Table Stakes for the Leadership Team

Two factors that must be true for every member of your Leadership Team

Lao Tzu, the great Chinese sage said “A journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step”. In EOS, that first step is what we call Focus Day. And one of the most important pieces for a successful EOS journey is having the right people around the table on Focus Day.

So you can imagine I spend a lot of time with new clients helping them determine who should be in that session. So what makes someone a good candidate for the Leadership Team (LT)? According to my friend and mentor, Philadelphia area Professional EOS Implementer Ed Callahan, it is two things.

First, you must be able to trust every member of the LT with the most sensitive – and sometimes difficult – information in and about the company. Every member of the LT must be fully trusted to know everything about the organization. This includes warts-and-all detail about every financial, ownership, personnel and business aspect of the company. If the LT suspects just one member of the team cannot be trusted with this information, they will be hesitant to tackle their most critical issues and that will impede their ability to succeed.

Second, every member of the LT must consider the LT to be their primary team. Most LT members are on two teams. One is the LT, and the other is the organization they lead within the company. It is common for leaders within a business to have tremendous loyalty to the people they lead. However, there are times when there is conflict between what appears to be good for the department and what is truly in the “Greater Good” interest of the company. Every member of the LT must realize that their first allegiance is to the Greater Good. Since the LT is – by definition – the ultimate protector of the Greater Good, each LT member must therefore recognize that their first allegiance is to the LT, not the team they lead.

So the answer to the question “Who should attend Focus Day?” must include an open and honest assessment of how the leaders in the organization live up to these two factors. In every Focus Day I take the time to explain these two attributes to the attendees so the entire Leadership Team is crystal clear what is expected of them, and what they should expect of each other.

These two attributes are literally “table stakes” – the price of admission for a seat at that table.