- transitions are periods of acute vulnerability, b/c you lack established working relationships, detailed understanding of new role; you're managing under a microscope, subject to high degree of scrutiny
- break even point: when contributed as much value to new org as consumed from it; when hired from outside into very successful org, may take year or more for you to be net value contributor
- common traps
- sticking with what you know
- falling prey to "action imperative" - need to take action, try too hard; too busy to learn, make bad decisions and catalyze resistance
- setting unrealistic expectations - you don't negotatiate your mandate or establish clear, achievable objectives
- attempting to do too much
- coming in with "the" answer - you alientate people who could help you understand what's going on, squander opportunities to develop support for good solutions
- engage in wrong types of learning - spend too much time focused on learning technical parts of business, not enough about culture and political dimensions of new role
- neglecting horizontal relationships - not enough time on peers and other stakeholders
- to be successful, you need to mobilize the energy of others in your org
- essential transition tasks
- prepare yourself
- accelerate your learning - understand markets, products, technologies, systems, structures, culture, and politics; be systematic and focused about deciding what you need to learn and how you will learn it most efficiently
- match strategy to situation
- secure early wins
- negotiate success - carefully plan for series of critical conversations about situation, expectations, working style, resources, personal development; gain consensus on your 90-day plan
- achieve alignment
- build team - evaluate, align, and mobilize its members
- create coalitions - identify those whose support is essential for your succcess, figure our how to line them up on your side
- ask yourself "what will I do differently?" and "how will I succeed?"
- strike right balance btwn keeping wide view and drilling down into details
- delegating: build team you trust, establish goals and metrics to monitor progress, translate higher-level goals into specific responsibilities for reports, reinforce through process
- decision making becomes more political - less about authority, more about influence
- issues you're dealing w/ are more complex and ambiguous
- your ability to identify "right" answers bsed solely on data and analysis declines
- challenges of outside hires
- not familiar w/ informal networks of info and communication
- not familiar w/ corporate culture, greater difficulty navigating
- unknown to the org and so do not have credibility
- business orientation - learning about company as whole; beyond simply financials, products, strategy; understand operational model, planning and performance systems, talent mgmt systems
- stakeholder connection - identify key stakeholders, build productive working relationships
- expectations alignment - understandings developed before you join may not prove to be fully accurate once you're in the job
key info
- cultural adaptation
- culture is set of consistent paterns people follow for communicating, thinking, acting, all grounded in shared assumptions and values
- top level: symbols & languages; need to learn to speak like the locals
- next level: organizational norms and accpeted patteerns of behavior; how people get suport for important initiatives, how they win recognization for accomplishments, how they view meetings (forums for discussion or rubber-stamp sessions)
- bottom level: fundamentla assumptions everyone has about the way the world works (e.g. right way to distribute power based on position - execs given lots of decision making power from day 1, or is degree of authority a function of seniority, or does org operate on consensus)
- identifying cultural norms
- influence
- how do people get support for critical initiatives?
- is it more important to have the support of a patron w/in senior team, or affirmation from peers and directs?
- meetings: filled w/ dialogue on hard issues, or forums for publicly ratifying agreements made in private?
- execution: which matters more - deep understanding of processes or knowing the right people?
- conflict: can people talk openly about difficult issues w/o fear of retribution, or do they avoid conflict?
- recognition: does company promote stars, rwearding those who visibly and vocally drive business initiatives? or encourage team ployers, rewarding those who lead authoritatively but quietly and collaboratively?
- ends versus means: are there rstrictions on how you achieve results? is there well-defined, well-communicated set of values reinforced through positive and negative incentives?
- influence
- turned corner
key info
- onboarding checklists
- business orientation checklist
- as early as possible, get access to publicly available info about financials, products, strategy, and brands
- identify additional sources of info, e.g. websites & analyst reports
- stakeholder connection checklist
- ask boss to identify and introduce you to key people you should connect with early on
- schedule early meetings w/ key stakeholders
- be careful to focus on lateral relationships (peers, others), and not only vertical ones
- expectations alignment checklist
- understand and engage in business planning and performance mgmt
- schedule convo w/ your boss about expectations in first week
- have explicit convos about working styles w/ bosses and directs as early as possible
- cultural adpation checklist
- identify people inside org who could serve as cultural interpreters
- after 30 days, conduct informal 360 check in w/ boss and peers to gauge how adaptation is proceeding
- business orientation checklist
- few mgrs received training in systematically diagnosing organizations (exceptions include former mgmt consultants)
- planning to learn: what the important questions are and how you can best answer them
- identify best available sources of insight, figure out how to extract maximum insight w/ least possible outlay of time
- define learning agenda
- focused set of questions to guide inquiry or hypotheses you want to explore and test
- as you learn more, hypothesize about what is going on and why; learning will shift toward fleshing out and testing those hypotheses
- are reasons someting done still valid? conditions changing?
