#2: Your First Team Doesn’t Work Like One
You walk into executive team meetings expecting alignment—and instead get polite updates, turf wars, and half-hearted consensus. That’s not a First Team. That’s a group of silo leaders pulling in different directions.
And when your First Team fractures, execution fragments. Growth bottlenecks. Enterprise value erodes.
The Enterprise Value Impact
McKinsey reports that only 38% of executive teams focus on work that requires true cross-functional leadership. The rest spend their time optimizing silos instead of driving enterprise outcomes. The cost? Slower decision-making, wasted resources, and stalled strategy.
What Great CEOs Do Differently
- Staff for the Enterprise: Appoint leaders who can think beyond their function.
- Define the Work Only They Can Do: Strategy, resource allocation, interdependencies, and culture—not department metrics.
- Build an Operating Rhythm: Connect strategy, execution, and behavior into one cohesive tempo.
Your CEO Call to Action
Look around your First Team table and ask:
- Are these leaders protecting silos—or building the enterprise?
- Are we spending time on cross-functional strategy—or status updates?
- Is this team the engine of growth—or a drag on execution?
Only you can reset the rhythm, reframe the work, and reset expectations. When your First Team acts as one, alignment accelerates—and enterprise value follows.