Some leadership experts argue that members of the senior management team independently work on their own issues and come together only occasionally to coordinate organizational activities and set organizational strategy. 

Consider the following thoughts regarding the work of senior leaders and their teams: 

1. The job of a typical healthcare vice president has an individual focus. That is, she spends most of her time on activities that have nothing to do with the work of the senior management team of which she is a member. 

2. Working challenges faced at the middle management and frontline supervisory levels are usually shortterm in nature (there is an immediacy to the nature of the issue), and the problems that must be solved are usually clearer. Issues at the senior management level are much grayer, involving strategy and longerterm decisions. 

3. Compared with the problems faced by middle management, the challenges encountered by the senior management team require strategic (not operational), long-term responses. Similarly, the purpose of a senior management team (e.g., achieve a 4 percent margin) is more abstract than the purpose of any other organizational team. 

4. Senior-level leaders have two, often overlapping, performance goals—a corporate goal and an individual goal. 

5. At the senior leadership level, complementary skills are less important than position. In true team situations, the extra performance capability that a real team provides comes mostly from its complementary skills—that is, executives with clinical backgrounds are knowledgeable about patient care operations, while leaders with financial backgrounds are adept at business concepts. 

6. Establishing and maintaining team standards of behavior are difficult for a senior management team because this group meets less frequently than do other teams. 

7. Members of senior management teams are not “mutually accountable” to each other; rather, they are individually accountable to the CEO. Mutual accountability is hard to establish because one executive has too many responsibilities. 

Questions 

1. If these points are correct, how should senior executives enhance their working effectiveness? Can executives create real teams? 

2. If you were starting an organization from scratch, how would you assemble the leadership team?