There comes a moment in almost every company when the methods that created its success begin quietly conspiring against its future.
Revenue may still rise and the strategy still appears in presentations, yet something essential has begun to drift.
The CEO’s vision is no longer the vision being executed three levels down. The market is changing faster than the management team. Innovation is discussed but not concentrated where it matters most. Artificial intelligence (AI) is being sampled rather than harnessed. Strong executives are working hard, often in different directions.
Nothing looks broken enough to inspire alarm; that is precisely why the danger is so great.
Most companies do not stall because they lack talent, capital or opportunity. They stall because strategy, leadership behavior, innovation and execution slowly separate.
The answer is to echelon the management team.
An echelon is a formation in which each member has a clear position and the group moves as one force. In business, echeloning is the disciplined process of aligning, elevating and coaching the four to 12 leaders whose decisions and behaviors most determine the company’s future.
It unites four forces:
- A living strategy — Every quarter, the team confronts what has changed in markets, customers, competitors and technology, then adjusts accordingly.
- A compelling growth vision — Leaders continually clarify the vision, recommit to it and, when necessary, enlarge or redirect it.
- Concentrated leverage and innovation — The team intensifies the company’s primary source of leverage and attacks the constraint or opportunity where focused effort can create disproportionate growth.
- Strategically connected coaching — Each influential leader improves the one behavior most capable of strengthening the culture and accelerating execution.
Culture is shaped disproportionately by a small number of people. Employees study what leaders notice, tolerate, reward and repeat. A leader’s behavior becomes a team’s permission, which becomes company culture.
One changed behavior in the right leader can travel through an organization with astonishing force.
Yet many companies assign coaches who understand individual executives but not the enterprise. Echeloning uses one coach who understands the company’s strategy, culture, constraints and areas requiring innovation. Each leader grows individually while the team grows as a system.
AI makes this alignment even more urgent
AI is not a strategy; it is an amplifier. It can magnify insight, creativity and speed, or it can magnify confusion and mediocre thinking.
Echeloned teams do not merely use technology; they aim it at the company’s most valuable opportunities.
Even healthy companies can benefit from having a turnaround mindset. Every organization is becoming obsolete somewhere. The best companies confront
that truth before a crisis makes it compulsory. That is how strong businesses become category leaders, command exceptional valuations and sometimes achieve unicorn exits.
Look at your top four to 12 managers and ask: Are they talented individuals, or have they become a force capable of multiplying one another?
If they became dramatically more aligned, strategically alert and effective over the next 12 months, how much more could your company be worth?
That is the hidden value of echeloning.
For more than three decades, I have helped CEOs, owners and management teams clarify strategy,
accelerate growth and improve leadership behavior.
If four to 12 leaders largely determine your company’s future, consider the value that could be released by echeloning them.
Your company already has a trajectory. The only question is whether you will accept it.
Mark Faust (513-621-8000, mark@em1990.com) works with owners, CEOs and management teams to align leadership, accelerate growth, strengthen execution and increase enterprise value. Schedule a complimentary Echeloning Strategy & Growth Dialogue with Mark at calendly.com/markfaust. Read more ideas from him here.
