Once again, I’m reminded about the most important team within an organization — the executive team. In planning for the upcoming year, an executive team’s ability to align, collaborate, and plan the overall strategy will determine the potential success for any company.

In today’s complex organizations, unified and efficient coordination of parts is more vital than ever. The competition is fierce across all industries. Unity and trust among the top leadership is the only way to ensure that everyone within the company is working toward the same goals in a complementary manner.

While this may seem obvious, many executives and senior managers focus most of their efforts in managing their own groups. Often, they feel more responsible for the performance of their teams and less about the overall performance of the company. That mindset results in misaligned priorities.

In order for any team to be successful, there needs to be mutual trust, focus on the group (not individual) goals, and clear accountability of each member. These things cannot happen without considerable time spent together to build such cohesion.Yet, executive teams commonly get together to report their individual results and not enough time aligning, helping and bonding with each other.

Yes, the senior executives tend to be “alpha” personalities, which make building cohesion difficult. That’s precisely why there needs to be more investment into making this most important team successful.