Academy Leadership : Begin building your dream team.

Academy Leadership: "SUCCESSFUL TEAMS share two qualities: they are smart, and healthy. They show that they are smart by developing intelligent strategies, marketing plans, product features, and financial models that lead to competitive advantage over rivals. They show that they are healthy by eliminating politics and confusion, which leads to higher morale, lower turnover, and higher productivity.

I find that many leaders spend most of their time and energy making their organizations smarter, not making them healthier. This is regrettable, considering three benefits of health.

First, healthy organizations have a way of making themselves smarter. Even if their ideas are temporarily inferior to those of competitors, they recognize their deficiencies and change plans before it is too late. Other companies squander intellectual advantages because of infighting, lack of clarity, and other health problems.

Second, healthy companies are far less susceptible to ordinary problems. During difficult times, employees will remain committed to a healthy organization and stay longer, ultimately working to reestablish competitive advantage.

Third, no one but the leader can make the organization healthy. While executives often delegate responsibility for strategy, technology, marketing, or finance, they can't assign responsibility for cultural well-being. Hence, leaders should focus more on making their organizations healthy. And yet strategy, product innovation, and marketing typically receive far more attention.

Why? Because health is hard to measure—even harder to achieve. It feels soft to executives who prefer more quantitative methods of steering their companies. It also entails longer lead time to implementation than does a technology or marketing strategy. And health is often neglected because it involves facing realities of human behavior that even the most committed executive is tempted to avoid. It requires levels of discipline and courage that only a truly extraordinary executive is willing to embrace.

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