Courage to Execute: What elite U.S. military units can teach business about leadership and team performance

Chapter 7

Leadership on Purpose: Developing Teams and Leaders from Day One

Earlier, we said that individual execution is one thing, organizational execution is everything. That's supremely important in the armed forces because the military executes as a team, often as a team of teams, but we don't think of the army or navy or air force as a team itself, at least in the true sense. Teams are defined by the personal working relationships between members. If I can't name everyone in a group, I don't consider it a team. Size matters here. A small cohesive group can act like a team. An entire 50-person sales force may call itself a team, but it most likely functions like an organization. Show me a 10-person industry group within that larger organization, however, and I might be able to show you a real team. It's about being able to communicate and work together effectively.

It's also about moving toward a common goal, the other defining trait of a real team. At the highest level, a senior leadership team is responsible for leading the organization to the high-definition destination (HDD), that overarching yet highly detailed future with a two-to-five-year time horizon. Strategic objectives reside at the next level, in the form of goal markers. Divisions and other sub-groups aspire to achieve these targets over 6, 12, or 24 months. Tactical mission objectives are at the operational level, and frontline teams are out there in the field striving to achieve them. Those objectives usually ...