Should Companies Push for Leaderless Teams?

Written By Ted Grigg

In the local Dallas Morning News this morning, the July 16 Life At Work section featured a business productivity article with the interesting title "How tables shape power."

What does this have to do with marketing? Actually, quite a bit.

Fast pace and deep change make marketing leadership and decision making more challenging than ever. Just today, one of my CMO clients running a $100 million retail business confessed that he is now making decisions with less information than he had available 5 years ago.

Business moves quicker than our ability to gather and analyze the business. The old idea that the best leaders make the needed decisions when faced with ambiguity is taking on new meaning.

Yet when this Dallas paper interviewed Robert Blomstrom, president of Wilson Office Interiors who designs offices for companies in Dallas, he said.

"More offices are encouraging collaboration during meetings... In many meetings today, there isn't a leader. There are co-participants regardless of rank. So we tend to put tables with plenty of space around them so people can walk around... and are able to express themselves."

Yet, another source said the opposite. "Round tables create a sense of equality and hamper getting things done... while long, narrow tables and horseshoe-shape tables take focus away from the leader."

Why is this important? I believe it reflects the popular concept of "team work" that is out of control.

It takes a lot of people working together to get things done. But apparently companies do not view team work in the same way. Some see it as creating a work force where everyone is equal. Yet another wants to emphasize the importance of leadership and the team's clear recognition of who is guiding the ship.

What is your view? Do you see that leaders need to take control in making decisions? Or should the team somehow draw its own conclusions in due time so everyone backs the decision?

Another question remains.

Can teams reach better decisions in today's environment than leaders who tap into the team for input as needed reaching a decision for the team quickly? Or should companies eliminate ranks and organize a totally flat organization for better results? Your thoughts?

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
Previous

Clients Slow in Paying Invoices, Yet Want Quick Turnarounds
Next

How to Select Marketing Enterprise Software