The Effectiveness of Senior Teams

The Winsborough Limited Survey

Benchmark Report 2007

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Winsborough Limited Winsborough Limited is dedicated to improving performance at all levels of the organisation: individual, group, team, or organisation-wide. We were established in 1999 as a specialist organisational psychology service. As psychologists we operate at the point where organisations and individuals meet. We have established a reputation as pragmatic, innovative, and creative. Our passion is developing interesting and practical solutions to the problems people in organisations face. We’re not satisfied to just follow good practice – we produce exceptional results.

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Table of Contents

Foreword by Brian Blake............................................................................................................1 Introduction..............................................................................................................................2

This report answers four questions ........................................................................................2 Rating effectiveness...............................................................................................................2 Acknowledgements...............................................................................................................2

Good, but how would we know? CEO views of senior teams role and performance...................3 Role ......................................................................................................................................3 Performance .........................................................................................................................3 Winsborough Comment........................................................................................................4 CEO Role ..............................................................................................................................5

30 minutes a day: The five differentiators of effective team.......................................................6 Winsborough Comment........................................................................................................7

Clarity matters in time too.........................................................................................................9 Winsborough comment ........................................................................................................9

The value of values: how senior teams can use values to be more effective ..............................12 Winsborough comment ......................................................................................................14

Epilogue by Dave Winsborough ..............................................................................................16 Appendix A – Participating Organisations ................................................................................17 Appendix B – Scales used in the questionnaire.........................................................................18

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Foreword by Brian Blake Managing Director, DB Breweries DB Breweries was keen to participate in the Winsborough study as we recognise that management learning and development is critical to our future success. Coupled with this is our enthusiasm to support good, original, independent New Zealand research. DB Breweries’ recent success is due to the courageous attitude, goodwill, and hard work of its people. However this study focused on the particular leadership effort – in the collective sense - of our senior management team. Leadership has multiple dimensions. On one hand it is the market leadership we strive for with our various brands, and on another, it is to maintain the innovative edge we believe we enjoy in our industry. At another level, leadership has more of an internal focus in articulating a vision for the company and developing the next generation of leaders. In one sense the situations that have challenged us the most have influenced our development more than our successes. We have challenged, inspired and supported one another as we have sought to be one of New Zealand’s best businesses. The findings of this study offer DB Breweries concrete ideas for improvement, informing the senior management team of its strengths as well as the future growth opportunities on which DB can capitalise. I trust this report will provide you with leadership and development insights of equal value.

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By the numbers, details about the survey:

Introduction Winsborough Limited began this research because we believe senior management teams matter enormously in organisational performance1, and that New Zealand senior teams can become more effective, helping to raise the productivity of New Zealand organisations. This research represents the first systematic investigation of senior management team role, functioning and values in New Zealand. Our aim is to find practices and tools that teams can use to improve effectiveness at the top.

This report answers four questions

1 Is there a particular role for the senior team, and what are the greatest obstacles to improved performance?

2 What is the difference between the most effective teams and the least effective?

3 Does long-term or short-term thinking make senior teams more effective?

4 Finally, do team values change effectiveness, and are New Zealand executives different to their American and Australian counterparts?

Rating effectiveness How is team effectiveness determined? Measuring organisational outcomes is hard for several reasons (see ‘The five differentiators of effective teams’ on page 7). Instead, we followed international and research convention2 and relied on team self report.

Acknowledgements Our enormous thanks to the senior teams who took part in the research (see Appendix A).

Number of executives involved 117

Number of questions in the survey 61

Percentage of executives who believe their team is ineffective

31

Number of organisations taking part 13

Biggest senior team 12

Average senior team size 7

Ratio of women to men in private sector teams 1:10

Ratio of women to men in the public sector 1:4

1 West, Patterson, Dawson and Nickell (1999) found that senior management team homogeneity, tenure and

effective processes accounted for an additional 37% of the variance of profitability beyond firm size, industry sector and prior performance. Hambrick and D’Aveni (1992) described the ‘downward spiral’ of failing firms engendered by senior team deterioration.

