Teams at the Top: Their Unique Mandate

Fall 2006 Issue

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Teams at the Top:
Their Unique Mandate

	Introduction by Jon Wheeler, John Boyle and Bill McKendree, Partners - The Clarion Group

The mandate of the team at the very top of a business is a daunting one. The team at the top has always been beset with pressures, but today’s increasing expectations for intimate oversight and broad transparency while continuing to grow the business have substantially raised the bar. Despite the challenges, membership in this elite team is highly sought after, because it is from this organizational pinnacle - uniquely - that leaders gain the perspective to have the entire picture in their frame and to influence outcomes that have a lasting impact on the organization. Unfortunately, many members of teams at the top do not quite understand the singularity of their role. This is no surprise; they gained the top ranks by successfully fulfilling responsibilities of a smaller scope. But the responsibilities of the team at the top are unique. Its members deliver on a leadership mandate that cannot be satisfied from any other seat in the business. Their impact can be profound; they can be the inflection point for the organization. We have found it helpful to compare the responsibilities of these teams to those of an urban architect. They face design and structural integrity challenges similar to those an urban architect faces in the conception, design, and build out of an urban landscape. Just as an urban architect designs neighborhoods and the things that link them together, the executive team must construct an architecture that creates the connective structures that align the entire enterprise. Please join us as we look through the eyes of the urban architect at three key aspects of the team at the top’s role. As always, we welcome your feedback.

Executive Teams Function
as Urban Architects

(Page 1 of 3)

As leaders grow into their demanding roles as members of the executive team, it can be illuminating to think of their role as an urban architect. The urban architect conceives and designs an interconnected pattern of business and residential areas that results in an aggregate landscape that has meaning and functionality. In the corporate world, the team at the top creates and designs a corporate structure that aligns business silos with a common brand, identity, and business mission.

Urban architects are creators of an intended design. They conceive of a spatial environment that will facilitate and inspire the life and work of the landscape’s occupants. Urban architects chart the city’s infrastructure using wiring, water systems, and roadways to ensure smooth functioning and easy movement from one area to another. They consider the structural integrity of the whole, ensuring that what has been designed will stand the test of time, and that all of its parts will interface easily and efficiently. Finally, they define the directional course that guides the various zoning and planning boards as they bring the vision to reality.

Executive teams must be the urban architects for their organization’s business-scape.

They must co-design a compelling strategic direction that clearly describes the outcome towards which everyone in the business builds. This can only be done with the right input and involvement from their organization’s “neighborhoods.” Their vision needs to spark enthusiasm and draw people toward it. It must entice others to embrace it and bring it to life, just as a well-designed town center does. Finally, the executive team’s design must fit logically in its intended surroundings, anticipating the right environmental influences and conditions, and offering the hope and promise of enduring success.

Of course, the members of the executive team are more than initial designers; they are really resident organization architects. They will stay continually involved with the structures and mechanisms they've designed. They will adjust, redesign, and rebuild to adapt the business as required by internal and external conditions. The organization architect retains responsibility for the stability and continuing evolution of the business.

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