The volume of guidance for CEOs and other business leaders grows by the day, but its quality, rigor of thought, and practicality or applicability can vary enormously. Many of the conventional models and frameworks that are available to help CEOs understand what makes an effective team tend to confuse or conflate inputs with outputs. In addition, much of the published guidance focuses on teams in their broadest sense and does not take account of the nuances and complexities, pressures and responsibilities of operating at the executive level.

We have taken our practical experience of what really matters – and what really works – when supporting executive teams across industries and geographies and combined it with research and thinking from other fields to develop a framework that helps executive teams become more effective and impactful. These articles introduce the main aspects of our framework and set the conditions to best manage complexities.

In our work with executive teams, we have found that the most-consistently successful CEOs and their teams pay particularly close attention to, and manage and keep in balance, two key polarities. Part 1 of the series explores the characteristics of managing each end of those polarities well and the drawbacks of overemphasizing one end to the exclusion of the other.

Part 2 of the articles explores the personal qualities that CEOs should develop and model, as well as how they can set the conditions for executive team effectiveness in addressing polarities. We have seen the most effective CEOs recognizing that the way they behave has a profound influence on the way their executive teams function and their collective ability to manage polarities.

Polarity 2: Enterprise Leadership

Steward the Enterprise - Manage the Business