2 Flood, Hannan, Smith, Turner, West & Dawson, 2000.

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Good, but how would we know? CEO views of senior teams role and performance Role In all organisations role descriptions are taken very seriously. Individuals have them, project teams have them, and even departments have them. Role descriptions help orient individuals and teams towards their tasks and importantly, prevent overlap and duplication of effort. At the top table a good understanding of team role would seem vital. Where does an individual’s functional role differ from their organisational leadership responsibilities? What is the domain of the CEO as distinct from the team? In this sample, only one of the thirteen organisations in our study had a formal description of the role of the senior team. We also found that no teams had formal measures of success for the team itself. Yet CEOs and executives had informal consensus about three elements of the team role:

1. The forum for strategy debate and consideration. 2. Making decisions that benefit the organisation as a whole. 3. Balancing the needs of the whole organisation against the demands of its

constituent parts. This last point is interesting in the light of executives’ concern that the team’s ability to do this was compromised by the demands of their functional (i.e. day-to-day) roles. Even if there is an informal sense of the senior team’s unique role, the workload of team members compromised its effectiveness. Monitoring the organisation’s performance was not mentioned as an element of the team role, despite some CEOs using organisational performance as a proxy for team performance. We know some teams do monitor organisation performance, but the fact it was not mentioned underscores the generally unthinking way in which teams define and approach their tasks. We also probed the differentiation between CEO role and the role of the team. The key difference executives saw was that the CEO has the final say; however, they also saw their role as making decisions as well. Perhaps CEOs act as a circuit breaker? This group also complained about poor decision making processes inhibiting performance and this is an obvious area for improvement. On a related theme, no executives and very few CEOs described the CEO role as leading the team. Only two CEOs mentioned as their particular responsibility the performance management of their reports. Further, no team has a formal induction for new members when they were promoted to the top table or when they joined from another organisation, leaving them to adapt to its [new] processes and disciplines alone.

Performance Only one Chief Executive rated their team very poorly; the rest gave scores indicating the team was performing well – a result at odds with at least one third of the executives responding. However, no Chief Executive had anything approaching a formal measure of team effectiveness. The actual measure of success they applied was ‘feel’ – that is, the team is harmonious and free

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from discord. Some CEOs referred to the overall success of the organisation as a proxy measure for senior team performance; two referred to climate survey results. When asked about what stands in the way of improved performance, CEOs were surprisingly unanimous. We compared their responses to those of an American survey3 and to comments from executive team members in our sample.

Two common frustrations emerge: team members not up to the job, and fragmentation or insufficient cooperation across the organisation. For team members, the struggle to balance functional and organisation-wide work and overcome poor decision-making processes blocked better performance.

Winsborough Comment We think accountability and responsibility at the top of New Zealand organisations is insufficiently defined. Not having a formal role description for the team and clear measures of success is, at best, careless from a governance and compliance point of view. It does little to reduce frustrations about balancing day-to-day and strategic objectives, and it increases the possibility of misalignment and discord. We believe not having a clear role and clear measures of performance is a massive missed opportunity for CEOs, and for their organisations. Setting goals and providing clarity around roles are the most basic of team disciplines – and must become one of the core roles of the CEO. Under the direction of the CEO, teams should answer two simple questions:

1. What is the unique role of the team, distinct from members’ functional roles? 2. How will we know we’ve been successful in 18 months?

The discipline of working through robust discussion to answer these questions is not hard, but can reap large rewards. From this research, we can point to seven elements that define the role of the team at the top:

1. The forum for strategy, debate, and consideration. 2. Committing to goals and measures for organisational performance. 3. Balancing the needs of the whole organisation against the demands of its

constituent parts. 4. Taking decisions for the benefit the organisation as a whole. 5. Monitoring the implementation of strategy. 6. Monitoring the delivery of goals. 7. Ensuring the health and adequate resourcing of the organisation in a

sustainable fashion.

