High Impact Leadership Teams - Meet CEO Peter

Peter has been the CEO of his company for two years. While the company's performance has been satisfactory, Peter is ambitious and believes there is potential for much more. The Board shares his belief, especially in terms of increasing market share. They envision a strategy focused on specific product/market combinations and leveraging synergies in production and procurement to fuel further growth.

To achieve this, Peter hired a consultant to help the leadership team develop a new strategy. Following a 3-day workshop, the team agreed on a series of actions aimed at positioning the company as a leader in its industry. However, six months later, Peter noticed that while the central departments—Marketing, R&D, and HR—were making progress, the country-level operations remained stagnant. The country managers continued to focus on short-term goals and maintained their traditional methods of achieving monthly results.

Faced with this challenge, Peter approached me to help him understand the underlying issues. He questioned whether he could trust his country managers to execute the agreed-upon strategy and sought guidance on how to shift the dynamics and behaviors within his leadership team and the broader organization.

Peter's situation is not unique. Many organizations can craft ambitious strategies, yet research shows that up to 90% of the time, these strategies fail to achieve their objectives. Although the leadership team members may outwardly agree with the central strategy, in practice, they often remain focused on the performance of their own units, lacking genuine commitment to the broader goals. This disconnect is often rooted in insufficient trust, which stifles open discussions and the voicing of disagreements. Constructive feedback is rarely part of the company culture, leading to a lack of necessary, albeit difficult, conversations. As Peter Drucker famously said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Without addressing this fundamental issue, even the best strategies are doomed to fail.

At Sage, we take the following steps to reset the culture, starting with the management team:

1. Business Culture Diagnostics (BCD): We begin by inviting the leadership team to complete a 20-minute online BCD. This anonymous survey gauges whether the leaders are aligned with and committed to the company’s strategy and assesses their views on the implementation plan.
2. High Impact Leadership Team (HILT) Workshop: We then facilitate a 2-day workshop where the leadership team reviews the survey results and discusses future leadership practices. During this workshop, we introduced new approaches to giving constructive feedback and developed a team charter to formalize how the leadership team will work together moving forward. Special attention is given to winning the “hearts and minds” of the participants and addressing the "elephants in the room."
3. Commitment to Action: Recognizing the need for tangible outcomes, Peter opted to add a third day to the workshop. This day was dedicated to translating the workshop’s insights into a concrete commitment to action. The team decided to cascade these new ways of working and leadership practices throughout the organization.

One year later, Peter was pleased to report that the strategy had finally come to fruition, resulting in double-digit growth for the company.

Oscar Wezenbeek

Managing Partner

@Sage Boardroom Consulting