The unexpected starting place for leadership teams to align

I’m in Singapore this week, working with a new bunch of legends… I mean client. Gee, I love it here. 

At the bottom of this email, you'll find a photo of the building I'm staying in. I’ve been spending lots of time inside, but only just noticed what it looks like from the outside. I like the way the designers have offset curves against straight lines, and woven pockets of green at each opening.

Looking up at all those curves and straight lines, I realised it's the perfect metaphor for the work I’m doing here - helping a global leadership team build fierce alignment.

More often than not, creating alignment in senior leadership teams is hard. Each leader is busy running their own team, department, business unit or geography. They’re immersed in their own goals, priorities and contexts. They have their own narrative, their own notions of success, teams with their own sub-cultures and distinctive ways of working.

In other words, difference is hardwired into the team. So much so, that sometimes true alignment seems daunting.  

So where do you start?

Well, as I’ve learned the hard way, diving straight into a “let’s get aligned”conversation rarely works. Because too often, senior leadership teams are made up of people who simply don’t take the time to step into each other’s worlds. 

And so, that’s exactly where you start – by getting curious about and celebrating those worlds. Not rushing to force convergence, but creating space to explore the divergence. To look for the green shoots within the difference, by asking questions such as: 

• How can we help you with that?
• What can our departments learn from each other?
• How do our customers experience the role each of us plays?
• Where are our two functions in conflict, and how do our people experience that?
• How can we make it easier for each of our teams to succeed?
• What problems could our departments solve together? 

By opening up conversations like these, teams that once saw themselves as lone wolves quickly find their lines - once competing - are part of something quite beautiful.

Until next time,
Simon