3 Donald Hambrick “Fragmentation and other problems CEOs have with their top management teams” 1995

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Inducting new members on to the top team is a discipline that CEOs should perform as a matter of course. Transition into new roles is difficult and research shows the costly phenomenon of ‘flailing’ is reduced by transition-to-role activities and coaching4. Similarly, while organisational success might be the ultimate measure of senior team performance, it is difficult for public sector agencies whose outputs are hard to quantify. In the private sector, firm success is also likely to lag team actions by too long for practical purposes or be affected by outside factors. Finally, this measure does not reflect what team members regard as the team role. ‘Feel’ may indeed be appropriate, but only when it is accurate; in our research, some CEOs were notably at odds with how team members saw their team. Winsborough has identified ways teams should measure their effectiveness:

1. The attainment of defined medium term goals (see above) that link directly to mission or strategy.

2. Structured annual ratings by the team and by consumers of its work (i.e. third tier executives and boards).

3. Bi-annual ratings by CEOs. 4. Applying measures that reflect the health of organisational capability (i.e. skills,

talent, unique organisational competencies). 5. Defined external measures controlled by the team:

a. For the Public sector: Minister’s evaluations; productivity measures b. For the Private sector: EBITDA per employee; other productivity

measures.

CEO Role It is also of concern that the CEO role and the powers of the team are ill defined. While it is useful and desirable for CEOs to have support, authority and accountability needs to be more clearly defined to prevent responsibility dissolving in ‘the team’. Another two points make us think CEOs do not attend to the role of leading the team enough. First, only two CEOs referred to performance managing their reports when describing the differences between their role and that of the senior team, which is a surprisingly small number. Second, team ratings of CEO leadership were also generally positive but statistically unrelated to executives’ ratings of team effectiveness. This implies that teams do not see CEOs affecting the teams’ performance. But CEOs should be differentiators of performance at the team level and should be seen as contributing to its functioning. To get to grips with leading the top team, CEOs should ensure the team work to answer the two questions on the previous page.

4 14% fail; more underperform. Setting Leaders up for Success, Learning and Development Roundtable, 2006

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30 minutes a day: The five differentiators of effective team The research sought to distinguish effective and ineffective teams. Several analyses of questionnaire data were completed to provide a robust result. Firstly, we looked across all the individuals in the survey. What separates executives who rate their teams positively from those who rate them poorly?

Four factors accounted for the largest gap:

1. Task focus 2. Team development 3. Decision making 4. Contribution to team

Secondly, we compared the scores of the three highest and three lowest rated teams. By ignoring the seven teams in the middle, we aimed to draw out differences and point to those factors that have the greatest bearing on effectiveness. This analysis revealed similarities with the list above: decision making, contribution to team and task focus again; but trust and safety emerged as a differentiator as well. Development still accounts for better than a 20% gap between lower rating and top rating teams.

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Finally, we conducted a regression analysis to determine the factors that best predicted effectiveness. Once again, five factors emerged as important drivers, and when considering the other analyses, were identified as key, in the following order:

1. Task focus: United in pursuing goals, similar standards for performance and prepared to help others to achieve team goals.

2. Development: Consciously considering team performance and investing time in improvement.

3. Norms and decision making: Formal process for decisions, no hidden agendas, use of consensus.

4. Trust and safety: Trust colleagues, surface conflict and admit to mistakes easily. 5. Contribution to team: Colleagues who participate, hold up their end and add

value. Better teams are clear about goals, standards and approach. Members help each other for the overall good and critically reflect on their combined performance. Decision making is clear, and all agendas and concerns are on the table. Decisions are taken clearly and executed. The whole team contributes well and no-one ‘pulls their effort’. The overall environment is one of openness, support and trust.