key info
- questions about the past
- performance
- how has this org performed in the past? how do people in the org think it has performed?
- how were goals set? were they insufficiently or overly ambitious?
- were internal or external benchmarks used?
- what measures were employed? what behaviors did they encourage and discourage?
- what happened if goals were not met?
- root causes
- if performance has been good, why has that been the case?
- what have been the relative contributions of strategy, structure, systems, talent bases, culture, and politics?
- if perofrmance has been poor, why has that been the case? do primary issues reside in the organization's strategy? its structure? its technical capabilities? its culture? its politics?
- history of change
- what efforts have been made to change the organization? what happened?
- who has been instrumental in shaping this organization?
- performance
- questions about the present
- vision and strategy
- what is the stated vision and strategy?
- is the org really pursuing this strategy? if not, why not? if so, will the strategy take the org where it needs to go?
- people
- who is capable,a nd who is not?
- who is trustworthy, and who isnot?
- who has influence, and why?
- processes
- what are the key processes?
- are they performing acceptably in quality, reliability, and timeliness? if not, why not?
- land mines
- what lurking surprises could detonate and push you offtrack?
- what potentially damaging cultural or political missteps must you avoid?
- early wins
- in what areas (people, relationships, processes, or products) can you achieve some early wins?
- vision and strategy
- questions about the future
- challenges and opportunities
- in what areas is org most likely to face stiff challenges in the coming year? what can be done now to prepare for them?
- what are most promising exploited opportunities? what would need to happen to realize potential?
- barriers and resources
- what are the most formidable barriers to making needed changes? are they technical? cultural? political?
- are there islands of excellence or other high-quality resources that you can leverage?
- what new capabilities need to be developed or acquired?
- culture
- which elements of the culture should be preserved?
- which elements need to change?
- challenges and opportunities
- listen to key people both inside and outside org; translate between external realities and internal perceptions, and between people at top and front lines
- external sources of info: customers (how do they perceive your org, how rank against competitors), suppliers, distributors, analysts
- internal sources of info: frontline r&d and ops, sales & procurement, staff, integrators, natural historians (old-timers who absorb orgs history)
- leverage resources online, including backgrounnd info, analysis of org, bios of key people, info on org's own website
- meeting with direct reports
- how will you avoid being excessively influenced by what the first couple of people say?
- can use script
- openign remarks about yourself, your approach, questions about otoher person (background, family, interests), then standard set of questions about business
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- what are biggest challenges org is facing (or will face in near future)?
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- why is org facing (or going ot face) these challenges?
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- what are most promising exploited opportunities for growth?
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- what would need to happen for the org to exploit the potential of these opportunities?
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- if you were me, what would you focus your attention on?
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- carefully listen, thoughtfully follow-up
- how people answer matters; who answers directly, who is evasive or prone to tangents? who takes responsibility, who points fingers? who has broad view of business, who seems stuck in silo?
