It’s time to pay off your company’s group health debt.

We live in a VUCA world: we are all experiencing unprecedented levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Ever since I entered the business world 25 years ago, I have been saying, “There is more uncertainty now than ever.” In the corporate arena, one of the most underrated indicators of sustainable success is the health of the leadership team. He fully understands that to scale in any business climate, companies need a stellar strategy – an extraordinary product market fit, a winning business model and a distinct approach to the market. However, all of these things are in place while building a leadership team with strong execution capabilities. That is, the ability to make high-quality decisions faster and more often than competitors. And the key to execution capacity is the health of the leadership team.

Healthy leadership teams share these characteristics:

• Individually and as a team, they are aligned on their common purpose, the “Why”.
• On the “what”, their vision is clear where they are heading.
• They embrace a unified “how” with a commitment to a common roadmap, operating system, and guiding principles.
• They have a deep understanding of who they are as individuals, where their strengths and gaps lie, and are adept at facilitating each other.

With all of that in place – tailored to the company’s people and strategy – they learn, grow and scale successfully together.

As strategies change, and leaders are under more pressure than usual, it’s time to check the health of the leadership team. Because, often, managing through interruptions increases the health debt of the group, let’s face it, it was already more than it should be in many organizations.

Group health debt includes dynamic activities that never happen but need to be done, such as conversations; Decision making that takes place in silos; Low levels of transparency; And when low-quality conversations occur.

Teams suffering from group health debt may be too good for each other—so good that they don’t have the difficult strategic or personal conversations needed to succeed. They may find themselves in long, rambling, or awkward conversations that show clarity but seem like slow decision-making. Or, they may find themselves too busy focusing on the day-to-day, making adjustments, making calls, or otherwise avoiding the level of communication development necessary to drive strategy together.

The challenge of group health debt, like technology debt, is that it’s not always a visible issue for all group members, despite its devastating impact. But if paid back, the team can move to higher levels of performance, strategy execution, and even happiness.

It’s important to stay current on your team’s health bills. When you postpone a meeting to collaborate or miss a serious discussion, or don’t have a serious collaborative meeting to address big strategic issues, you’re guilty, thus incurring more team health debt. Teams that invest time and have the difficult conversations not only pay off the debt, but reap the rewards of innovation and growth.

The easiest way to tell if your team is suffering from high team health debt is to look at how they address strategy and performance. Unhealthy groups see the world in binary terms. Where they are not, you will see simple yes no choices. And so, factions are formed, individuals dig in their heels, and the quality of decision-making suffers. In unhealthy groups, these negative tensions are seen as a trade-off. They don’t openly discuss it, but they lurk underneath and poison the team – slowly reducing the kill, making poor decisions and killing morale.

• Product vs. Go to the market. Should you focus on technology and product development, as you did in the company’s early days, or on revenue generation? The answer, of course, is both, but if executives argue over resource allocation, roadmap clarity, or critical metrics and metrics, the underlying tension is likely to be an unspoken, shift by key leaders to one side or the other of this spectrum.
• Autonomy and cooperation. As employment increases – from 10 to 50 people or 200 to 500 people – there is a need to ensure independence and to solve issues more effectively. If executives are slow or poor at making decisions about roles, decision rights, and pooling or crossover, your team may be stuck with this false choice.
• Culture vs growth. Ask your team, “How do we grow and preserve our culture?” They may not be clear about the company’s values, operating principles, and how individuals are empowered to live by them. In difficult situations, culture and development are seen as a trade-off, which harms both.
• Patience and action. “We need a bias for action.” Or, “We have to be patient with the strategy, let the team do the work and trust the process.” What if both are true? What if groups could discuss areas where patience is needed and compare areas where action is necessary?

Healthy teams see these tensions as opportunities for strategic discussion and negotiation. They take a both/and approach rather than an either/or approach to resolving tensions—that is, they work together to understand how to get the most out of both elements of the tension.

Think of a group that has systematically paid off the group health debt and has clear decision rights, structures and agreements on which issues are urgent and which require patience. Imagine a team that brings difficult conversations to the fore, resolves them, and builds relationships. Imagine a team with an updated simple, clear and co-created purpose, vision, road map and operational plan. How fast can it be measured? How fun could it be? What will be released?

There are three main areas that companies can focus on to improve team health and strength and make an immediate impact on strategy execution.

Individual Leadership: It all starts with individual leaders. Any executive leader needs to know their strengths and values ​​and be clear about their areas of development. They need to see these continually evolving and invest in exploring them in collaboration with others on the team. Every leader builds self-confidence and humility by mastering their code – essential conditions for successful leadership.

Team Combinations: Next comes team communication. In a world where teams are more fragmented than ever and the five-day work week in the office is a thing of the past, there is an opportunity to focus on deeper relationships – trust, vulnerability and communication. When teams are deeply engaged, they can resolve issues more quickly, meaning problems are discussed earlier, resolved more quickly, and better solutions are found. Updating a team’s core foundations—values, purpose, vision, roadmap, strengths, and operating systems—has the dual effect of providing a strategic or intellectual update and doing so in a way that encourages and builds strategic dialogue. relationship.

Group Operating System: Like computers, teams have operating systems that govern their functions. In most cases, the operating system is not clear – the rules of how to do the most important work are not clear. We believe that every team should design an operating system that identifies the following: Number of strategic and tactical meetings, metrics or objectives, and key results (OKRs) they should focus on. Methods and procedures to ensure implementation success; and agreed principles. With this operating system, the strategy execution formula is clear and continuously refined.