Winsborough Comment The five simple factors are a call to arms for any CEO interested in building an effective team. They may seem to be common sense; so is exercising daily for 30 minutes and drinking in moderation. And just as these lifestyle practices are easier to talk about than to do in daily life, the research shows senior management teams struggle to master these disciplines. We think four reasons may account for this. Firstly, the team role is rarely formally spelled out and instead exists in team members’ assumptions and the habits of past performance. It is hard to master effective disciplines when they are unclear, and so people act in the ways that made them previously successful. Yet the behaviours that got executives to the top table are not necessarily those that guarantee either individual or team success. This is particularly so when they are promoted by virtue of their technical expertise. Secondly, many executives wrote of their struggle with the need to think both functionally and strategically. This seems an unusual complaint at this level; one wonders what their expectations were on arriving at the top table. In fact, no teams discussed expectations or inducted new members. Some executives may need to “unlearn” as much behaviour as they need to acquire. Formal induction and coaching about effective team behaviour is essential for every new promotion to ensure that people truly participate in the team. Thirdly, demands on executives’ time and the pressure to deliver results in their functional areas blocked teams from working well. In the research we noted a link between teams who spend most of their time on short term problems and lower ratings of effectiveness. This suggests these teams are not organising their time well or team members are retreating to their functional roles at the expense of the ‘whole-organisation’ view. Effective teams have members that ‘contribute to team’, so colleagues who fail to contribute, or who retreat to a functional position, are key drivers of discontent. CEOs should be especially sensitive to individual performance issues that block people delivering on their senior team role. CEOs should act decisively to help, but if necessary, remove consistent non-contributors5.

5 Jack Welch, the well known ex-boss of General Electric, was prepared to give poor performers who ‘got the values’

chances to improve, but was famously intolerant of good performers who failed to cooperate and work for the good of the overall organisation.

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Finally, poor teams act without thinking. One of most enlightening results was that teams that reflect about their own processes and take time to discuss ways of improving see themselves as more effective. Ignoring, consciously or not, the behaviour and effectiveness of the team is a sure-fire way to under-perform. The five keys to effective teams are straightforward. • They make it their business to be clear about their role • They define what future success looks like for that role • They insist everyone contributes and doesn’t hide in their functional role. • They work to surmount obstacles • They work consciously to improve their functioning.

Chief executives can apply these five rules to teams no matter the business they are in. They need, however, to be conscious, diligent in application and practised. Making it the team’s business to be effective is a good start, but for the best teams in the study, these are daily practices. The Winsborough research makes it clear that effectiveness is underpinned by discipline at the top.

Sidebar: Tolstoy’s Lament

Do senior management teams mirror families? The research suggest Tolstoy’s famous observation that “Happy families are alike; unhappy families are unhappy in their own way” applies just as well to senior management teams. Teams who see themselves as effective do so for only four main reasons. Teams who rate themselves as ineffective have many complaints. The teams rated poorly on effectiveness turned out to be ineffective each in its own way. For some, it was having the wrong talent on board, or poor leadership. For others, it was an excess of politicking, or a lack of clear direction or a lack of belief in the team’s ability to succeed. Failing to contribute to the team’s goals, personality clashes, the underperformance of peers and a reluctance to confront each other were also frequently mentioned as reasons for low effectiveness.

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Clarity matters in time too Research by the Economist Intelligence Unit and Marakon Associates6 identified that senior teams spend just 3 hours per month making strategic decisions (or around 15% of their total time). Author Michael Mankins castigated teams for “spending more time selecting its holiday card than debating vital strategy”. We were interested in when teams conducted their business. We asked teams to allocate 100% of their time to the following categories:

• Immediate concern – days and weeks • Short term issues – months • Medium term issues – 12- 18 months • Mid to long term issues – 18 – 36 months • Long term issues – 36 – 60 months

We found that over half of New Zealand executives’ time is spent on issues of short term or immediate concern. They spent around 20% of their time on mid to long term strategy.

Winsborough comment We think this is about right, and think Mankins’ comments somewhat wrongheaded. Strategy shouldn’t occupy lots of time – by definition, once a direction is set executives will add no value by constantly tinkering with it or relitigating issues on the margin. We believe better teams should focus on the medium term and execute the stratgegy (what we term the ‘implementation zone’). When we averaged CEO ratings of time spent we see a good approximation of how time should be spent:

6 Michael Mankins “Stop Wasting Valuable Time”, Harvard Business Review, September 2004

Time spent – whole sample

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That fits our recommendation that relatively less time should be spent thrashing around running the day-to-day business (what we term the ‘transaction zone’). And this is exactly what we found when we compared the performance of the highest and lowest rated teams in the study. Teams rated low on effectiveness spent more time on issues of immediate concern by a factor of five! Better rated teams spent six times as long in the strategic zone.

