a certain tactic and endorses it wholeheartedly. Picture a pickup football team faced with the decision to pass, punt or run. Several players in the huddle argue passionately for each option and then they decide to compromise on some type of ill-conceived plan where there's a little of all three plays. What chaos!
What makes a successful football play is exactly what's needed in the executive suite: though we don't all agree we'll put our differences aside and run the play with all our blood and guts for the glory of the moment, as if it were the only thing we ever thought of doing. And we'll do it with PASSION!
[If you'd like to read the entire article, go to
Articles at
Grant Consulting and click on "What Should Agency Management Teams Do" to download the .pdf file.]
