The Challenge
The complexity and speed of change in the external business world demands constant re-appraisal of the business strategy and more importantly the development and execution of an integrated internal response. The modern business needs to be smart and fleet-footed and be able connect the dots at speed. Gurus like Michael Porter believe that this situation requires the development of a horizontal strategy that pulls the organisation together to realise strategic alignment and release synergies that deliver significant business benefits.

The executive of a business consequently cannot operate as a group of individuals making silo contributions. Rather it needs to come together as a team to integrate the contributions in the pursuit of alignment and synergy. It needs to develop a leadership team that creates an enduring competitive advantage in its ability to work together in new ways to achieve challenging business goals.
The challenge is to understand how to create and apply the power of a leadership team to meet these new challenges and take the business to a new, higher level of performance. It is a challenge because when people come together in teams there are the inevitable tensions and mis-understandings that cause the team to get stuck and consequently fail to achieve its business goals. Issues of conflict, anger, domination, group-think, disengagement and negative thinking may prevail. These all prevent the team from focusing productively on the business task. Even groups of brilliant individuals may make poor decisions when the group is beset by internal competition, bickering and power play. Furthermore, when these blocks to performance are removed there may still remain the challenge of using the power of the team to learn how to continuously achieve alignment and meet the challenges of the modern business world.

PenLion uses the Hawkins cutting edge approach to leadership team development that enables the team to raise its performance to new heights. This approach seeks to coach the team in developing awareness of internal team dynamics so that it may deal with them effectively and consequently spend more quality time on the business task at hand. In this way the team learns how to identify and remove the blocks to communications, collaboration and learning needed to function at an advanced level. Once this is achieved the team can productively construct a strategic alignment of its goals, strategies and execution plans that will yield improved business performance. This will deliver a sustainable competitive advantage that will not be easily matched.