What do you stand for?

Clearly define your role as CEO
As leader of your team, you serve two broad functions: One is to ensure the organization’s goals are met. The other is to ensure that your team has the resources it needs to meet those goals.
In order to do the first, you need to lead the team in defining who you are as organization. This includes, but isn’t limited to, your organizational purpose, direction, how you’re different or better than your competition and the behaviors that are key to your success.
You also need to lead the team in creating shared goals that support your identity. What will you do to make the identity come alive and how will you measure your progress over time? You need to ensure that the team has resources to meet your goals. This includes having the necessary talent, setting the right measures and ensuring the commitment to measurement and adaptation when you’re not meeting your goals.
Clearly define the purpose of your team
Other than being your direct reports, why does your team exist? What purpose does it serve? Here are a few suggestions:

  1. Your team exists to be stewards of your identity and shared goals.
  2. Individual leadership team members lead and serve their teams by ensuring they have set goals that support the entire organization and that resources are available to meet those goals.
  3. Leaders need to model the behavior outlined in your organizational identity. You need to live and demonstrate what you expect from others.
  4. Leadership team members hold each other accountable for the goals you co-create.

Unless you address these three steps first, even the best leaders can flounder in helping your organization create the future you long for.
 Andy Kanefield is the founder of Dialect Inc. and co-author of “Uncommon Sense: One CEO’s Tale of Getting in Sync.” Dialect helps organizations improve alignment and translation of organizational identity by discovering and using the unique strengths of the organization and its people. Andy can be reached at (314) 863-4400 and [email protected].