“Lieutenant McKinnon, you are dead!”

I’ll never forget those words, barked at me by the Captain evaluating me on a dusty, hot morning at Fort Knox, Kentucky, early in my officer training. I was leading a six-man team of fellow officers through a series of Leadership Simulation Exercises — the Army’s version of leadership training scenarios like you might encounter in an Outward Bound-type setting. We had a problem, in this case, getting our entire team to the other side of a “room” laced with tripwires and “explosives,” that we had to solve in a limited amount of time. Rapid-fire assessment, delegation, direction-setting, monitoring and action were demanded in a pressure-filled, time-limited environment. The grade would either by Mission Accomplished or Mission Failure — no in-between.

Sound like one of your days at the office?

I’ve met with the executive teams of two CEOs in the past two weeks – CEOs being intentional about enhancing their teams’ effectiveness. Excellent teams don’t form by chance.

It may be time to evaluate your leadership team. Challenging times call for a gut-check on who’s in the foxhole with us. What grade would you give your team?

If you give them an “A” or better – what would you identify as the #1 ingredient? Conversely, if it’s “C” or lower, what would be the #1 cause? How many of us are tolerating ‘average?’

A CEO getting fired is always an occasion for learning. Wall Street has given us two such occasions in the past two weeks.

What caught my attention were the observations about Stan O’Neal of Merrill Lynch. Note these descriptions from The Wall Street Journal in an article sub-titled ‘Startled Board Ditches a Famously Aloof CEO:’

“Mr. O’Neal’s talent and steely drive came with a tragic flaw: