Executive team dynamics will significantly affect the development and execution of next year’s strategy and budget. Here’s why aligning the team and addressing challenging team dynamics before or with the strategy build is imperative.
A healthy executive team rationally analyzes last year’s performance and devises a clear strategy that sets the business up for success. However, when misalignment or team dynamics cloud the picture, the strategy and budget are incomplete or don’t support each other, and team members don’t fully commit to the plans, objectives, and actions necessary for success and start the year lagging.
Sometimes, these issues stem from legitimate disagreements about the best path forward. Other times, executives lack the skills and ability to align, a situation made worse by poor communication, personality conflicts, or unhealthy competition over resources. This can happen on any team. Family-run companies have an extra layer of family dynamics that further complicate decision-making and alignment.
That’s why now is the time to address team dysfunction before the company devises an innovative strategy and budget to match.
Why Alignment Matters in Strategy and Budget Planning
At this stage of the year, executives are juggling multiple priorities: hitting this year’s targets, planning for next year, creating a budget to match the strategy, and preparing the company to hit the ground running.
Unfortunately, year-end strategy development is often rushed, lacks innovation, or occurs after a budget is created. Crucial conversations don’t happen, and people pretend that the elephant in the room (or several of them) isn’t there. Little, if any, focus is put on the team dynamic. As a result, team members may inauthentically commit to plans, budgets, or targets, resulting in an ineffective strategy. When this occurs, or executives lack confidence in the team, the company starts the new year handicapped.
Executive team dynamics have again contaminated the process, creating a weak foundation for starting next year—at best.
Could this be happening at your company?
To find out, take a moment to consider these six questions that reveal where your team stands and what you must address this planning season. Note that this is the short version; our proprietary executive team assessment covers 20 elements of high-performance teams. Nevertheless, answering these fundamental questions will help you identify whether a lack of alignment or, worse, significant team dysfunction will cripple your strategy and budgeting process and your team’s success.
6 Questions to assess executive team alignment:
- Is the company consistently meeting or exceeding its objectives? [Y, N, or Unsure]
- Are you confident that all executives demonstrate commitment to the same compelling and bold vision, strategy, plans, and goals? [Y, N, or Unsure]
- Are any team members focused on their own departmental goals to the detriment of their commitment to the top-level corporate objectives? [Y, N, or Unsure]
- Can the team discuss the most challenging issues (including the elephants in the room) compassionately and bring them to resolution, decision, and follow-through? [Y, N, or Unsure]
- Do the team and its members consistently do what they promise and deliver results? [Y, N, or Unsure]
- Specifically for family-run businesses: Do family dynamics influence the company’s decision-making, effectiveness, or support? [Y, N, or Unsure]
If you answered anything but a confident “yes” to any of these questions, executive-team dynamics will negatively impact your planning process, strategy execution, and results.
The solution and its benefits
The most significant opportunity lies in addressing executive team effectiveness before yearly strategic planning and budgeting. But if you’ve already started planning or are about to do it, it’s still crucial to tackle the problems concurrently. Here’s why:
- It allows you to simultaneously uncover and address performance and organizational and strategic concerns.
- It allows for a better strategy and budget.
- It will immediately and profoundly impact innovation and performance—now and next year.
- Identifying dysfunction may be much faster and simpler than most executives realize.
- If yours is a family-owned company, it reintroduces compassion, harmony, and unity into a stable, growing business and strengthens the family.
So, identifying and addressing team dynamics is a crucial component—but how do you fix it?
These challenges vary among organizations and teams but often result from ineffective communication, personality conflicts, territorial business units, blame, or fundamental disagreements over last year’s performance or new objectives. CEOs must ask straightforward, impactful questions—both in a group setting and with individual executives—to identify and address the root of the problem.
Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done, especially when disagreements are personal, and executives are too caught up in the situation to see clearly. In this case, bringing in an outside perspective can be invaluable.
Results Management Group has decades of experience guiding scores of teams and families to achieve alignment on vision, strategy, goals, and culture. Whether setting a strategy, unearthing a hidden problem that executives avoid discussing, old unresolved conflict, making critical decisions, or just rubbing others the wrong way, we’ve just about seen it all. We can help you get to the bottom of the fundamental issues that stand in the way of your success.
Don’t let a misaligned team or challenging team dynamics contaminate the planning process and thus start the year handicapped. Instead, take decisive action. By addressing problems early, you can ensure the best strategy and budget possible— and hit the ground running in January.
Watch this video to see how this team got unstuck and set itself up for success, becoming, in the CEO’s words, “like an Olympic rowing team.”
And, if your company is family-owned, this is another video to watch:
