CEO excellence decoded: it’s about six mindsets and supporting practices that matter most!

Authors, Senior Partners at Mckinsey & Company have identified six mindsets that distinguishes Best CEOs from the rest,and supporting practices as adopted by these CEOs in their role, culled out of interactions with impressive list of CEOs across wide spectrum of industries and regions. Among the six mindsets ie Direction setting, Organization Alignment, solving for Team psychology, Board engagement, stakeholder connections and personal effectiveness, I found the one dealing with team and decision making quite thought provoking.  

My takeaways from team management mindset and associated practices are as follows: 

1. DACI often works better than RACI:  No matter how much we use RACI, I often find people arguing between R & A and experiencing difficulty in allocating right actors to each category.  DACI framework creates no such confusion.  (A)approver is the person who approves the decision, (D)river is the one who proposes and also delivers what is approved, (C)ontributors are mainly team members and Informed are all those who are likely to be impacted from the decision and overall project.   

2. Serious Reviews are primarily for those not doing well? Is it? There is not much to discuss as all results look good- really! DO we now the reason behind success? Is the success by design and deliberate effort or outcome of fortunate events? What is the likelihood of continuity of success? What if there is lot more potential as the assumptions behind target setting have gone wrong, and no one is revealing it? 

3. Between Data and Dialogue, make SPEED an essential ingredient: Neither the advocates of data can ever be sure that all data has been collected, validated and analyzed, nor the experienced believers of intuition and gust are satisfied in their ability to articulate why they feel what they feel and convince others- and the situation keeps crying for decision.  And this is where the decision timeline brings necessary closure to the issue.  

4. Solid performers are not second class citizens: Do you prebook all the excellence rating slots for those you want to promote?  Do you classify the excellent piece of work done by solid contributor, quarter after quarter, as nor worthy of praise as it has become norm for him to deliver at that level, given his tenure in this role? Imagine getting that quality from his replacement as pinch test!  Do you dismiss those not matching your career ambition levels lethargic, lacking initiative and drag

5    Drag between decision to let go and its execution serves no one:   Yes, you have shared the expectations, you have provided performance feedbacks, you have proposed coaching and training support, but the outcomes are still not up to the mark.  The inclination to give another chance and avoid delivering the verdict only leads to another drag on team performance, dent on your leadership credibility and one more quarter of anxiety to the person suffering underperformance.  Whenever I have let someone go, my only regret has been that I should have done it earlier! 

6    It is quality of cement not strength of individual bricks that decide how strong the wall is:  Leaders cements the team through clearly defining behavior charter, meeting norms, information sharing expectations, integrity and accountability standards and disagreement resolution process.  CEO must be perceived as playing fair to all members, while accommodating for individual needs and aspirations in a transparent manner.  No less important is the task allocation process, to ensure that tasks that deserves team efforts get teams and those that are delivered best through individual accountability are not thrust on the team.

7. Finally, who is welcome in the team:  Someone who adds another dimension of competence to the team portfolio, has history of contributing in Team effectively through his conduct and has Character others can admire! 

Among the other mindsets, few practices that are worth reflecting and reiterating include: 

8. Resource allocation practice:  It is expected that CEOs would continually review and redistribute the resourcesallocated across businesses and units in response to changing context and opportunities – Best CEOs tend to do this three times more often!  These CEOs have developed practice to sharply identify what to nurture and what to pruneamong opportunities that are not unfolding as per plan, and take necessary actions.  

9. Pick only one thing to change in culture:  Best CEOs identify one element of the work environment that makesbiggest difference in delivering desired outcomes and needs to be changed.  They use all levers including communications across forums, stories, personal conduct, measures, to bring change in that element.  Key here is to identify the one element that needs to focus on (closely aligned with strategy), among many options, including temptation to change multiple elements at the same time.  It is clear recognition of the effort required to make meaningful change and hence the need to concentrate energy. 

10. Boards have their own reason to exist Best CEOs facilitate boards to do their duty, while leveraging them strategically to drive his/her own agenda as well.  There are fairly known ways of engaging with board members, including exposing your management team to board and other practices that are well documented elsewhere - may be Best CEOs are able to practice them more astutely. 

11. Making stakeholders interactions meaningful to all: CEO messages need to clearly explain his intent and decisions by relating to five segments ie self, colleagues, company, customer and society.  And while doing so, it is important that underlying narrative stays the same, else any perceived inconsistency in messaging would create trust-deficit.

 

12. Manage your Personal effectiveness- Given the time and energy demands of the position, focus on doing what only you can do or should do? It is also good to prioritize within time allocated to each segment – say 30% to external parties than prioritizing across whole stakeholder segment.

While books such as above are often questioned for their originality of ideas and newness, their real value lies in culling out differentiating practices from large swathe of options, supported by reference to CEOs who stand behind these suggestions.

 To that extent, it helps do self-assessment against what the Best CEOs are doing and if the reflection ends up provoking reader to experiment with one more practice, the time spent on book is worth it!