STRATEGYCOACHING 201
requires a screwdriver. Instead, I listen carefully, ask questions, challenge,
and provide feedback.
In my experience, the most common problem facing today’s top managers
is that they have inherited an organization designed so that strategy was set
by a top-down process of allocating scarce financial capital across the com-
peting needs of the business. This organizational model is typically rein-
forced by a set of sophisticated planning and control systems created to drive
capital requests, strategic plans, and operating budgets upwards to top man-
agement so that it could allocate and control capital effectively. And support-
ing all this is a corporate staff whose whole purpose is to manage this f low of
f low of information up and down.
But as we’ve moved into an information-based, knowledge-intensive ser-
vice economy, capital remains important, but it is no longer the scarce, con-
straining, and therefore strategic resource for top management to control.
The new strategic resource is the information, knowledge, and expertise re-
quired to develop and diffuse innovation. That information and knowledge
exist in people’s heads and in organizational relationships. It can no longer be
hauled to the top to be allocated and controlled by the CEO. The task of de-
veloping and diffusing innovation is fundamentally different from allocating
and controlling capital. This change has driven a decade of delayering,
reengineering, and empowerment that has transformed the modern corpora-
tion and fundamentally altered the role of top management.
In this environment, most organizations are far too complex for the CEO
to be conversant with everything. Critical to the success of any organization
is obtaining the alignment and commitment of the top team. Almost all or-
ganizations hold a regular top management meeting, and one of the first
things I will typically do as a coach is to sit in on a few, listening and observ-
ing to absorb the state of the business and the dynamics of the team. It’s as-
tounding how many such meetings serve as show and tell presentations of
information that could be obtained by simply reading the accompanying re-
ports. There’s huge value added even just in getting the agenda of those
meetings right by balancing operating review items with key strategic issues
and development opportunities.
There also may be some intraorganizational tension or problem that is
causing difficulty in the top team’s effective functioning: a dysfunctional
person who needs to be removed; an unresolved dispute that needs to be re-
solved; or an unspoken concern that needs to be explored. It helps to have
fresh eyes and ears observing the work of the top of the organization. As an
outsider, my role is to gain sufficient confidence and respect that I can