Is your company run by a team with no name?
At the top of every organization chart lies a myth–that a
Senior Management Team makes a company’s critical decisions. The
reality is that critical decisions are typically made by the boss
and a small group of confidants–a ’team with no
name’–outside of formal processes. Meanwhile, other members
of the management team wonder why they weren’t in the room or even
consulted ahead of time. The dysfunction that results from this gap
between myth and reality has led to years of unproductive team
building exercises. The problems, Frisch shows, are ones of process
and structure, not psychology.
In Who’s in the Room? Bob Frisch provides a unique
perspective to this widely misunderstood issue. Flying in the face
of decades of organizational psychology, he argues that the
solution lies not in addressing behaviors, but in unseating the
senior management team as the epicenter of decision making. Using a
broad portfolio of teams–large and small, permanent and
temporary, formal and informal–great leaders match each
decision to the appropriate team in a fluid, flexible approach that
you won’t find described in management textbooks.
Who’s in the Room? is based on interviews with CEOs at
organizations ranging from Master Card to Ticketmaster to The Red
Cross.
* Understand and embrace the way decision-making actually happens
in their organizations
* Use these ’teams with no names’ to best advantage
* Engage the Senior Management Team in the three critical tasks
for which it is ideally suited
Organizations will get better decisions and superior results by
unleashing the full potential of their Senior Management Teams. And
bosses will see a dramatic drop-off in people coming into their
offices asking, ‘Why wasn’t I in the room?’
Inhoudsopgave
Introduction: Who’s in the Room? 1
Part One: From Problem to Portfolio 5
1 Most Companies Are Run by Teams with No Names 7
The Myth of the Top Team
Illusion and Reality
The Problem That Isn’t There, But Won’t Go Away
2 Team Building Won’t Solve the Problem 21
When the Shrinks Go Marching In
After the Shrinks Have Gone
3 Don’t Blame the Boss 29
In Search of the Ideal Leader
Inside the Box
Do the ”Rights” Thing
4 Four Fundamental Conflicts at the Heart of Senior Management Teams 41
Mission Control Versus Knights of the Round Table: Functional Specialists or Reflections of the CEO?
The Team Versus the Legislature: The Representative from Finance, the Senator from Operations
The House Versus the Senate: Are Some More Equal Than Others?
The Majority Versus the Majority: The Impossibility of Deciding
Maybe the Problem Is That There Is No Problem
5 Case Study: How One CEO Transformed His Top Team 57
The Past as Prologue
Moving from a Single Top Team to Multiple Teams
The Team That Sits Together Works Together
Tailoring the Structure to Suit Your Needs as a Leader
6 Best Practices: Design an Organization That Delivers the Outcomes You Need 73
The Three Centers of Gravity
Flexing in Five Dimensions
The Portfolio and the Payoff
Part Two: The Senior Management Team Unbound 91
7 Engage the Senior Management Team in Three Critical Conversations No Other Team Can Have 93
8 Align the Senior Management Team Around a Common View of the World 99
The Starting Point: Aligning Around Trends
Clustering Trends into Drivers of Change
Understanding Capabilities and Assets
Walking the Boundaries of the Company: Testing Walls and Fences
Defining and Selecting Opportunities
9 Prioritize and Integrate Initiatives to Hit the Strategic Bull’s-Eye 119
Asking the Nearly Impossible: Prioritizing Initiatives
The Real Source of the Difficulty
Changing the Conversation
It’s All Relative
Hitting the Bull’s-Eye: Making Initiatives Work Together
10 Move from ”Should We Do This?” to ”How Do We Do This?” 145
It All Depends: Why Initiatives Fail
Putting on the Brakes: The Value of Parochialism
The American Red Cross: Managing Dependencies at the Speed of Disaster
Going from ”Should” to ”How”
Fixing What’s Actually Broken
11 Tailor Your Portfolio of Teams for Top Performance Now 167
Thinking It Through
Putting the New Approach into Motion
Repurposing the SMT
Who’s in the Room?
Acknowledgments 179
The Author 183
Index 185
Over de auteur
Bob Frisch, managing partner of The Strategic Offsites Group, has worked with organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to German mittelstand family businesses to the U.S. Department of State. Bob’s work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fortune.
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