I believe every manager is a member of three teams:
1.The people that report to that manager. This is usually what someone means when they refer to “my team.”
2.The external stakeholders in other departments they work with every day. For example, marketing is often considered part of the extended team for sales or development.
3.Their peers in the same department or group. For example, the leaders of each sales region.
Unfortunately, most people think of either 1 or 2 as their primary team, prioritizing their time and decisions accordingly. They view their peers as competitors for fixed amounts of budget, headcount, and attention. This attitude can create unintended silos within a department.
For the last few months, I’ve been thinking about how to encourage teamwork among peers. As such, I was intrigued by a NY Times article about the British fast food chain Pret A Manger which hires, pays, and promotes employees on qualities like cheerfulness, not just pure performance. This thinking isn’t unique to Pret: the McKinsey book ‘Beyond Performance’ suggests that an organization’s health is even more important than traditional measures of performance.
Read full blog post here.
I'm fascinated by the concept of aligning execution and strategy; in other words – making sure what we actually do matches what we say we will do. It might sound obvious but finding ways to close the gap between the two makes a great subject for a blog and I’ve been writing about it for years. Even as CMO of SAP, I do my best to literally “manage by walking around” but since SAP is a global company it might be more aptly called manage by flying around. While I occasionally write about marketing topics, most of my entries deal with general people and business issues. Please share your ideas and experiences in the comments. 
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