Henry Ford ruled his innovative assembly line company like a dictator, he had a hand in most every decision, and when backers didn’t agree with him, he simply bought them out. Later, a CEO would simply hire a COO to help run the organization. To paraphrase an old saying, organizations and their top management teams (TMT) have come a long way baby.

Business environments, CEOs, and their TMTs face an abundance of challenges that Henry Ford would probably only dream of in his worst business scenario nightmare. 

• Global competitions
• Changing technology
• Organizational complexity
• Succession
• Instability
• Diverse yet interdependent business units
• Mobile staff in widespread locations

Of course, there are the internal stresses, disrupters, and explosive elements that can cause a TMT, or any team for that matter, to become dysfunctional. Internal elements consist of