My leadership team members still act like heads of their individual silos, constantly fighting for resources and defending their own teams rather than making decisions for the good of the entire business. How do I get them to think like enterprise-level leaders?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When leadership team members behave like tribal chiefs defending their own territories, your strategic growth stalls. To prepare for a clean exit, your executives must transition from functional managers to true enterprise leaders. They must put on their leadership hats the moment they enter the executive room.

Start by establishing a clear rule: inside our leadership meetings, we represent the entire company, not our individual departments. Use your V/TO® to ground every strategic discussion. Every resource allocation and structural decision must be evaluated against your three-year picture and one-year plan, not departmental convenience.

Use the Accountability Chart to reinforce this mindset. Remind them that they own a seat on the leadership team first, and their functional department second. If a decision benefits the company's enterprise value but makes their specific department's life harder, they must champion that decision anyway.

Tie their quarterly performance and bonuses to company-wide goals, such as hitting your total revenue and profitability targets, rather than individual departmental metrics. Track these leading indicators on your weekly Scorecard. When everyone's success is tied to the same high-level numbers, siloed thinking naturally fades away.