How a leader built a culture of accomplishment

You’re busy and if you were really frank, you’d compare leading your team to running a large, complex project with a difficult client. In your heart you want to develop them, but despite your best efforts, you feel as though you’re missing the mark. It’s become messy, so you tell yourself that it’s ok and not so important because nothing awful will happen if things stay the same. Except, the messiness takes up too much space in your head and there is significant opportunity being missed.

The best teams leverage diversity of thought for 3x the innovation, have freedom and confidence to make their own decisions, respond quickly and accurately to opportunities, feel confident in their leader, and make decisions 2x faster with half the meetings.

Sounds great doesn’t it? But how do you accomplish that, meet all deadlines, as well as advance your own career?

Here’s how one leader and team we worked with turned things around.

An accomplished, well-liked senior operations expert, was promoted from within the team. Fully aware of what wasn’t working he proposed and began leading a revamp of finance and accounting. The changes would significantly speed up client billing and internal reporting. This would in turn allow the executive team access to more real time information on which to base decisions. This was critical to their plans to grow and stave off cannibalization by an ecosystem of start-ups in their industry.

Once complete and kinks ironed out, the new architecture would be used throughout all regions. Despite careful planning and detailed consideration, the changes didn’t meet expectations at all. Reporting was slow, too broad, late, and inaccurate. The executive team lost confidence in this new addition to their team.

Working with him one-to-one, and in group development with his team, we helped him hone in on what was missing. The way he was showing up had huge impact on team culture. The perception his behavior created was a lack of accountability, which literally translated to team behavior. With a change in some behaviors, tweaking his communication, and consistently holding himself and others accountable, everything shifted. He was able to create an environment where the F&A team did their best work through greater participation, simpler decision-making, and focusing on the most valuable activities. And a learning environment where knowledge was shared, and the risk of operational bottlenecks reduced. The reporting was timely, accurate, and highly relevant, and his reputation as a true business partner established.

Politeness is the poison of collaboration.

— Edwin Land, Polaroid