If your EXCO is still about updates, it’s not a leadership forum. It’s a calendar item. Future-ready EXCOs exist to drive irreversible decisions, fix execution gaps, and solve customer and cash problems faster than the market.
EXCO is not a club. It’s a battlefield. While working in a bank’s finance department as a petty cashier in my very first job, I once left my weekend classes to pick up some notes I had forgotten. I opened the door and froze.
There was the CFO. Alone. On a Saturday, hunched over a laptop, under dim office light, at noon!
I assumed someone at his level would be golfing or at a beach resort. Instead, he was manually preparing the EXCO report. The bank’s End of Day (EOD) reconciliations ran late Friday. The trial balance came out in a .csv file. The CFO would return every weekend to manually reconcile figures. Too sensitive to delegate. Too critical to postpone.
I offered to automate the entire process using macros I had learnt on my own. He agreed. It worked. He left the office early for once, and I got promoted that Monday.
That moment taught me: EXCO is not about rank. It’s about results.
Most EXCOs waste time pretending to lead.
Executive Committee (EXCO) in most banks, or the Senior Management Team (SMT) in private companies and institutions, is the top executive forum below the Board. They are the final engine room for performance, transformation, and control.
Yet, across my years advising banks, regulators, hospitals, insurers, and digital companies, I’ve found most EXCOs are:
Meeting monthly when crises are moving hourly
- Reviewing reports instead of making hard calls
- Discussing people in vague terms instead of managing performance by name
- Tracking projects but never killing failing ones
- Avoiding conflict and calling it “alignment”
That’s not a strategy. That’s showbiz.
Winning companies, those that dominate markets and attract top talent, run EXCOs like special forces units: fast, focused, and ruthless about outcomes.
A future-ready EXCO meets weekly with teeth.
Monthly is for tourists. Weekly is for builders. Every EXCO meeting must generate forward momentum, or don’t meet at all.
Here’s what a future-ready EXCO agenda looks like:
a) Customer pain of the week, What real problem did we solve? Who was affected?
b) Cash position and cost truths, No filters. Which accounts are bleeding? Where is the budget trapped?
c) Execution scorecard, Not PowerPoint. Actual sprint data. Red-Yellow-Green. Brutal honesty.
d) People and culture issues, Who’s burning out? Who’s coasting? What behavior is tolerated that should be punished?
e) Risk radar, What risk hit us last week that we didn’t see? What internal fraud or abuse is being ignored?
f) Irreversible decisions, Every meeting must produce 3. If not, you’ve wasted your week.
If your EXCO ends with everyone smiling, you probably failed. Execution involves conflict. Tension is a feature, not a flaw.
From Mr Strategy’s Toolbox, I recommend the EXCO Execution Grid
Set up a 3×3 board in your EXCO room, or embed it in your digital dashboard.
Table 1: EXCO Execution Grid
Focus Area | Last Week (Review) | This Week (Status) | Next Week (Commitment) |
Customers | What customer complaint or issue was resolved? Example: “Resolved app crash affecting 800 users. Complaints dropped 40%.” | What is the current top customer issue or opportunity? Example: “Onboarding delays for SME clients - avg. 6 days. Investigating root cause.” | What specific customer improvement will be delivered? Example: “Launch live chat support by Thursday. Target: reduce resolution time to < 1 hour.” |
Cash | What cash position or cost issue was addressed? For a bank think CASA targets. Example: “Collected UGX 210M in aged receivables. Cut marketing waste by 18%.” | What is the current cash or cost concern? Example: “Project X overspend UGX 45M. Team flagged poor procurement controls.” | What specific financial outcome is being targeted? Example: “Close 2 new credit clients. Recover UGX 100M from top 5 debtors.” |
Culture | What people or culture shift occurred? Example: “Exited underperforming sales lead. New head onboarded, team morale up.” | What’s the current team dynamic or concern? Example: “4 resignations in support team. Exit interviews indicate burnout, unclear KPIs.” | What specific people action will be taken? Example: “Reassign team lead roles. Launch pulse check survey by Friday.” |
Why this works
- Each EXCO member fills in their row Friday COB. No delegation. No blank cells. If you’re unsure, you’re not close enough to the ground.
- Monday EXCO meeting:
- 3 minutes per person per row.
- Facts only. No opinions. No blaming. No fluff.
- Red-flag issues get priority discussion.
- Visual board or shared dashboard:
- Use color codes (Red = blocked, Yellow = at risk, Green = on track).
- Keep history. Review progress monthly to detect execution patterns.
Stop admiring problems. Start fixing them.
EXCO is not a place to “review.” It is a war room to act, decide, and drive. If your EXCO is still focused on what happened last month instead of what must happen this week, you are already irrelevant.
The battlefield doesn’t care about your meeting etiquette.
It rewards the bold. Fix your EXCO, or start writing your exit strategy.
Table 2: Common EXCO vs future-ready EXCO, are you leading or just meeting?
Common EXCO | Future-Ready EXCO | Key Question to Ask | Practical Example |
Reviews reports | Demands decisions | What decision did we make after that report? | A financial services EXCO reviewed the NPL report 6 times before deciding to restructure. A future-ready EXCO makes that call in 1 meeting. |
Tracks performance | Forces outcomes | Did we act on underperformance or simply note it again? | A telco tracked churn monthly. Future-ready EXCO called daily huddles, cut churn by 17% in 3 weeks. |
Talks about strategy | Executes strategy | What strategic milestone did we deliver last week? | A manufacturing firm had a “digital transformation plan” for 2 years. Future-ready EXCO launched e-invoicing in 45 days. |
Avoids conflict | Surface tension early | What tough conversation are we avoiding? | A bank’s CEO avoided confronting the toxic credit head. Future-ready EXCO removed him. Loan portfolio performance jumped 24%. |
Delegates transformation to consultants | Drives transformation personally | Whose hands are on the wheel? | A parastatal paid UGX 900M for a strategy plan. No traction. New EXCO drove a 30-day sprint. 12 KPIs hit within the quarter. |
Relies on dashboards | Asks, “What exactly did you deliver this week?” | What did YOU personally execute? | COO kept quoting “system downtime”. Future-ready EXCO asked: “What action did you take personally?” Problem solved in 3 days. |
Hides behind ‘alignment’ | Commits to visible accountability | Who was accountable last week - and what was delivered? | A CEO said, “We are aligned.” I asked, “What’s the name of the person leading revenue recovery?” Silence. Future-ready EXCO assigns names to every outcome. |
Discusses people issues vaguely | Names names. Fixes or exits. | Who is underperforming, and what’s being done? | An energy firm kept saying “HR issues”. New EXCO named the exact unit heads, retooled the teams, and restored output. |
Celebrates mediocre wins | Exposes root causes of underperformance | Are we clapping for average? | Sales grew 3%. EXCO applauded. Future-ready CEO asked: “Why not 12%? What blocked us?” The new market will open next quarter. |
Meets monthly | Meets weekly to win the war | Are we meeting to maintain appearances or drive momentum? | A state agency met monthly, but fell behind on 4 projects. New weekly EXCO cadence delivered full digitization in 90 days. |