- distill info; convene direct reports as group, feed them back your impressions and questions, invite discussion
- create learning plan
- learning should be primary focus of first 30 days on job
- cyclical lerning process: collect info, analyze, distill; develop and test hypotheses, progressively depending understanding of org
key info
- learning plan template
- before entry
- find out whatever you can about org's strategy, structure, performance, people
- look for external assessments of performance of org; you will learn how knoeldgeable, fairly unbiased people view it; if you're mgr at lower level, talk to people who deal w/ your group as supplies or customers
- find external observers who know org well, including former employees, recent retirees, people who transacted business with org; ask open-ended questions about history, politics, culture; talk with predecessor if possible
- talk to new boss
- as being to learn about org, write down first impressions and eventually some hypotheses
- compile initial set of questions to guide structured inquiry after you arrive
- soon after entry
- review detailed operating plans, perforamnce data, personnel data
- meet one-on-one w/ direct reports and ask them questions you compiled; will learn about convergent and divergent views and about your reports as people
- assess how things are going at key interfaces; will hear how salespeople, purchasing agents, customer service reps, others perceive your org's dealing w/ external constituences; will learn about problems they see that others do not
- test strategic alignment from top down; ask people at top what company's vision and strategy are; then see how far down into org hierarchy those beliefs penetrate; will learn how well previous leader drove vision down through org
- test awareness of challenges and opportunities from bottom up; start by asking frontline people how they view company's challenges and opportunities; then work your way up; will learn how well people at top check pulse of org
- update questions and hypotheses
- meet w/ boss to discuss your hypotheses and findings
- by end of first month
- gather team to feed back to them preliminary findings; will elicit confirmation and challenges of assessments and learn more about group and its dynamics
- analyze key interfaces from outside in; will learn how people on outside (suppliers, customers, distributors, others) perceive org and its strengths and weaknesses
- analyze couple of key processes; convene representatives of responsible groups to map out and evaluate processes you selected; will learn about productivity, quality, reliability
- meet w/ key integrators; will learn how things work at interfaces among functional areas; what problems do they perceive that others do not? seek out natural historians; they can fill you in on history, culture, politics of org
- update questions and hypotheses
- meet w/ boss again to discuss observations
- before entry
- to enlist aid of others, you need to be clear about what you're trying to do an dhow they can help
- figure out where to get early wins, or build supportive coalitions
- what kind of change am i being called upon to lead?
- what kind of change leader am i?
- STARS: start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, sustaining success
- goal is same: successful and growing business; challenges and opportunities vary
- negotiate success means proactively engaging w/ new boss to shape game so you have fighting chance of achieving desired goals
- establish realistic expectations, reach consensus, secure sufficient resources
- higher you rise, more autonomy you're likely to have
- don't stay away: may feel good to be given lots of rope, but resist urge to take it
- don't surprise your boss: report emerging problems early enough; worst for boss is to learn about problem from someone else; as soon as you become aware of developing problem, give heads-up
- don't approach boss only w/ problems: need to have plans for how will proceed
- does not mean must fashion full-blown solutions
- give smoe thought to how to address problem - even if only gathering more info - and to your role and help you will need
- dangerous to say "don't bring me problems, bring me solutions". far better to say "don't just bring me problems, bring me plans for how we can begin to address them"
- assume boss want sto focus on most importaant things trying to do, how she can help
- don't expect your boss to change; it's your responsibility to adapt to your boss's style
- clarify expectations early and often; get bad news on the table early and lower unrealistisc expectations; check in regularly to make sure your boss's expectations have not shifted
- take 100% responsibility for making relationship work
- negotiate time lines for diagnosis and action planning; don't let get caught up firefighting or be pressured to make calls before you're ready
- aim for early wins in areas important to your boss; focus on three things that are important to your boss and discuss what you're doing about them every time you interact
- pursue good marks from those whose opinion your boss respects; needn't curry favor; simply be alert to multiple channels through which info and opinon about you will reach your boss
- five conversations
- not subjects to be dealt with in separate meetings, but intertwined threads of dialogue
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- situational diagnosis conversation
- how your new boss sees STARS portfolio you inherited
- how did org reach this point?
- what factors make this situation a challenge?
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- expectations conversation
- understand and negotiate expectations
- what do you need to do in short term and medium term?
- what will constitute success?
- how will perforamnce be measured? when?
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- resource conversation
- what do you need to be successful? what do you need your boss to do?
- focus your boss on benefits and costs of what you can accomplish w/ different amounts of resources
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- style conversation
- what kinds of decisions does boss want to be consulted on?
- define boundaries of decision-making box in which you will operate
- pinpoint specific ways in which your styles differ, assess what those differences imply about how you will interact
- don't try to address all style issues in one conversation
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- personal development conversation
- few months into new role, begin to discuss how you're doing and what your develompental priorities are
- are there projects or special assignments you could undertake (w/o sacrificing focus)?
