Enterprise orientation

As part of an Executive Springboard mentoring engagement, an executive takes a proprietary assessment. It looks at eight dimensions correlated to success in an organization, and it compares the executive’s comfort zone with the company’s needs. This way, we can find situations of potential conflict and growth – how to meet the organization’s needs while remaining authentic.
 
The last dimension we examine is a sense of loyalty. At one end is loyalty to one’s team. At the other end is supporting the greater good. Here is a typical map of assessment results.

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​The Loyalty dimension often has the narrowest comfort zone in our assessment. In this example, the company’s expectation of supporting the greater good (the green rectangle) is far beyond the executive’s comfort in delivering this (the yellow band.)
 
What does this imply? Working as part of an executive team entails making compromises. Sometimes you stand up for your team or for your own strongly held belief. Sometimes you yield on a position in the interest of alignment. The executive’s assessment above indicates a likelihood that alignment won’t come easily for them.
 
Let’s take this a step further to consider two aspects of “supporting the greater good” might mean to a leader’s professional growth.
 
First, there is cabinet collective responsibility. If you are a cabinet minister in the UK or Canada and your own belief is different from what the Prime Minister decides in a cabinet meeting, you have two choices: support the decision or resign. The same dynamic applies to boards of directors. Board members do not go rogue and report their dissenting view publicly. Cabinet collective responsibility can create an important dilemma for an executive. They may have told their team that they support a certain position that loses out in an executive team meeting. Their responsibility is to go back to their team and explain why the prevailing decision was the right call. This almost always involves consideration of factors beyond the narrow view of their own circle of control.
 
Second, there is the expectation that an organization’s senior leadership will make contributions that extend beyond their own expertise. The head of operations may opine on a marketing initiative, either to challenge assumptions or to  consider consequences to other parts of the business, e.g. “Beyond the cost of the advertising campaign, are we willing to risk an investment in the extra inventory that will be needed to satisfy the projected demand?”
 
What does it take to get comfortable with supporting the greater good? How do you develop an enterprise orientation? My friend Janet Polach tackles these questions in her new book The Strategic Leader’s Mindset: Unlocking the Keys to Success. I’m so impressed with what she has to say that I’m including her book in the Executive Springboard leadership development toolkit.
 
Dr. Polach posits that people who have excelled as managers need to adopt an entirely new way of thinking to become successful leaders. Instead of focusing inward on themselves and their team, the strategic leader looks outward, keeping on top of trends that might impact the business, and they develop strategies to mitigate risk or leverage opportunities. They influence peers to champion ideas and create cross-organizational success. The reason these leaders have capacity to do these things is that they’ve empowered their people to do their jobs, so they can focus on what they alone can contribute.

I briefly wrote about enterprise orientation in a blog last year on the learning curves we face in our careers. Developing this high altitude mindset, of being able to contribute outside of your own lane, is the last step in becoming a successful leader.

If you are interested in taking Executive Springboard's Comfort Zone assessment, click here. The survey takes about 15 minutes to complete, it costs you nothing and it comes with no obligation to work with us. Some of the assessment takes some hand-tabulation, so expect a couple of hours after you've completed it before you receive a report.