Leadership Team Development #2 – The 4 Major Functions

First note that I have changed the title of the series from Leadership Development to Leadership Team Development. Leadership and management only has relevance in the context of an organization – leading and managing people. Any business organization has at least 4 major functions that must be driven and managed for the business to succeed. As displayed in our June 1, 2010 post, they are:

1. Marketing and Sales – someone has to generate leads and convert them to new customers;

2. Operations – someone needs to make and/or deliver our products and services to our customers;

3. Administration and Finance – someone needs to keep track of our money and records and maintain our buildings and equipment;

4. The Integrator – someone needs to keep his or her eye on the entire business and make sure the first 3 major functions are all working harmoniously together.

This generic structure adjusts for every company to include the major functions specific to each company. In about half of all companies, there is one additional major function called The Visionary. When a true visionary exists, we just need to make sure the responsibilities of the visionary and the integrator are clearly defined, because they couldn’t be more different and we can’t have the two leaders stumbling all over each other. (We’ll talk about the differences in the near future.) For now, we just need to conclude with two takeaway points:

• We must have one person leading and managing each major function. If you try to make more than one person responsible, no one will be responsible, so choose one. (Note: In smaller companies, one person can be responsible for leading and managing more than one major function.)
• These leaders must function well together as a team or you’ll end up with chaos. So again, this is why I prefer to talk about leadership team development. There’s little value in developing strong leaders who don’t play well together.

With our leaders selected, we can now talk about strengthening the individuals and the team.