Strategic Teaming

In the environment in which we work—time pressures, multiple and often competing organizational demands, and diversity of perspectives—it is essential for leaders to foster effective teamwork and collaboration within intact teams, cross-functional teams, or across geographies in support of team goals and strategic initiatives. We call this strategic teaming. The Strategic Teaming process focuses on tapping into the unique perspectives that individuals and teams offer in order to identify and address strategic challenges and opportunities facing the organization and driving long term value for the firm. It is designed to enhance team performance and increase strategic collaboration and alignment across many different aspects of the business:

• Business Units
• Corporate Functions (Sales, IT, Marketing, Operations)
• Departments
• Project Teams
• Supply- or Value-Chain Partners
• Customers and Key Business Allies

About Strategic Teaming

Strategic Teaming serves as an opportunity to bring together the diverse perspectives of individuals or teams (either intact or cross-functional) to foster greater collaboration on strategic initiatives and achieve alignment on strategies and plans that the team or teams will need to execute together.

Objectives & Outcomes

Because every organization’s needs are unique, ATHENA CONSULTING works closely with the organization and/or teams to identify key objectives and outcomes as a result of the strategic-teaming process. Some common objectives and outcomes include the following:

1. Open up dialogue around critical strategic opportunities in the business and discuss how to seize and execute on those opportunities.
2. Gain alignment on a shared strategy so it can be communicated across the organization and cascaded throughout each function that needs to support it.
3. Help cross-functional teams or functional areas of the business jointly identify strategic priorities that will capture competitive advantage for the organization.
4. Make and drive important strategic decisions, define commitments, and develop action plans.
5. Create a disciplined structure for action around the strategies that each business function or team develops in relation to their shared goals.
6. Assist strategic teams with implementation of skills, behaviors, tools, and practices that will ensure that the strategy’s execution is consistent.
7. Seek alignment and define methods for sharing information appropriately, eliminating competing goals, and building successful teams.
8. Identify waste, inefficiencies, and tactical distractions so each function can operate on a strategic track.
9. Establish strategic measures of effectiveness to ensure successful execution and accountability for the strategies that are created.

Our Approach

The Strategic Teaming learning experience is a facilitated process led by ATHENA CONSULTING using strategy tools and concepts that help teams take a collaborative and strategic approach to addressing key business needs and issues. The Strategic Teaming process is built around a series of sequential phases:

• Phase I is about articulating the need and business case for strategic teaming. It provides participants with a baseline understanding of the strategic-teaming effort, as well as key strategy concepts, principles, and skills.
• Phase II is designed to help the strategy team collaborate on creating, building, or modifying strategies and plans to create greater alignment on strategic efforts and their execution.
• Phase III is for creating execution, sustainability, and accountability mechanisms that will drive strategic results and increase team-member engagement, effective teamwork, and ownership of the strategy.

This three-phased approach enables teams to shift from simply being operationally effective to being strategically focused, successful teams.