Leaders have long favored a “bias for action,” and yet many leadership teams are largely dysfunctional, precisely because they fail to function as an action learning team (ALT) to execute the strategy. ALTs develop specialized, strategic capability across functions, drawing together individuals with highly specialized knowledge in order to collaborate on developing and applying new forms of knowledge.

Executive teams are charged to focus first on purpose (strategic intent), and once this is clear, to develop people and processes that align with this purpose. The purpose must be so clear that all see how their role or function fits into big picture and how best to achieve the strategy. In addition, processes must be developed (and others abandoned) to ensure that these clearly support the strategy. Often one or more of these critical components is lacking alignment and clarity, and resolving these problems must begin at the top. ALTs at the Top The executive boardroom is composed of specialists (VPs of functional areas, such as marketing, finance, engineering, operations, and IT) and a leader “generalist” who orchestrates activities. Most senior executives, too, are talented in their fields, but now are also expected to play nicely in the sandbox together with others who they scarcely understand. Hence, they often blame one another for failures, compete for budget, lobby for resources, and engage in CYA in advance of the inevitable breakdowns in execution. Harlan Cleveland, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, once said that the primary emotion pervading boardrooms is one of thinly veiled terror—defensiveness, posturing, identifying too closely with functional roles, and a pervasive inability or unwillingness to test cherished assumptions. This situation often…

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