Читать книгу Winning the Talent Shift - Berta Aldrich - Страница 10

Board	Executive Team
Strategic direction	Execute strategic direction
High-level goals	Responsible for profits and shareholder value
Hire CEO	Awareness of the competition
Hire key C-suite positions	Manage the firm's resources
Guidance and accountability	Make decisions on talent

Boards set the strategic direction for the organization. They are typically comprised of high-level leaders from a variety of industries who are paid to provide oversight and diversity of thought and experiences. Boards establish talent and succession planning, set the business strategy, and ensure appropriate capital deployment. They recruit the CEO and are typically involved in the hiring of key positions, including the C-suite, those corporate officers, whose titles begin with C (e.g., CFO, COO, CIO, or CTO). They are the guiding force of the organization. Accountability for the success of the company starts with them.

The executive leadership team executes the strategic direction. C-suite executives have highly impactful and coveted positions in their organizations. They are responsible for their company's profitability and are ultimately accountable for shareholder value. They lead other executives internally while keeping a watchful eye on the competition and ensure that their company goals and ultimate strategy are being fully executed. They manage the firm's resources and make decisions on talent management. These leaders are typically compensated well for their role in the organization. Great leaders are visionary, are ethical, maximize resources (both dollars and talent), are fair, create inspired teams, and are strategic.

The number-one problem with today's organizations is this: too many people in leadership positions are imposters who disenfranchise the true high performers, mitigate the organization's existing talent, and undermine anyone perceived as a threat.

To make a fundamental shift to high performance, the board needs to establish the company's vision, goals, and direction, while the executive leadership needs to be held accountable to make the shift happen. That is how it works with every other goal within an organization, and a goal around high performance that maximizes a company's most important asset should be no different.

If boards and leadership want to achieve high performance, outpace their competition, and lead their respective industries, the one thing that I uncovered (and, remarkably, experienced) is the need to start with an intentional integration of high-performing, gender-balanced talent in an organization's leadership. Specifically, teams comprised of a balance of men and women are tomorrow's Holy Grail for high-performing teams. Here's why: Men, who have traditionally held leadership roles, can be confident risk takers and negotiators. Women, on the other hand, can be great leaders who empower teams, develop high-performing talent, and think through competitive or industry-leading options and permutations. I often refer to this healthier integrated culture as “right balanced” because that indicates an intentional shift and integration from simply including a token female voice, which is often muted and mitigated, to ensuring that a critical mass of female leaders contribute to shaping the culture and standards that drive high performance. Today, only 8% of senior executives are both strategic and have the ability to effectively execute through their teams, putting an exclamation point on the need for right-balanced teams.