Designing an Effective Executive Team

In my 30+ years of consulting I’ve seen a lot of executive team design by default. What do I mean by that? Like job titles in many organizations, large and small, executive team design is often not thought about in a strategic manner and has evolved over time without the necessary deep dive into being clear about why the team exists and who should be on the team.

First, definitions are in order. In this article, executive team refers to the group of senior leaders at the top of an organization chart who meet to make critical decisions about the strategy, direction and management of the company. Many organizations have an executive team and a management team, or other named group, which includes the executive team and some roles which report directly to executive team titles.

As with any group, it is important to consider how effective the executive team can be given its size. For instance, having ten people on an executive team with a company of 50 – 500 employees may not make sense. How can decisions be made with that many people in the room? How does the group move forward? A top team of more than 5 or 6 people makes it difficult to make decisions and more people create more jostling and politicking to be heard. But, on the other hand, the management team which makes more operational and tactical decisions, may have an optimal size of 8 – 12 or so for a middle market company.

With respect to roles to be included on an executive team, CEO (Chief Executive Officer), COO (Chief Operations Officer, and often the number two in command), CFO (Chief Financial Officer), CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer), CIO (Chief Information Officer) and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) are a good core to start with, understanding specific job titles for these roles are most likely different in your company. Since job titles are not uniform across organizations, you may essentially have these jobs but with different labels, such as Vice President, Senior Vice President, Executive Vice President, Director, etc.

Some CEO’s struggle with creating an effective executive team because they aren’t clear to start with regarding why the team exists. It is necessary to decide why the executive team exists, and then determine which roles require a seat at the table. Simply having a Chief title or being a direct report to the CEO should not automatically mean a role is included in the executive team.

Clarity around why each senior level role exists is also critical. If roles are added at the top of the organization chart and there is overlap between duties, there will most likely be conflict and lack of direction without clear definition of responsibilities.

If your company needs assistance determining the best executive team structure for your company, reach out to Conover Consulting at laura@conoverconsulting.com. We have decades of job design and organization design experience and approach these issues with a strategic mindset.

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