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20 - The Top Team – From executive group to executive team

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2009

By
Jean-Philippe Deschamps
Edited by
Preston Bottger
Preston Bottger
Affiliation:
IMD International, Lausanne
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Summary

On the first day of the retreat, one of the business line guys piped up, ‘If you, support-function guys, would just do this …’ The CEO said, ‘Hang on. We're all part of this company. If you're going to sit in this room and work on this team, you've got to drop this “we” and “they” … This is a collective effort.’ People got the message, and this has turned into a real team.

CXO, global motor company

To support the CEO effectively, CXOs must often engage in combined action.

This chapter considers some of the obstacles to the pursuit of an integrated and coherent corporate agenda. We pull together some of the previous themes and propose ways of surmounting the barriers to collective action that are built into the social system.

Building on points made earlier in chapters 16 and 19, we can identify four practical challenges for the CEO, and for the CXOs in their work to support the CEO:

  • Handling the effects of the inevitable informal hierarchy within the top team, particularly when this pits CXOs against their line colleagues;

  • Ensuring that CXOs find the right balance between supporting their line colleagues and enforcing corporate-wide policies in their functional area;

  • Encouraging CXOs to broaden their thinking to act as full members of the top executive team;

  • Aligning the work of all CXOs with the entire corporate agenda.

Before exploring these four tasks in greater depth, it is useful to clarify the composition of the corporation's top team.

Type
Chapter
Information
Leading in the Top Team
The CXO Challenge
 , pp. 377 - 388
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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References

Hammonds, K., ‘How do we break out of the box we're stuck in?’, Fast Company, November (2000), pp. 260–8.Google Scholar
Hamel, G., ‘Strategy as revolution’, Harvard Business Review, July–August (1996), pp. 69–83.Google ScholarPubMed
Eisenhardt, K. M., Kahwajy, J. L and Bourgeois, L. J., ‘How management teams have a good fight’, Harvard Business Review, July–August (1997), pp. 77–85.Google ScholarPubMed
Gardner, H. and Laskin, E., Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership (New York: BasicBooks, 1995).Google Scholar
Killing, P. J., Malnight, T. and Keys, T., Must-Win Battles (London: FT Prentice Hall, 2005).Google Scholar

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