Reinventing Your Leadership Team

1. Look for people with varied experiences, who have worked within different ecosystems and understand the capabilities, technologies, channels, and transformational approaches you will be deploying.
2. You want leaders who have demonstrated that they can build and scale up the capabilities you aim to perfect.
3. Your team should reflect the diverse voices of your total ecosystem—including the customers you seek to serve, your workforce, and your partners. Very likely, those voices will cover a range of gender identities; national, racial, and ethnic origins; abilities.

The role of the leadership team does not stop with making big choices; senior executives must also see that their decisions are successfully implemented. That’s what the “strategic executor” leadership paradox is all about. Your top people will need to get their hands dirty working through the implementation details and making sure that the activities of disparate parts of the organization add up to a coherent whole.

1. How much of your time is spent running the day to-day versus shaping the future
2. How much of your time is spent reacting to what others in the organization bring to you, rather than driving the top team’s agenda?
3. How often do your strategic discussions lead you to make hard choices about your company’s future?
4. When your team spends time on strategy, do you focus on the external environment or the bold choices that your organization must make?
5. How much time do you spend reviewing actions after the fact versus proactively shaping actions and a direction? 

1. How often do you ask people to come back with more-detailed proposals because your team doesn’t quite have the energy or the clear vision to be decisive?
2. How often do you spend time debating who is responsible for solving an issue rather than addressing it?
3. How often do you and other members of the leadership team work together on issues?
4. How well do you know your colleagues on the leadership team?
5. Do you get the feeling that they care about your success, and do you care about theirs?