Most leaders leave the composition and agendas of their leadership teams to chance. This is a waste of time, energy, and focus.

Almost all senior leaders choose the members of their leadership teams almost by default: all their direct reports, as well as a selection of participants from staffing and back-office roles ‘in the matrix’ (Finance, HR, IT, Regulatory, Affairs, Communications, Quality Assurance, etc.).

The advantages of composing leadership teams in this way are that:

✅ Representatives of all functions are aware of every topic that is discussed (information and awareness)

✅ Participants from staffing and back-office functions feel they (and their functions) are taken seriously as true ‘business partners’

✅ The leader avoids difficult discussions about the composition of their leadership team

Although this sounds great, this typically results in:

❌ Large teams

❌ Long meetings

❌ Meeting agendas that lack a clear focus

Let me explain.

Focus

The more participants are invited to join a leadership team, the longer the meetings will be. First of all, because all members will bring in their topics, and secondly because they will all want to ‘contribute’ by participating in discussions around the agenda items brought up by others.

This results in meetings that lack a clear focus. Instead, the meetings will move from (unrelated) topic to (unrelated) topic: from revenue to marketing updates, from annual performance reviews to sustainability initiatives, from the status of legal proceedings to new R&D developments, etc.

The relationship between the time spent on a particular topic versus the importance for the business will often be hard to find . Reason being that topics where everyone has an opinion about will take longer than topics which do not.

I personally witnessed this when I switched from an IT to HR role. If I provided an update on an IT system in a leadership team meeting (e.g. the upgrade of a database, which meant a system was not available for a couple of hours during one night in the following week), I hardly ever received a question. When I switched to HR, just about any topic I presented invited ‘contributions’ from my fellow leadership team members.

Unbalanced and Uncomfortable

In leadership teams that are composed in the arbitrary manner described at the start of this post, the number of revenue-producing members will almost always be outweighed by the members in staffing and support roles.

However, the performance of the members in revenue-producing roles is likely to be much more time-critical for the leader of the team than the performance of the other members. Therefore, the most intense discussions in leadership team meetings will usually be those between the team leader and their revenue-producing direct reports.

That is not a matter of importance, but of timing and priority. Remember the Eisenhower matrix? Urgency is not the same as importance. Sustainability reports and talent management programs are important; however, usually far less time-critical than revenue and profits. There is a difference between delaying the launch of a new internal CSR initiative or training program by a month, and the need to address disappointing sales results in a particular month.

“…the fact is, everybody (Vice Presidents, Operations Managers, HR Directors, IT people, Customer Service Representatives, Marketing people, Accounting people, Receptionists … everybody) can stay at home until somebody makes a sale.” (Peter Drucker).

For revenue-producing members in a leadership team, it can feel very uncomfortable having to discuss (or, more accurately, ‘defend’) their results with the leader of the team, while their peers in staffing and support roles take a comfortable spectator role.

Time

Finally, a key disadvantage of broadly composed leadership teams is their potential for wasted time. Not only do these meetings waste time from the team members, they also drain the time and focus of the leader.

Of course, preserving their time and focus is, in the first place, the responsibility of the leaders themselves:

‘The question I ask myself like almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’ Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time’ (Mark Zuckerberg).

On the other hand, people in leadership teams and meetings also need to make sure, in the interest of the company, that the leader spends their time in the best way possible.

Several years ago, I worked for a line manager who had the ear of our CEO. The CEO almost always invited him to his office on Friday afternoons to brainstorm for hours about whatever was on his mind. What I found particularly courageous and unconventional was that my line manager told the CEO at a certain moment that he should spend more time with his revenue-producing business leaders, rather than complaining about them to him. He literally told the CEO: ‘I am only the CHRO’.

Solutions

There are several possible solutions to address this issue. They all have to do with selecting the right participants, frequency, and agenda of leadership teams.

Limiting the number of participants

The first option is, of course, to limit the number of participants. The information flow from and to the functions they represent can be facilitated by inviting them as guests to present their topics and proposals during the meeting, instead of permanent members, and copying them in on the minutes.

However, it remains a painful exercise that can result in the de-selected members’ frustration and resentment, since they (and the functions they represent) are likely to feel ‘demoted’.

Different meetings

Another option is to establish different meetings with different purposes.

I once worked for a regional business leader who had a large leadership team: an executive assistant, two Product Line Business leaders with a profit-loss responsibility, two Marketing leaders, a Pricing Manager, a Communications Manager, a Regulatory expert, a Training Manager, a Finance Manager, and an HR Manager (me).

Although the meetings always felt fruitful, due to the length and the broad nature of the agenda, they took the eyes of the business leader from the ‘critical few’: the few items that ultimately determined the difference between success and failure for himself, and, more importantly, for his organization. These critical few were revenue and costs.

Once he recognized this, he established two different meetings.

First if all he created a new body: the Commercial Leadership Committee. This committee was composed of the two (revenue-producing) Product Line Business leaders, the Finance Manager (Investments), and the HR manager (Organization). This committee met monthly and focused almost exclusively on revenue realization and costs.

He maintained the composition and agenda of his ‘original’ Leadership Team but reduced the frequency from 12 to 6 meetings per year to discuss general topics, and made sure discussions that needed to take place in the Commercial Leadership Committee stayed off the agenda of his Leadership Team meeting.

The advantage was that everyone was aware of everything that was going via the ‘classic’ Leadership Team meeting, however, it also enabled the leader to focus on his key deliverables (revenue) through his Commercial Leadership Committee, which also created a much better setting for the two revenue-producing leaders to discuss their performance and challenges.

Creating the right agenda: First things first

I am currently dedicating part of my time to serving as a senior advisor for an AI start-up in the Human Capital space. As you can imagine, leadership teams in start-ups often have countless competing priorities.

However, during one of our last leadership meetings, one of the two founders made a brilliant intervention by arguing that we should start our meetings focusing on revenue and spend at least 60% of the time of our meetings on this topic. I thought this was brilliant, because it ensured that the best energy of the team was preserved for the most important item: revenue, the lifestream of a start-up.

‘One thing you can’t recycle is wasted time’. Anonymous

If you’re a leader who feels unable to focus on the right topics because your time is slipping away and your energy is depleted in your leadership team meetings, I highly recommend you to review the composition, frequency, and topics of your leadership team meetings.

(Picture Credit: StockCake)