But is this simply a function of whether the low rating organisations are dealing with a lot of operational issues right now or are in crisis? One was dealing with the implementation of large infrastructure, but the other was operating in a business-as-usual mode. The high rating organisations both have large scale operational activities. Suggestively at least, where in time teams spend their discussions may matter a great deal. It makes sense to think that teams whose time is spent running the day-to-day operations of the organisation will not rate the team as very effective. Operating too much in the transaction space suggests the team has not adapted to its strategic role and needs to delegate operational tasks to the level below them. This raises two questions: are executives reverting to their comfort zone (i.e. they haven’t ‘unlearned’ behaviour no longer useful at this level)? Or could it be that a lack of capability at the third tier requires executives to operate transactionally? One test of an effective executive is in building capability to run the organisation. Executive teams should be conscious about the type of conversation or decision they are making. Recall the complaint from executives (page 3) that pressure from their functional roles compromised the team? CEOs must coach individuals and the team on the importance of lifting themselves out of the day-to-day and ensuring the organisation’s ability to deliver in the mid term. Executives who are struggling with too much must build capability below them so that they can delegate effectively. Teams need to be conscious of balancing discussions about concerns of the moment with the work of shaping and guiding the organisation to achieve in the future.

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Sidebar: How Golden Bay Cement is moving to the Execution Zone Golden Bay Cement is one of the biggest players in the New Zealand cement industry. Profitable and well established, it has spent years planning for and implementing new plant worth hundreds of millions of dollars. New GM John Beveridge found the company mired in engineering mindsets and losing sight of the organisation’s future. “The results of the Winsborough survey data on where the team was focused (see chart) was very revealing. It confirmed we were running the company on a very reactive basis with little sense of our future at all. We needed to start talking about the mid-term and how we could invigorate an organisation that was frankly running in operational mode”. Beveridge first reduced his team from 12 to 7 and then engaged them in a series of whole-organisation projects that the team owned. They completed a staff survey and set targets to improve their scores; they rebranded the company and came up with a new tag line: ”We Commit. We Do” that emphasised action; they embarked on a series of workshops with all staff to refine and re-invigorate corporate values; they set new goals and stretch targets for the organisation. “We’ve just started really” says Beveridge. “Already though, the leadership team are acting like leaders. Most importantly, we are no longer focused about the past, or getting lost in fine technical details, we are beginning to run the company into the future”.

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The value of values: how senior teams can use values to be more effective Corporate values are important in most, if not all, organisations. Leaders invest time in choosing values they believe will shape organisational culture (think of these as espoused values). Leaders also tend to behave in a manner consistent with their personal values. For example, a leader’s values often determine what data they notice, which problems are assigned importance, the solutions they propose and how they evaluate effectiveness. Consequently, the values of top leadership are a prime driver of organisational culture. Leaders find activities that are consistent with their values to be motivating, and those that are not to be unmotivating (but not necessarily demotivating). It is valuable therefore to explore the values of the executive leaders in this study. (For an explanation of the instrument used to measure values, see sidebar). This is the first systematic investigation of New Zealand executives’ values using a standardised psychometric assessment. The research findings confirm popular stereotypes of leaders. To a large degree, they are change-oriented and prepared to adapt to shifting circumstance (low Tradition and Security). They are also relatively analytical, data-oriented, and concerned with quality (high Science, Aesthetics). Some findings run counter to commonly held impressions. Leaders are not, in general, motivated to seek fame or glory for themselves – instead they are likely to be moderately low-key (low Recognition). In fact, New Zealand leaders are lower key than US and Australian executives. Instead, our executives are typically more instrumental (low Altruism), creative, fun-loving (high Aesthetic and Hedonism scale) and change oriented (lower scores on the Security scale).

