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Alan Whitman: Firms are hoping their key leaders succeed—hope is an awful strategy.
Written by: Alan Whitman
Early in my tenure as CEO at Baker Tilly, I had a big problem:
My leadership team was struggling to operate effectively as a unit, and our performance suffered as a result.
- We weren’t generating innovative, bold ideas.
- We weren’t executing our strategy or willing to BREAK THE MOLD™ to achieve differentiated outcomes.
- We struggled to find new ways to drive growth and often disagreed on the way forward.
Instead, we spent a lot of time organizing and analyzing data and struggled to turn all that effort into intentional actions that delivered results.
Finally, I decided to seek help from an outside party because it was clear that the way our leadership team was operating was not working.
Once I did, my eyes were opened to a whole new way of thinking about maximizing the performance of both teams and individuals in our organization.
More importantly, I learned that many of the traditional approaches to constructing a leadership team that executes strategy and enables growth were completely wrong.
"Gather The Smartest People in a Room”
To build my leadership team at Baker Tilly, I followed the traditional advice I’d heard many times before: “Gather the smartest people in the room.”
It’s simple, right?
Identify the smartest, highest performers in the organization, bring them together, and magic will happen.
So that’s what I did.
The result?
Well, as I alluded to, the team wasn’t performing as I’d hoped.
We encountered considerable friction in our operations and it seemed like we struggled to get out of our own way.
From my perspective as CEO, it was troubling (to say the least) because this team set the tone for the direction and performance of the organization.
So, what gives? What was wrong?
The consulting organization we partnered with helped make an incredibly valuable distinction:
I had built a committee of smart, high-performing people.
That’s completely different than building an effective team.
What I Learned About Building High-Performing Teams
Here’s the most important thing I learned about team performance:
Effective teams aren’t built solely on assembling the smartest and most talented individuals.
Effective teams are constructed by bringing together smart and talented people who complement one another in the right ways.
Teams need to collaborate seamlessly to achieve goals and create unique outcomes.
This requires a blend of diverse skill sets that complement each other, making the collective more potent than the sum of its parts.
Consider a sports analogy…
A basketball team composed entirely of the most talented point guards wouldn’t fare well against a team with players in each designated position.
Similarly, a hockey team made up solely of the best goalies would struggle to succeed.
I realized I had built a team full of high-performing individuals without understanding their strengths, preferences, and work styles.
Without this understanding, we would never maximize our potential as a team.
The Value of Knowing WHO You Have
Our work with the consulting partner we hired started with gaining a deeper understanding of who everyone in our leadership group was.
Each of the leaders on the team was assessed, and through those assessments, we were able to learn more about their personalities, tendencies, workplace behaviors, communication styles, and more.
It was invaluable because it made the invisible, visible. It provided a roadmap for how I, as CEO, could best leverage their strengths and address their barriers to performance.
It was like receiving an instruction manual on how to best utilize the people in our organization so that they performed at their best, and as a result, the company would perform at its maximum potential.
From a team-building perspective, I learned that our leadership team was made up of people who all had similar profiles and therefore, similar tendencies.
That’s why we were getting stuck.
A majority of team members were more analytical and conservative and we lacked people who were big thinkers and more willing to take risks.
An ideal team needs a balance—we didn’t have that.
So, armed with new information, I was able to make different decisions about the structure of our leadership team.
That meant removing some people and adding some new ones to ensure we had a more balanced representation of personas and personality types.
I’ll tell ya… It worked.
Having a more diverse group of personas, work preferences, and experiences led us to build a team that could effectively think differently, plan effectively, and bring ideas and initiatives to life.
This core group sparked the incredible growth run that we had at Baker Tilly over the next 8 years.
How to Apply This to Your Organization
Here’s the main idea I hope you walk away with:
Your leaders represent your companies’ biggest bets.
Understanding WHO your leaders are and HOW they operate will unlock higher performance for the individuals and teams that make up your organization.
Whether you’re building a leadership team, promoting new Partners, or hiring lateral Partners to grow your firm, it’s incredibly valuable to assess and understand your leaders so you can build intentional plans to enable and accelerate their performance.
Take it from me…
Assuming people will perform on a team or in a role based on their talent, capabilities, or previous performance is a losing proposition. That’s hoping—and hope is an awful strategy.
Slow down to speed up.
Take the time to understand who someone is and how they operate, you’ll be better positioned to accelerate their performance and the success of your organization.
Based on my experiences at Baker Tilly and what I learned through this experience, I was intrigued when I met Angela Navarro and the team at Kinavic Leadership Acceleration.
Using their proprietary Verity Leadership Assessment℠, powered by Hogan Assessments, Kinavic is helping professional services firms accelerate Partner performance using data in a similar way that benefitted us at Baker Tilly. When I saw how their unique and industry-specific data served as the foundation of their performance acceleration framework, I knew firms would benefit from their approach.
As a strategic advisor to Kinavic, I’d be happy to introduce you to the team and the impactful work they do in professional services. Feel free to get in touch using the contact information below.
Alan Whitman
Alan Whitman is a transformative leader who led Baker Tilly US to significant growth and scaling during his time as CEO. He now serves as a Strategy and Growth Advisor to professional services firms, enabling them to BREAK THE MOLD™ of traditional thinking to help them scale faster and do it differently. Alan serves as a strategic growth advisor to Kinavic Leadership Acceleration.
