What Every Great Leadership Team Has

Every great leadership team needs a Visionary. This is the leader who consistently reminds the team of its ultimate direction and its mission. They answer the question of why the company exists in the first place and define the broad steps necessary for the organization to reach its goals. They see in advance how factors economic, geopolitical, demographic technological and cultural will converge in the future to create opportunity and cash flow. The Visionary has the unique ability to define, in real terms, what the future looks like. They can describe the future with such energy and in such detail that the team literally feels like they are experiencing the future in the present, as if it had already happened. 

In the words of Napoleon Hill (oft recited by one of my mentors), whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. In this context, the Visionary is the mind of the organization, conceiving huge ideas and believing they can inspire the company to reach heights well beyond the imaginations of others. When hurdles stand up and block the organization’s way, it’s the Visionary who won’t take no for an answer and instead convinces the rest that obstacles can be cleared or knocked down. Every great leadership team needs a Visionary.

Every great leadership team needs a Storyteller. The Storyteller communicates to everyone — inside and outside — what makes the company special. Equal parts sales, marketing and cheerleader, the Storyteller determines who needs to hear the story and then gets and keeps them excited about the vision, mission and activities of the company. Equally comfortable speaking before a conference of hundreds as they are in the conference room of a client or customer, the Storyteller can articulate why anyone — a client, a team member, a potential team member or a supplier — should engage with the company. They provide positive feedback and encouragement and keep people believing in the mission. They exude energy and engender confidence in a manner that facilitates accomplishment of mission and organizational goals. Every great leadership team needs a Storyteller.

Every great leadership team needs an Executor. This person takes the mission and vision of the Visionary and the paradigm and commitments of the Storyteller and makes them real. They are the organization’s taskmaster.  They obsess over details and have a “get it done” mentality.  Fueled by a strong sense of urgency, the executor is the one who wakes up at 3:00 AM worried about whether an order due the next day is going to ship and they get the call at 4:00 AM when a critical machine goes down.  When bad news needs to be delivered — to other members of the leadership team, to an employee or to a customer — the Executor delivers it. They keep the plant clean and customer-ready at all times. They prioritize which expedited order gets done first. They obsess over on-time delivery, throughput, yield and machine uptime. They maintain and upgrade equipment and process as necessary to optimize these. They make tough decisions on personnel and ensure environmental compliance. The Executor keeps the organization honest with each of its stakeholders. Every great leadership team needs an Executor.

Every great leadership team needs a Visionary, a Storyteller and an Executor.  These need not be three separate people, however. In smaller organizations, these three roles might reside in a single individual who comes up with the vision for the company, shares that vision with customers, team members and others, and also has the will to see their ideas and plan to completion.

Another company could have a visionary CEO, a vice president of sales who can tell the story and a plant manager who oversees the operations of the company. 

Yet a third organization could have a president who sets the vision and shares the story and a vice president of operations who serves as Executor.

While these responsibilities can reside in different people, when one is missing the company is at risk of falling short of its true potential. An inspiring vision and mission are useless if no one can share their story with those who need to hear it. A great Storyteller is pointless with no mission or vision to share and a prolific Executor is wasted talent if the organization can’t reach the market to inspire customers and others to do business with it.

If your company is crushing it in the marketplace and in the plant, chances are you can identify who within the organization serves as Visionary, who is the Storyteller and who is the Executor. If you’re falling short of expectations it’s likely one of these three is missing or inadequate.