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Top Management Teams

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I”. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I”. They think “we”; they think “team”. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit … This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done. (Peter F. Drucker)

Key Learning Points

  • What are Top Management Teams (TMTs) and what is their task?
  • The role that TMTs play in their organizations
  • Prescriptions for creating and maintaining TMTs
  • Defining the purpose and objectives of TMT as complementary to organizational objectives
  • Inputs for TMT effectiveness that are unique to TMTs
  • How to compose and ensure the diversity of TMTs
  • TMT processes – participation, conflict, agreement seeking and communication
  • Processes unique to TMTs and common to all teams and the importance of clear norms of team functioning
  • The role of the CEO in the TMT

Born in the tough landscape of the Bronx in New York City and a passionate leader with strong values, Angelo Mozilo started Countrywide Financial in the late 1960s. Mozilo believed he could enable millions of families to buy homes by building a financial business that was founded on probity and commitment to its customers. Forty years later, CEO Mozilo appeared to have lost the plot, convinced on the one hand that a disastrous financial crisis lay just around the corner – he was right – but stubbornly ...

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