Leadership team effectiveness consultants that turn a group of department heads into one team
We interview each leader in confidence, observe your meetings and review how the team plans and reports. Then we facilitate and coach, so your leaders put this team first and agree what only it can do.
Collette EastonExecutive coach and former CEO
Matt RobertsCo-founder of ZOKRI
Meet Matt before you book
The person you'd be talking to, and how we think.
You're probably here because
Sound familiar?
- We make a decision on Tuesday and reopen it on Thursday.
- Each of my directors tells me a different story.
- Everyone defends their own department first.
- There's a conversation we all know we need to have, and nobody starts it.
- I've just inherited this team and I need it working by spring.
- Nobody admits a mistake or asks for help in front of the others.
- Our meetings are polite, and the real debate happens afterwards.
- When someone misses a commitment, nobody calls it out.
What you leave with
What do you want to leave with?
Every team wants something slightly different, and we agree it with you first. These are the things leadership teams most often ask for.
- A short team charterWhat this team exists to do, as distinct from the teams its members lead.
- A decision-making agreementWho decides what, and how: consult then decide, consent or vote.
- The avoided conversations, hadIn the room, with a safe structure.
- A smarter way of working togetherHabits for meetings, feedback and follow-through that the team will actually use.
- Meetings that use the talent in the roomFormats that get every voice heard, so the best idea wins rather than the most senior one.
- One commitment each, and a 90-day reviewIn their own words, with the review already booked.
Who runs it
The people in your room.
Proof
Run by people who do this every week.
When we're the wrong choice. If one person is the problem, a team session won't fix it. That's a management conversation, or one-to-one coaching, and we'll say so.
After the plan
The plan is agreed. Now someone has to find the time.
10 of 15recent discovery interviews
Leadership teams know what needs fixing.
- They can name the broken process and the meeting that goes nowhere.
- What they can't find is the time to fix it.
- Some aren't sure they have the skills.
- In 10 of our last 15 interviews, someone said it almost word for word.
- Output under pressure
- Work harder
- No time to improve
- Capability erodes
- More fires
MIT's John Sterman and Nelson Repenning call it the capability trap.
- Under pressure, the sensible short-term move is to work harder.
- That leaves no time to improve the way work gets done.
- Capability erodes, the fires multiply, and firefighting starts to feel like diligence.
Source: Repenning and Sterman, California Management Review, 2001
It's hard to see from the inside.
- Managers see their own patch, but most plans fail at the handoffs between teams.
- In a study of nearly 8,000 managers, 84% could rely on their boss and their own team. Only 9% could always rely on colleagues in other functions.
- Naming the problem is political, because it usually points at a peer or a past decision.
- Most managers were promoted for doing the work, not for designing how it flows.
Source: Sull, Homkes and Sull, Harvard Business Review, 2015
- We run it with youYou run it, we coachQuarterly review
So we stay, then step back.
- At first we run the work alongside your people: mapping the process, testing a fix, measuring it and running the retrospective.
- Then your managers run the next cycle while we coach from the side.
- Then we step back to the quarterly review.
- Your people learn by doing the work with us, which sticks in a way a training day never does.
- We'd rather you stopped needing us by spring.
- People
- Operations
- Sales and marketing
- AI enablement
Fractional, until the role is hired or grown
Sometimes the gap is a missing person, not a missing skill.
- The plan needs someone to lead the people side, run operations, drive sales and marketing, or get AI working in the business.
- Hiring for that takes six months you don't have.
- One of us joins your team part-time, works from inside with your people and systems, and hands the role over when you've hired or grown someone into it.
Weekly check-in
Goal 2Your owner + oursProgressConfidence3 of 5We're your accountability partners.
- People find it harder to let a goal slide when someone outside the business turns up every week expecting to see it moved.
- A quarterly cadence, with a named owner on your side and one on ours for every goal.
- Weekly check-ins on progress and confidence, so a slipping goal shows up in week three rather than week twelve.
- What we learn, including what didn't work, is written down and shared across the team.
- We're measured on one thing, and it's results.
- Planning30 daysCarry on
Every engagement ends with a 30-day review and an option to carry on.
- However we run your planning, from a single in-person day to several weeks of interviews, async work, online sessions and workshops.
- The option is priced before we start, so nobody has to negotiate when energy is low.
- Most teams know by day 30 whether they want it.
Questions people ask first
Is this executive team coaching?
Yes, alongside facilitation. We coach the senior leadership team as a team, and individual leaders where it helps, so the team decides faster and deals with what it has been avoiding.
What does a leadership team effectiveness consultant do?
A leadership team effectiveness consultant helps a top team agree how it decides, deal with the conversations it has been avoiding, and set habits that keep it working, starting with confidential one-to-ones.
Is this team building?
No games and no trust falls. It's a working session on real decisions.
Will people be open?
That's what the confidential one-to-ones are for. Themes are shared and sources aren't.
Is this therapy?
No. It's about how a team works, run by people who've led teams.
What does it cost?
A fixed fee, agreed after a 30-minute call once we know the size of the group, how long you have and what has to be decided by the end.
Related
Last updated
Have the conversations your leadership team keeps avoiding.
Thirty minutes with Collette. Tell us what has to be decided, and afterwards we'll send you a short summary of the call: what we heard, and how we'd approach it.