The notion that all executives must be visionary thinkers or strategic thinkers is absurd. In fact, this can be devastating to an organization if all members of the senior executive team are extreme visionaries. When this happens, the team naturally lacks other needed strengths such as operational focus, taking care of business, meeting fiduciary requirements, process implementation, systems alignment, consistent service, prudent decision making, etc.
Some years ago, a mid-west based communications company with over 50,000 employees adopted an executive competency model that had six key competencies. Unfortunately, five out of the six competencies described the strategic, innovative, change agent, side of the table. “Results” happened to be the only competency, of the six, that had anything remotely to do with operations or execution.
Not surprisingly, the CEO was a high visionary. He valued this attribute too much and surrounded himself with other strategic risk takers. They were all exceptional at business development and doing great deals. However, they lacked the leadership strengths essential to take care of the infrastructure and to assure that operational processes were in place to serve the clients well with consistency. While this CEO was in charge after adopting his executive “competency model”, stock price went from over $60 per share to under $20 per share over a 4-year period. This was due to to inadequate customer service, failure to manage costs, overlapping processes, operational failures, product problems, etc. In the end, the CEO was terminated.
Our consulting work with senior executive teams combined with our assessment and financial performance analysis shows that organizations need executive team balance with both strategic and operational leadership capabilities. Below are eight requirements for designing an effective, diverse competency model that will equip organizations to plan their optimal future while taking care of business.
8 Requirements for a Diverse Executive Competency Model:
- Be objective and open and – “club membership not required” (And, use an objective, validated assessment tool to measure talent)
- Respond well to changing business and customer needs, competitive forces, and organization life cycle stages
- Maximize business growth opportunities and take care of business – these are not mutually exclusive
- Be equipped to deliver measurable results
- Identify and welcome a wide range of leader talent and bench strength
- Promote ideas and applied actions
- Be anchored in reality — rather than provocative descriptors; and,
- Should acknowledge that not all leaders need “visioning” capabilities to be successful.
