Temat: Think Horizontal

Think Horizontal
Conference Board Review (11/08) Allgaier, Larry; Reid, Grant
In this question-and-answer article, Novartis Global OTC CEO Larry Allgaier and Mars Drinks president Grant Reid discuss the use of leadership teams. As effective leaders, they have realized the importance of involving other members of the organization to take part in the decision-making process, not leaving every decision up to the top executive. There are two types of teams: permanent teams that must remain intact and project teams that are formed and dissolved based on organizational needs. Although executives may initially be hesitant to give up their time to serve on some of these teams, Allgaier and Reid said that they actually spend less time in meetings because the teams are more efficient. The teams should consist of people from different levels of the organization, as upper management also know less about specific issues than junior employees. Although CEOs still have the ability to overall recommendations from these teams, they will rarely have to do so if the teams are functioning as designed. In the event that a recommendation is not followed, the CEO should sit down with the team and discuss the pros and cons of the issues so the team understands that their point of view is valuable. In a team-based setting, individuals still must take personal responsibility and be accountable for their own actions, as their performance can be measured through feedback from leaders and peers. Leaders should also go out of their way to ask others in the organization for feedback on their own performance, even though they might initially resist criticizing their boss. Allgaier and Reid also said that some high performers may not be right for horizontal teams because they might do their best work individually.