- go back regularly to confirm and clarify; some bosses konw what they want but are not good at expressing it; keep asking questions until you're sure you understand
- focus early covnersations on goals and results instead of how you achieve them; simply say you expect to notice differences in how you two approach certain issues or decisions but that you're committed to achieving the results to which you have both agreed
key info
- negotiating your 90 day plan
- 90 day plan should be written, specifiy priorities and goals as well as milestones
- share it with your boss and seek buy-in for it
- serves as "contraact" btwn two of you about how you're going to spend your time
- specifies what you will not do
- 30 days
- key output is diagnosis of situation
- identification of key priorities
- plan for how you will spend nexet 30 days
- should address where and how you will begin to seek early wins
- focus on situationa nd expectations conversations, reaching consensus about situation, clarificationn of expectations, buy-in to your plan for next 30 days
- 60 days
- review meeting should focus on assessing progress toward the goals of your plan for previous 30 days
- 5 conversations w/ team
- not just have new boss, are new boss
- get team tod o pre-work before meeting
- by end of first few months, want boss, peers, subordinates to feel that something new, something good, is happening
- keep your ends clearly in mind when you devise your plan to secure early wins
- each wave should consist of distinct phases: learning, designing changes, building support, implementing changes, observing results
- spend time up front to learn and prepare, afterward consolidate and get ready for next wave
- goal for first wave of change is to secure early wins
- avoid low-hanging fruit trap; don't want to expend most of energy seeking early wins that don't contribute to achieving longer-term business objectives
- goals you have agreed to w/ your boss and other key stakeholders are destination
- define goals so you can lead w/ distinct end point in mind
key info
- problematic behavior patterns
| lack of... | symptoms |
|---|---|
| Focus | * group can't clearly define priorities, or has too many * resources spread too thin, leading to frequent crises and firefighthing; people rewarded for ability to put out fires, not devise enduring solutions |
| Discipline | * people exhibit great vriation in levels of performance * employees don't understand negative consequences of inconsistency * people make excuses when they fail to meet commitments |
| Innovation | * group uses internal benchmarks to measure performance * improvements in products and processes unfold slowly and incrementally * employees rewarded for maintaining stable performance, not pushing envelope |
| Teamwork | * team members compete w/ one another and protect turf rather than work together to achieve collective goals * people rewarded for creating fiefdoms |
| Sense of urgency | Team members ignore needs of external and internal customers * complacency reigns, revealed in beliefs such as "we're the best and always have been" and "it doesn't matter if we respond immediately, it won't make any difference" |
- understand your reputation: you will start w/ one, deserved or not; risk is it becomes reality, as people tend to focus on information that confirms their belief (confirmation bias)
- new leaders perceived as more credible when they are
- demanding but able to be satisifed; know when to celebrate success and when to push for more
- accessible but not too familiar; accessible does not mean making yourself available indiscriminately
- decisive but judicious: defr some decisions until you konw enough to make right calls
- focused but flexible: establish authority by zeroing in on issues but consulting others and encouraging input; give people flexibility to achieve results in their own ways
- active w/o causing commotion: avoid pushing people to point of burnout
- identify key audiences (directs, other employees, key outside constituences) and craft messages tailored to each; focus on who you are, values and ogals you represent, your style, how you plan to conduct business
- modes of engagement - how will you intorduce yourself? one-on-one or in a group? informal, or focus immediately on business issues?
- act as quickly as can to remove minor but persistent irritants; focus on strained external relationships
- cut out redundant meetings, improve problems w/ physical work spaces
- picking projects to secure early wins w/ guidelines
- keep long-term goals in mind
- identify few promising focal points - areas or processes in which improvement can dramastically strengthen org's overall operational or financial performance
- elevate change agents
- leverage eaerly-win projects to introduce new behaviors
key info
- FOGLAMP project checklist
- Focus: What is focus for project? E.g., what goal or eraly win do you want to achieve?
- Oversight: How will you oversee this project? Who else should participate in oversight to help you get buy-in for implementing results?
- Goals: What are the goals and intermediate milestones and time frames for achieving them?
- Leadership: Whil will lead the project? What training, if any, do they need in order to be successful?
- Abilities: What mix of skills and representation needs to be included? Who needs to be included b/c of their skills? B/c they represent key constituencies?
- Means: What additional resources, such as facilitation, does team need to be successful?
- Process: Are there change models or structured processe you want team to use? If so, how will they become familiar with the approach?
