"Executive Focus springs from the recognition that an organization's top management ultimately shapes and determines how the organization performs..."

Executive Focus

Executive Focus is an intense 1- 2 day process that sets the stage for an organization to achieve its major targeted goals. It does so by working with the top management group to establish conditions required for dynamic development, conditions that only this group can provide:

• A clarity of direction among the top executives relating to the organization's vision and its future growth
• A unified resolve among them focused on achieving the vision
• A clear understanding of the impact of their leadership functioning on achieving the organizational vision
• A commitment to reshaping their own management roles and functioning as needed
• Clear plans, collectively developed, to achieve their objectives

Executive Focus springs from the recognition that an organization's top management ultimately shapes and determines how the organization performs, including how effectively it manages change. Please consider the following five questions. These highlight areas in which Executive Focus may help clarify direction and serve as a catalyst for action.

• Does your organization have a clear, compelling sense of direction and vision about its future?

• How united is the top management group in their understanding and acceptance of that vision?

The first requirement for systematic, long-term development is that the top people within an organization have a clear sense of direction, knowing where they are going and what they want to achieve. This unity of purpose - an orientation to a future about which they collectively care - cannot be over stressed. Creating a vision-driven context infuses an organization with a motivating vigor and surrounds the difficult tasks of growth and change with meaning and importance.

Executive Focus begins by revisiting the vision, direction, and development objectives of the organization with the executive group. This step provides the opportunity to explore their meaning and to consider their implications as a major source of energy available to the organization. The Executive Focus process forges the unity and resolve of the top management team around a congruent vision of the organization's future.

• How uniform is the top management group's commitment and resolve about pursuing the collective vision?

The top people in an organization must understand and accept that most targeted changes are not just a program but a new "way of life" that requires a shift in the fundamental assumptions, values, and culture of the organization. Top management's informed commitment is absolutely essential to achieving this shift.

• Does the top management group understand, both individually and collectively, what changes in their own performance and behavior the vision may require?

Successful organizational change and growth is not due simply to the level of commitment and support shown it by upper management. It is linked directly to their understanding that if the organization is going to grow, develop, and change effectively, they themselves must be the first targets of change. They must understand that an organization's performance and results ultimately spring from top management's beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors. Consequently, the achievement of desired goals and vision may require that they make clear, unambiguous, and personal changes in their own behavior and attitudes before asking others to do the same.

Executive Focus provides top level executives and managers the structure and opportunity to surface, analyze, and confront their own thinking effectively with an eye to addressing the changes they themselves, as the directing and energizing group in the organization, must make before any substantial organizational changes can be achieved.

• Are clear plans, developed and actively monitored by the executive group, currently in place and being implemented?

No matter how great the desire to improve, people also need a plan for collaboratively implementing changes. Executive Focus guides the process of top managers in targeting needed changes and in developing clear, concrete plans to achieve them. This step insures that the vision moves from the boardroom into the workplace.

Guided by Management Associates' staff, Executive Focus allows the executive group to addresses these essential issues that are critical to the success of their planned future. The process taps the strength of unity and forges an executive team. While this team will be challenged by the requirements of change, it will also be energized by a common vision, supported by a collective commitment, and focused on a single plan. Executive Focus takes an organizational vision down off the wall and out of the frame and creates the climate that will make it alive and operational throughout the organization.