Team Alignment and Development: Case Example

The Department Chair of an Academic Medical Center was concerned. His executive team, made up of renowned clinicians and researchers, would not work together beyond their areas of focus to raise the overall performance of the Department. He engaged us to transform this group into a high-performance team capable of setting and delivering on a vision and strategy.

We first conducted an Environmental Scan, highlighting Department strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats. With this as a foundation, we facilitated the development of a succinct Department vision statement. The vision served to inspire Department members to collaborate to raise the Department’s profile. Next, we helped the team define clinical, research, and education strategies. The team also set operating principles to ensure robust dialogue and accountability, and shaped roles and leadership styles to best support execution of the strategy.

The Department Chair reported both positive results and a dramatically improved team climate. He evaluated the team as significantly better positioned to execute the vision and strategy. Two years later, following robust growth reflecting successful delivery of the strategy, we were engaged to deliver an updated version of the Team Alignment and Development Program to incorporate new members of the executive team.