Authority is granted by the organisation; credibility in cohesive executive teams is earned separately. When this aspect of organisational leadership is unclear, people default to protecting their own function. The outcome is a practitioner who can hold a position on the organisational leadership discipline and revise it on evidence. Benchmarking exercises repeatedly place cohesive executive teams among the areas with the widest performance spread. Cases are chosen to expose the trade-offs in this area of organisational leadership rather than to illustrate ideal conditions. Participants who influence the wider organisational leadership agenda without directly controlling it will find the content directly usable. Plans for cohesive executive teams often fail at the handover point between functions. The course gives participants a defensible structure for this strand of organisational leadership and the judgement to adapt it. The programme closes with an action plan for the organisational leadership capability that each participant writes for their own organisation.
Expected Learning Outcomes
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Judge when to escalate cohesive executive teams and when to absorb it.
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Establish escalation routes for cohesive executive teams that work outside normal hours.
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Design a practical operating method for cohesive executive teams that fits the organisation's size and maturity.
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Develop successors capable of running cohesive executive teams without you.
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Align the incentives of different functions so cohesive executive teams is not quietly sabotaged.
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Assess the current state of cohesive executive teams against a structured set of criteria rather than impressions.
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Manage the emotional load cohesive executive teams places on you and on the team.
Who Should Attend
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Human resources partners advising leaders on cohesive executive teams.
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Founders and owner-managers formalising cohesive executive teams as the organisation grows.
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Operations staff who encounter the consequences of cohesive executive teams directly.
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Newly promoted managers taking on cohesive executive teams for the first time.
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Executives leading multi-function programmes involving cohesive executive teams.
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Business partners who must understand cohesive executive teams well enough to challenge it.
Course Modules
Open any module to see its sessions and topics.
01
Cohesive executive teams: conflict, politics and informal power
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Making cohesive executive teams work when resources are constrained
Rank the weaknesses in cohesive executive teams by consequence rather than by ease of fixing.
Decide the point at which you would escalate cohesive executive teams.
Recognise publicly one person whose work on cohesive executive teams went unnoticed.
Decide what will be stopped to create capacity for cohesive executive teams.
Session 2Moving cohesive executive teams through people who do not report to you
Define acceptance criteria for cohesive executive teams in advance.
Confirm that contractual obligations around cohesive executive teams are understood.
Ask the team what they think is wrong with the plan for cohesive executive teams.
Name a single owner for each element of cohesive executive teams.
02
Cohesive executive teams: performance, standards and consistency
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Deciding on cohesive executive teams when the information will never be complete
Identify the data already collected that bears on cohesive executive teams.
Test whether the team can explain cohesive executive teams in their own words.
Reduce the variation in how cohesive executive teams is carried out between teams.
Write down the reasoning behind your position on cohesive executive teams.
Session 2Who answers for cohesive executive teams, and to whom
