Stephen H Baum Leadership

A third party professional services team will help one of my CEO clients to enlist the minds and hearts of thousands of employees at all levels to what he believes will lead to better ways to work together: heightened collaboration across silos to win in the marketplace, focus on strengths, transition away from negative behaviors. How to charter a 3rd party which will conduct interviews and team-building activities?

We began with the CEOs top of mind view of the before and after on these topics:

1. Negative behaviors and root causes (including historical negative signal acts by prior leadership)

– example: silo unit leaders punish those who collaborate with or share information with other units; use personnel assessments to damage those by whom you feel threatened or whom you don’t like

2. Unwritten rules for success

– example: avoid being controversial in meetings (save substantive differences and personal animosity for back channels)

3. Signal Acts by the CEO and selected others

– examples: Promote someone known for helping others, give assignments that require people to work together with high visibility and significant stakes in joint outcome, re-structure/integrate units (under one leader) who most need to work together; celebrate and reward instances of positive behaviors that win in the marketplace

While this approach has worked in prior organizations, will post some time in the future as to how this goes.

That’s just my view. What’s yours?

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