Sidebar: Measuring Values Values are enduring beliefs considered to be important by individuals and that will influence their choices and work environments. We measured executive values with the Hogan Motives Values and Preferences Inventory, a research based measure of ten core values, standardised on over one million working adults. This instrument allows comparison of values between groups. The 10 values are: Aesthetic creative and artistic motives;

interested in quality, product look and feel.

Affiliation frequent and varied social interaction; belonging to a group or organisation.

Altruistic actively helping others, and improving society; interested in helping others.

Commercial business activities, money, and financial gain; realizing profits.

Hedonistic fun, good company, and good times; interested in pleasure, excitement, and variety.

Power Status, competition, achievement, and being perceived as influential;

Recognition fame, visibility, and publicity; interested in being known, recognized, and famous.

Scientific ideas, technology, and rational problem solving; understanding how things work.

Security certainty, predictability, and risk free environments structure, order, predictability

Tradition tradition, history, and old-fashioned virtues.

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New Zealand workplaces are more likely to be innovative, engaging, flexible and experimental than those of the other countries. Interestingly, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise market research confirms that New Zealand managers are seen by their American counterparts as exactly that.

It is to be expected that cultural differences emerge between countries. Does the same hold true across economic sectors? To test this we examined values of core public sector executives (i.e. Reserve Bank, MED, SSC and IRD) with private sector executives (IBM, DB, Steel and Tube and Golden Bay Cement). Clear differences emerged in the values between public and private sectors. Public service executives are far more analytical, aesthetic and quality -oriented than their private sector colleagues. As a consequence, they may operate as vehicles of debate, exploration and fine-grained conversation (archetypal policy discussion). These may be, at times, about interesting, but relatively trivial matters, as ideas may matter more in these cultures than outcomes. Public service leaders are also even less inclined to seek the limelight and will avoid reward and publicity. While the degree of scrutiny they face in their jobs makes this understandable, it may also drive somewhat contained work cultures.

Private sector leaders are more oriented to work in teams and to value a collegial environment than their public sector counterparts (high Affiliation). They are also much more concerned with achievement and results than public sector leaders (Power). Finally, private sector leaders are inclined to want to have fun at work and build workplace cultures that emphasise enjoyment (high Hedonism).

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Winsborough comment Clear differences in values can be seen between national cultures and between economic sectors. These differences make intuitive sense. Public sector executives are typically cerebral and deeply concerned with analysis, policy development and the design of outputs. Private sector executives are more likely to be concerned with measurable results. Tools like the Hogan MVPI offer a powerful opportunity for consciously choosing executives whose values will drive a particular culture. The values of the individuals who lead organisations have been very much in the headlines, mainly through a series of high profile spats, failings and frauds. From Enron (fraud), to Feltex (failing) to Vector (the recent board ructions over governance), the moral actions and stance of senior executives come in for scrutiny when results go south. Examining executive values may offer the chance to ensure adherence to espoused corporate values. Findings from this research are suggestive of a more positive reason values at the top might matter: suggesting that teams composed of individuals with broadly similar values tend to perceive those teams as more effective. The converse is also true; teams whose values are more diverse report greater discord and less trust around the top table. We believe values alignment contributes to effectiveness less by enhancing liking and more through providing a common base for decisions and shared assumptions about what is and isn’t important. We measured social cohesion – the extent to which teams value interpersonal liking and connection. We found that senior teams were relatively low on this scale overall. In fact, lower performing teams had higher ratings of social connection (see sidebar).

