Idea in Brief
The executive committee is often officially responsible for making a company’s big decisions while another, unofficial group, led by the CEO, seems to hold the real decision-making power. Although that informal “kitchen cabinet” lacks a proper name, everyone knows who’s in it.
This disconnect can cause senior executives to:
Learn about important decisions after the fact;
Assume they have the power to protect their departments when they really don’t; and
Endure a system in which the way decisions are actually made goes unacknowledged.
The ultimate decision maker is, of course, the CEO, who should consult both groups deliberatively. The key is to give the executive committee specific advisory and coordinating responsibilities while building a small, effective, and still-nameless kitchen cabinet that is free of the tyranny of the org chart.
Tom, the chief marketing officer of a company I’ll call LawnCare, is sitting in the biweekly executive committee meeting, and he’s becoming increasingly uncomfortable. The business development group is presenting the case for acquiring a competitor whose grass trimmers and lawn mowers are sold through big-box retailers. The acquisition, the team explains, would complement LawnCare’s high-end offerings, which are sold exclusively through a network of 600 distributors.
