I recently wrote a post about the importance of understanding your team's purpose. After all, purpose drives everything. It drives what's on the team's "agenda" and what's not (I am using the term "agenda" more broadly than meeting agenda. I am referring to the specific areas the team should be focused on).

An important step in clarifying team purpose is to first understand the "type" of team you need (and want).

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With the economy recovering and business picking up, I have been asked the following question several times by clients and potential clients in the past few weeks...

"How do we keep growing and maintain our culture at the same time?"

That is a great question.

You have probably heard us talk about DiSC and many of the other profiles that we offer. What you may not know is that there is an online system called EPIC that can put you in control of the administration process.

What is EPIC?

Things seemed to be changing quickly. In just a matter of three months, Ben was unexpectedly promoted from Consultant to Manager, Angela was hired and then quit, and now Henry was coming on board.

“So, how’s it going?” Ben's Manager Steve asked.

“Swamped,” Ben replied. “Henry’s started as of last Tuesday and so far seems to be working out pretty well.”

“Great,” Steve responded without knowing that Ben was about to continue.

“It’s nice having another resource around.”

“What?” Steve asked as he looked sharply back at Ben.

One of the challenges that senior leadership teams face is what I call an "interesting duality."

On on hand, a senior leader is often responsible for a functional unit or team within an organization. On the other hand, they are asked to be on a team with other leaders - usually headed by a Director, VP, or CEO.

My clients often ask me,"How big should our team be?"

My answer is typically...it depends.

It depends on the purpose of the team.

The challenge on many teams is a lack of clarity about a team's true purpose. In most cases, team's don't even know that they don't know their purpose.

This is usually a bigger issue at the senior leadership team level, where a CEO, VP, or Director leads a
team of other leaders.

I have found myself reading works by Napoleon Hill, an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal success literature. In the early nineteen hundreds, Andrew Carnegie commissioned him to interview over 500 successful men and women in order to discover and publish their formula for success.

Last week Dick Winters died at age 92.

He was described in a Wall Street Journal article as the leader of a valiant World War II paratrooper company that became famous a half-century later in historian Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers. I first read the book while I was on active duty, and then later watched the HBO miniseries (about 10 times).

I had an interesting hut trip experience this past weekend. A group of friends and I skied into a very difficult hut near Vail Pass. The 7 mile approach took over 9 hours, as we endured steep and technical terrain to get to our destination at 11,200 feet above sea level. On Sunday, the area was socked in with almost a foot of fresh snow. With the winds picking up and the snow continuing, we made a decision to take a longer but less technical route back to the trail head.