Sidebar: A little bit of sugar In studies of athletic teams social cohesion has tended to predict performance – and the corporate sector has mimicked this by paying an army of consultants to conduct off-site exercises aimed at breaking the social barriers. We sought to understand whether social cohesion (team bonding and liking) played a significant role in ratings of effectiveness. The Winsborough research reveals that social cohesion in executive teams was low overall. Executives just don’t spend time with each other outside of work and for the most part are disinterested in forming friendships with their colleagues. Further, the teams who showed higher levels of social cohesion reported lower perceptions of effectiveness and more internal problems (see graph). This finding makes sense; liking and bonding with them does not lead to improved performance. On the other hand being successful certainly makes it easier to get along with colleagues. It may be that social cohesion is like sugar; too little and the result is bitter and tart; too much and the team masks ineffectiveness with excessive sweetness.

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For example, DB, the highest rating team in this study, has had a string of exceptional annual results in a difficult market. All the individuals share some values in common (what we term ‘values anchors’). Significantly, the anchors are all about getting results, being commercial and having a good time – values which fit a beer manufacturer and retailer. The team also differ on other values – and as the CEO, Brian Blake says “That’s useful. I don’t want a set of clones”.

Contrast the DB team with another organisation that rated themselves in the bottom quartile of our survey. No obvious value anchors can be seen and the team reports a failure to achieve, high levels of political behaviour and incoherent actions.

The lesson for CEOs is clear. Select for values fit where possible. Where not, be very conscious in discussing the basis for decisions and exploring differences in perception.

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Epilogue by Dave Winsborough This research was driven by our interest in a number of observations:

1. Every organisation has some form of senior team at the top.

2. Few, if any, teams have formal delegations, written responsibilities or formal decision making powers – but all make organisation changing decisions.

3. Every executive and nearly all staff we have worked with believe the senior team is important and affects organisational success, health and culture. This group is the omnipresent ‘they’ in organisational life.

We think these points are the result of the constant presence and importance of teams in human psychology; we are group living animals7. That drives a short-sightedness that leads teams at the top to ignore their own functioning and miss the chance to build on the opportunities offered by truly effective functioning. The first and greatest step any senior team can take towards high performance is to become aware of its own structure, processes and behaviour. Beyond that, this research offers some specific and actionable steps.

1. CEOs must face and embrace their role as team leaders. 2. CEOs and the team need to clarify the role of the team, so that it is separated

from the functional roles of those who sit at the table. 3. Ensure the team has real tasks and goals to achieve that sit in the execution

zone. Acting as a big monitoring unit is to miss the point. Be conscious of when team discussion and actions occur.

4. Drive a reflective, constant approach to the team’s performance. Clarify, simplify and objectify processes for decision making, taking and monitoring.

5. Demand members contribute to the greater good; be intolerant of those who retreat to functional excellence only. Act swiftly to deal with non-performance at the top.

6. Build a trusting, enquiring culture at the top. 7. Match values where possible. Be conscious of the role of values in driving

miscommunication and argument. Finally, senior teams often set their sights too low. Excellent teams in this research provide an environment that enables daring, challenging goals to be attempted. For the future economic and social advantage of our country, our exhortation to CEOs and their teams is to challenge yourselves and stretch your performance as leaders, and a team, further.

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Appendix A – Participating Organisations Barnardos

DB Breweries

Environmental Science & Research

Golden Bay Cement

Greater Wellington Regional Council

IBM New Zealand Limited

Inland Revenue Department

Ministry of Economic Development

New Zealand Trade & Enterprise

PHARMAC

Reserve Bank of New Zealand

State Services Commission

Steel & Tube Holdings Limited

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Appendix B – Scales used in the questionnaire

Scale Explanation

Contribution to team This scale measures the degree to which members believe there is good contribution to team tasks and discussion by their colleagues.

Development Development is about team learning and reflection.

Direction This scale measures the degree to which members are clear and united about the mission.

Decision making and norms This scale measures decision-making behaviour – whether it is clear and understood or informal and politicised.

Sense of control Belief in the team’s efficacy – the ability to turn intent into results is what this scale measures.

Social cohesion This scale measures the extent to which the team has formed social bonds.

Task focus Task focus is a measure of drive and a willingness to achieve.

Team leadership This scale measures leader performance.

Trust and safety This scale is an indicator of the extent to which members can own up to mistakes, debate and explore conflict and share problems.