Executive Teams and Boards:
Strategic Alignment & Team Effectiveness

How do you, as Chair, CEO or business unit leader, transform a group of highly ambitious and talented individuals into a cohesive team that works together for the good of the organization? MindLab has a strong history of helping clients around the world meet this challenge. We work with executive teams and boards to align behind a common vision and a clear set of key strategic priorities; and we ensure that all team members are positioned to collaborate effectively to deliver on these goals. Our expertise in coaching executive teams and boards has been recognized globally and is reflected in the many articles we have published on the topic in journals and magazines such as the Harvard Business Review.

Our Approach
MindLab consultants apply a successful action-learning methodology built around a series of off-site sessions over a period of six to twelve months, supplemented with individual coaching in between each off-site meeting.

During the off-site meetings, the executive team addresses strategic issues, while developing its effectiveness in real-time. The results are:

  • Team alignment behind a clear vision and a set of key strategic priorities;
  • Development of strong team practices and ground rules that enable collaboration and minimize hurtful intra-team competition; and
  • Measurable progress on the strategic business issues the team and its leader have chosen to address.

This approach is not an academic exercise: teams and boards emerge with action plans on key business initiatives.

Examples
Below are brief descriptions of strategic alignment and team effectiveness projects we’ve been involved in:

  • MindLab consultants have been special advisors to a global construction materials company, working with members of the company’s top executive team, as well as its executive teams in more than 30 countries across all continents.  Our work has involved supporting teams to align after a significant restructuring effort and in the aftermath of a major merger.
  • Having recently restructured its executive team, an industry leader in the video game industry wanted support to design and facilitate a team off-site to develop a 12-month operational plan for each of the organization’s functions while defining a new, more efficient modus operandi.