My executives still view their departmental staff as their primary team rather than treating the leadership team as their Number One team. How do we shift their allegiance to the executive table first?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When executives treat their functional department as their primary team, they act like governors lobbying for their home states rather than enterprise leaders running a company. This dynamic creates deep operational silos, political turf guarding, and zero cross-functional collaboration.

You must explicitly establish Patrick Lencioni's First Team principle: every executive's primary allegiance belongs to the leadership team, not to their direct reports.

To enforce this mindset shift across the team:
- Redefine their core responsibility. Their primary job is achieving the company V/TO and enterprise profitability; managing their department is secondary.
- Tie leadership evaluation to whole-company outcomes rather than departmental trophies. If their department hits its numbers but the company misses its budget, they did not have a successful quarter.
- Stop backroom appeals. If an executive agrees to a decision during your Level 10 Meeting, they must champion that decision to their department without making excuses or blaming the leadership room.

Cracks at the leadership level appear as canyons to the rest of the organization. When your executives act as a unified first team, departmental silos dissolve and cross-functional execution speeds up dramatically.