- initiatives you put in place to get early wins should do double duty by establishing new standards of behavior
- mission: what will be achieved
- vision: why people should feel motivated to perform at a high level
- strategy: how resources should be allocated and decisions made to accomplish the mission
- group's skill base comprises four types of knowledge
- individual expertise: gained through training education, experience
- relational knowledge: how to work together
- embedded knowledge: core tech on which performance depends
- metaknowledge: where to go to get critical info
- identify gaps and unerutilized resoruces
- what mix of four types of knowledge is needed to support group's core processes? treat as visioning exercise, imagining ideal knowledge mix, then asses group's existing skills, knowledge, and technologies. what gaps do you see?
- nothing to be gained by criticizing people who led teh org before you
key info
- criteria you will explicitly or implicitly use to evaluate people could include:
- competence: technical ability and experience to do job effectively
- judgment: especially under pressure
- energy: bring right kind?
- focus: capable of setting priorities and sticking to them?
- relationships: get along w/ others?
- trust: can they keep word and follow through on commitments?
- meet w/ everyone on your team
- prepare by reviewing personnel history, performance data, other appraisals
- create interview template. sample questions:
- what are strengths and weaknesses of our current strategy?
- what are biggest challenges and opportunities facing us in short term? medium term?
- what resources could we leverage more effectively?
- how could we improve the way the team works together?
- if you were in my position, what would your priorities be?
- important reasons to have off-site meetings
- gain shared understanding of business (diagnostic focus)
- define vision and create strategy (strategy focus)
- change way team works together (team-process focus)
- build or alter relationships in the group (relationship focus)
- develop plan and commit to achieving it (planning focus)
- address conflicts and negotiate agreements (conflict-resolution focus)
- assess team's existing processes
- participant's roles: who exerted most influence on key issues? any devil's advocates? innovator? anyone avoided uncertainty? to whom did everyone else listen most attentively? peacemaker? rabble-rouser?
- team meetings: how often did they meet? who particpated? who set agendas?
- decision making: who made what kinds of decisions? who was consulted? who was told after?
- have framework for understanding and communicaating why different decisions will be approachced in different ways
- spectrum from unilateral decision making to unanimous consent
- most leaders use consult-and-decide and build consensus (basically middle-ground of two starker options)
- build up relationship bank accounts w/ peope you anticipate needing to work w/ later; think hard about whether there are people you haven't met who are likely to be critical to your success
- map influence networks - people tend to defer to others' opinions when it comes to important issues and decisions
- influence networks are channels for communication and persuasion that operate inparallel w/ formal structure
- get your boss to connect you to key stakeholders; request list of key people outside your group whom he thinks you should know; set up early meetings w/ them
- identify sources of power that give people influence in org
- expertise
- control of info
- connection to others
- access to resources, such as budgets and rewards
- personal loyalty
- influence strategies
- consultation promotes buy-in; engage in active listening; pose questions, encourage people to voice real concerns, summarize and feed back what you heard
- framing: carefully crafting your persuasive arguments on a person-by-person basis; focuses on a few core themes, repeated until they sink in
- choice-shaping: influencing how people perceive alternatives, making it hard to say no
- social influence: impact of opinions of others and rule sof societies in which they live; knowledge that highly respected person already supports an initiative alters others' assessments of its attractiveness
- incrementalism: people can move in desired directions step-by-step when wouldn't go in single leap; mapping out pathway from A to B is highly effective, b/c each small step taken creates new psychological reference point for people in decidin gwhether to take next one; getting people invovled in shared diagnosis of problem is form of incrementalism, b/c makes it difficult for people to deny need for tough decisions
- sequencing: being strategic about order in whic you seek to influence people to build momentum in desired directions
- develop personal disciplines
- plan to plan
- at end of each day, spend 10 minutes evaluating how well you met your goals and planning for next day; do same thing end of each week
- focus on important: easy for urgent to crowd important
- judiciously defer commitment: Never say yes on the spot. "Well, if you need an answer now, I'll have to say no. But if you can wait, I will give it more thought"
- go to the balcony: stand back, take stock from 50k feet
- check in with yourself: engage in structured reflection about your situation; jot down thoughts, impressions, questions at end of each day
- recognize when to quit: transitions are marathons, not sprints
- plan to plan
- surprsiign how may companies unable to answer basic questions about number of people bieng hired, getting promoted, moving between units, making lateral moves; difficult to design acceleration sytems w/o data
- need to understand transition frequencies