Kenneth Bloom is CEO of Inttra, Inc., which operates the world’s leading portal for ocean containerized freight. The Parsippany, NJ-based company was created five years ago and now originates six percent of the world’s ocean-going freight. In a recent interview with GDS Insights, Ken talked about the challenges that a successful start-up company faces as it matures.

At what point did lightning strike and you realized that things on your management team had to change?

For the first three years of our existence as a company, we were just trying to survive. Then, about a year and a half ago, survival was no longer the issue. It became: How do you organize, train, and align the management team around a set of behaviors that are more strategic, for planning future business growth? The question was not just, What do we do now? But, What do we do next?

Here’s the big-ticket question: Do crack management teams come about by chance or design? Put differently: Do great leaders follow some pattern or process in creating great management teams? Apparently not, according to management commentator William Holstein, who asserts that, “Building the right management team is challenging because there is no single formula that works” and, “Management experts can’t point to a single secret for team-building.” (Financial Times, February 26, 2006)

Let me offer a dissenting viewpoint.

Here are field notes from a recent assignment led by GDS consultant June Halper.

Presenting Situation: At an international specialty publishing company, two departments, sales and product engineering, were at odds . . . lack of alignment on goals, roles, processes, you name it . . . conflict mismanagement at its worst . . . the two SVPs had a tension-filled relationship . . . reporting to the SVP of sales, a new director who didn’t know how to manage or collaborate; reporting to the SVP of product engineering, a director who was frustrated and angry with her counterpart . . . below director level: high tension, low morale, confusion, missed deadlines.