After President Barack Obama’s inauguration today, I am hopeful that he and his newly formed administration will be able to make progress in solving our economic and global problems. He has brought together a strong group of individuals, so the potential is there. But to realize that potential, it takes more. My unsolicited advice to President Obama is: Take action now to galvanize your cabinet into a high-performance team.
I've been part of both great and not-so-great teams in my 30-year career. One of my strongest team experiences was in the early 1990s, when I was working in San Francisco. We were starting a new regional office for Frito-Lay, so no one came to the table with entrenched biases, and we all shared a common goal -- making profit plan. And most importantly, our leader worked hard to create shared experiences to bring us together as a cohesive team -- at work, in training programs and socially with our families.
Conversely, in my not-so-great team experiences, the leader was either more interested in individual success versus team success; or there were one or two highly disruptive people on the team -– and we all know a bad apple can spoil the bunch.
The primary lesson I've learned is that a leader must work hard to build a high-performance team -- it does not occur naturally. But the rewards are well worth the effort.
Our CEO, Al Carey, is a wonderful example of someone who has proved this. As part of his strategy, last year he decided to teach "Speed of Trust" to his senior team, and it’s making its way throughout the organization as we speak. Authored by Stephen M.R. Covey, the program focuses on creating and sustaining five waves of trust: self, relationships, organizations, marketplace and society. Each is equally important to building productive and mutually beneficial experiences -- at the office and at home.
The impact of this training at Frito-Lay has been powerful, particularly in uniting Sales and Marketing to better support our customers, in uniting Marketing and Research & Development to improve new product development and in improving decision-making and speed to market across all teams.
So, my unsolicited advice to President Obama is to work hard to instill trust and create shared goals among his cabinet to ensure his administration succeeds as a high- performance, collaborative team. If he does, he’ll significantly increase the likelihood of solving the enormous challenges we face in 2009 and beyond. What do you think makes a great leader or a great team?
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