The HBO TV show, ‘Succession’, follows the dynamics of a public global media empire run and partially owned by its founder and his family members. Collectively, the family owns the majority share-holding (or at least they did at the beginning….).
Despite his advancing years, the owner still holds ambitions of being the biggest and the best in a changing media landscape, where social media and technology are constantly shifting the goalposts and creating new spaces for upstart competitors to rise and conquer. His style is very much 'my way or the highway' and all the executive staff seem very well trained to follow his lead.
However, despite the scale and complexity of the external battles, there appear to be bigger internal battles where each of the children jostle to be the next in line, even plotting against the father by secretly building new alliances with the emerging new order upstarts. The clash between the power of the father and the challenge of the children, sometimes uniting but mostly fighting each other, leads to a toxic environment where everyone seems to be looking out only for themselves.
But this is just a TV show, right?
A key role of any Executive Team is to work together as a powerful collective and form an enterprise view that anticipates future needs and opportunities. As a result, the team is then able to ensure the organisation fulfils its full potential and creates a sustainable future.
Alas, when Executive Teams fail to fulfil this role, it results in a state of confusion at best, and one of conflict at worst that cascades through the organisation.
Despite almost 100% of senior executives polled by the Center for Creative Leadership agreeing that “increased effectiveness of my executive team will have a positive impact on organisational results”, only 18% rated their teams as ‘very effective’. This suggests that over 80% of Executive Teams were underperforming.
The biggest contributor to this lack of effectiveness was that 65% of Executive Teams experienced clashes between functional and enterprise accountabilities.
Members of Executive Teams customarily confront the dual role of leading their own function, while being simultaneously responsible for collaborating on business-wide initiatives. Similarly, they generally represent the voice of different stakeholders who often hold contradictory and/or competing needs. If this constant tension is not managed, it can readily snowball into misalignment and political infighting.
Executive team members invariably hold three levels of accountability:
1) Independent 2) Co-dependent 3) Interdependent.
Independent tasks are invariably functional and hold full autonomy. This is the realm where the Executive has full control and can demonstrate their capability. Here, Executives build their reputation for achievement and here is also where the Hero Leader can be born, free from the need to work effectively with others.
Co-dependent tasks require inputs from, and outputs to, other Executives (or their sub-ordinates). Each Executive is no longer in full control. However, despite the relatedness between the tasks, these are often carried out as functional responsibilities. Hence, in less healthy environments, the confidence developed in independent tasks can often lead to posturing and bravado in the presence of other Executives as each jostles for position. Then, when the inevitable happens where one Executive’s performance is negatively impacted by another, finger-pointing and blame erupts as individuals feel their reputations are being challenged (even if only in the mind of the Executive). Often, this behaviour becomes the ‘norm’ and the ‘clash of the titans’ takes hold.
Interdependent tasks lie at the enterprise level. These are the critical strategic differentiators that set the organisation apart. They require the full intelligence, experience, and wisdom of all Executives to be focused on the tasks at hand. This is where teaming is at its most critical. The greater the systemic understanding of the whole and how the whole works, the greater is the opportunity to see new opportunity. The greater the cohesion of the team, the greater the resilience and collective capability there is to succeed through change.
Alas, if the ‘clash of the titans’ is the prevailing Executive culture, the psychological safety so necessary to create success in these circumstances will sadly not be present. Individual Executives will be guarded in their contributions and actions and fail to bring their full power to bear on the collaborative accountabilities. The ‘team’ is robbed of the breadth and depth of its collective perspectives.
Often, these behaviours are strongly reflected in Executive Meetings. The sharing of independent achievements becomes a significant positioning game. Executives deemed as threats will be listened to with the intent to counter them or, at worst, sabotage them. Those who are not threats will be ignored and the other Executives will use the time to attend to other tasks. The time taken reviewing co-dependant tasks, where the titans come out in full armour, absorbs most of the meeting. Invariably, there is never any time left for the critical collaborative, strategic conversations.
Sadly, Executives that show so much promise in the independent tasks become unable to repeat the success in co-dependent areas, and invariably fail to fully support the development of interdependent, enterprise-level accountabilities.
If, within this context, teams have found a way to deliver some successful outcomes, then just consider what might be possible when their true potential gets released.
Alas, as the beacon for the enterprise, the behaviours of the Executive are invariably reflected throughout the organisation and so any dysfunction and unrealised potential that sits in the C-suite is mirrored throughout the business. The improvement potential becomes enormous.
In a VUCA world, the need for interdependent collaboration rises exponentially. In this environment, if Executives struggle to work effectively together then the possibility of organisational failure also rises exponentially.
On the other hand, helping Executives build their teaming muscles cascades through the organisation - amplifying and eventually accelerating performance and results.
Rather like peeling an onion, coaching helps teams acknowledge, manage and overcome the many limiting layers that build up over time and cause dysfunction. By enabling teams to see bigger possibilities in the service of their collective stakeholders, team coaching enables the team to connect with more and more of its true potential.
As this happens, teams begin to see things that were once hidden, become more aware of greater possibilities, open up to more fulfilling experiences and deliver far greater value.
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