What is your job as a CMO, CRO, or team lead?

"Creating strategy" you say. "Hitting targets." "Acquiring new customers." "Landing successful campaigns."

Not bad answers. But wait. You have a team of 5, 10, maybe 100 people. Are you going to do all these things alone?

"No, of course not. My team does that."

So let me ask you again: What is YOUR job?

"Managing the team." "Setting direction." "Hiring people." "Connecting the dots."

We're getting warmer, but we're not there yet. Let's go deeper. Look at your calendar:

• 9:00 - Emails and responses
• 10:30 - Team meeting
• 13:00 - Project review
• 14:30 - Interview
• 16:00 - Monthly business review

What's really happening here? What's your actual job? If you're not working in a plant or crafts, you're likely leading knowledge workers.

And your real job as leader? You manage information flow.

• Enable knowledge creation by others

• Synthesize and distribute information
• Turn information into decisions and direction

Andy Grove, former President of Intel and author of High Output Management distilled decades of leadership into a clear insight: his job, stripped to its essence, was to acquire, comprehend, and disseminate information—then make decisions that would shape the future of his company.

Think about that strategy you're building. It consists of: knowledge scattered across your organization, past learnings, details about available resources and capital, future aspirations and Insights into available capabilities and skills.

This is all information you must piece together. And once you do, everyone needs to have a common understanding about how they contribute to make it a reality.

Leadership: An Art of Information

For many new leaders, this revelation comes slowly. They’ve been promoted for their ability to create—code, designs, strategies, sales—but their new role demands a different skill set. They’ve become information handlers, processing the collective knowledge of their teams and converting it into direction.

The hardest part, isn't getting the information, it's the quality and the consistency of the information and knowing what to do with it.

So my questions to you are?

1. How are you managing this information flow?
2. How is your decision-making process?
3. How do you ensure your team understands and aligns with the same information?

This isn't rocket science. But it can't be left to "figure it out as you go." It requires rigor, consistency, and clarity—ensuring the information gathered is relevant, consistent, and equally understood across the board.

And for that you need a clear, consistent yet flexible structure and discipline to adopt it – yes, structure and process. So you can make sure you manage the flow, you understand the content and you are able to make decisions. – This is part of what I call the team operating model.

Leading people, teams is about managing information and making decisions in an endless stream of uncertainty, each choice creating new information flows that others will navigate.

--> If you find it hard to answer the questions above then maybe we need to talk.

Whether it is managing information flow, creating solid yet simple structures, or building a team operating model, I help leaders develop practical solutions to answer the questions and ensure solid decision-making.

#leadership #leadingteams #teamoperatingmodel