My leadership team agrees with our V/TO® in theory, but when it comes to making hard resource trade-offs, they protect their own department budgets instead of funding our high-priority company Rocks. How do we get our executive team to transition from siloed managers to true enterprise-first leaders?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When leaders fight for their own department budgets at the expense of the company's long-term vision, they are operating as siloed managers rather than enterprise leaders. This behavior slows down your exit timeline and starves your high-impact initiatives of the resources they need to succeed. To fix this, you must change how your leadership team views their primary commitment. Use the concepts of the Culture Index to evaluate if you have the right people in these seats. Enterprise leaders must possess the strategic depth to understand that a win for the company is a win for their department, even if it means sacrificing headcount or budget in the short term. At your next quarterly planning session, pull out the V/TO® and force a hard conversation. Revisit your 1-Year Plan and 3-Year Highly Achievable Goal. Ask the team: if we only achieve our departmental targets but miss our company-wide goals, does anyone actually win? The answer is no, especially if you are positioning the company for a sale. When setting quarterly Rocks, implement a strict resource allocation rule. No department-specific Rocks can be approved until the company's top three Rocks are fully funded and staffed. If a department head refuses to release resources for a critical company Rock, use the IDS® process to resolve the conflict openly. You must reward and promote the leaders who exhibit enterprise-first behavior, and hold accountable those who continue to protect their own turf.