7S Leadership?: A Recipe for Success When Leading a New Team

Many of us will have the opportunity to assume the role of new leader at some point in our career - be it through promotion within the same company or taking on a new organization in a different company.?When doing so, there are a few hurdles one must navigate - most paramount of them being your first 90 days. There are several published references that cover the first 90 or first 100 days as a new leader and so I will not in any way repeat what already exists [1,2,3].?My intention with this post is to offer a more concise, alternative view to help new and aspiring leaders successfully transition into their new roles based on my real world experience of taking on new businesses and new teams.

When transitioning into the role of new leader, there are seven critical areas that must be successfully addressed. All are important and failure to manage any one of them will undoubtedly leave you vulnerable, if not completely exposed to potential failure. As I present each point in more detail below, in many cases, I offer real examples of situations I have faced, questions I have asked, and in a few cases, results I have accomplished by following this recipe.

Finally, as a General Manager of large global businesses, many of my examples are broad sweeping and/or multi-functional in nature. For the function, regional, and first-time leaders, the ideas I present are still useful; you will just need to narrow the scope of the concepts so that they are applicable for you.

S#1: Supervisor

The undisputed most urgent thing to do when transitioning into a new leadership role is manage the relationship with your new boss.?Success or failure here can very quickly determine your fate regardless of everything else you may successfully accomplish.?Specifically, there are three key points to which you must pay attention.?

First, you must get clarity on your going in objective and its associated timeline. This is the single most important objective, usually a large and significant initiative, your new boss wants you to accomplish. For instance, during my career, I have had objectives such as establish a new brand identity, restore a business following a sharp decline in market share, structure a newly created business following a corporate reorganization, and introduce organizational change designed to accelerate growth.?I have had many successes and one life changing failure, which I described at the end of a previous post. For certain, success here is mandatory as it will lay the foundation for future success.?

Second, you need to manage the communication process with your new boss.?He/she will usually be very clear on the frequency and vehicle most preferred for communicating with you. It is your responsibility to exceed his/her communication needs.?The worst thing for you as a new leader would be for your new boss to feel isolated, or worse, uninformed on the things you are executing.

Third, you need to appropriately manage your new boss's expectations.?If you are experiencing barriers or obstacles, you need to make these clearly known so that you can reset expectations if need be. On the other hand, if you are quickly stepping through your mutually agreed upon objectives, you should communicate this progress as well.?It will help you build credibility and establish trust and rapport with your new boss.

S#2: Style

It is also important when taking on a new leadership role to establish your leadership presence and style with your new organization and team. From day one, all eyes will be on you. Barring a major reset effort later in your tenure, the tone, pace, and atmosphere you establish in the beginning will be the environment of your leadership legacy.?There are four key organizational “style” attributes I look to establish when taking on a new team.

First, I seek to establish anticipatory behavior.?I expect all members of my leadership team to think in terms of possible scenarios to essentially prepare for events – good and bad – before they occur and to have plans identified to accelerate the good or mitigate the bad. I refer to this as seeing around the corner.

Second, I seek to instill a passion for winning. I am a very competitive person; I hate to lose.?When taking on a new team, I establish early on that missing our objectives and/or commitments is not an option.?Of course, we never do anything illegal, unethical, nor immoral.?However, I make sure my teams know everything else is on the table to win in the market place. For example, on two occasions, I have inherited teams that did not have a do whatever it takes demeanor to them. I had to change the personality of these teams and establish a deep passion for winning. I did this by not only communication expectations but also through leading by example. I would routinely demonstrate to my team members a willingness to go the extra mile, a willingness to do whatever was required, thereby demonstrating an utter refusal to fail when it came to making our business successful. Modeling this energy and passion for winning sent a clear message that legacy practices of nonchalant behaviors needed to change.

Third, I seek to establish a bias towards action. I stress to my new team that they are responsible for getting things done and making things happen in the business. I will regularly emphasize there is no swooping in this business. The meaning of this phrase is simple – no one is going to swoop in and "save the day". If there are problems to be solved or issues to be resolved, it is the people on the team – those currently in place – who will need to take ownership of the problem/issue and act decisively to address it.

Fourth, I ensure we all communicate honestly, openly, transparently, and in a timely fashion. I call this HOTT Communication?. Things move fast in business. There is no time for decoding intent or interpreting meaning.?I like to?establish early on with a new team that we are all interdependent professionals, and, with this, nothing is sacred amongst our team.?All items must be addressed quickly, openly, professionally, and transparently. Anything less is unacceptable.

S#3: Strategy

When taking over a new business, it is important to do a deep dive assessment of the current business strategy to determine if the strategy in place will successfully deliver against the inherited goals. The urgency in which you validate the strategy depends on the overall state of the business.?If the business is in turmoil, your urgency increases.?If the business is stable and growing, then it becomes important to determine the area that will yield the greatest benefit and focus your early efforts there. Minimally, the elements that should be explored by a new General Manager in an initial deep dive include:

• Overarching goals and objectives
• Financial history and performance
• Sales and service order backlog
• Marketing strategy and communications approach
• Technology and new product development effectiveness
• Operations performance and cost structure
• Performance management goals and reward systems

The key questions to ask are: how much success can you expect with the current strategy??Can you achieve the business objectives??Can you over-achieve against the objectives? If the answer to the latter is yes, then your focus should turn to executing the existing strategy flawlessly. However, if the answer is no, all effort and energy should focus on modifying your business strategy to maximize the performance of your newly inherited business or organization. If your scope is smaller than that of a General Manager, the three questions above will still apply; you will need to ask them specific to your area of responsibility.

S#4: Structure

Organizational structure is a strategy enabler and therefore must follow strategy. As a new leader, once you have settled on the existing strategy or determined what your new one will be, you will next need to determine if the current organization structure will allow you to implement your strategy with maximum benefit.?If you determine it will not, you will need to change it. If change is in order, there are five primary areas that should be considered.?

Customers want judicious communication, timely delivery of high performing products or services and consistent quality. When re-organizing your new team, business or organization, you will need to consider how best to meet your customer’s needs. For instance, is a regional structure required to appropriately manage highly localized customers? Is a global structure needed?to best manage customers who themselves are structured globally?

Another area to consider when organizing a new team is how best to leverage the strengths, experiences, expertise, and general needs of your team. Does the team consist of deep functional experts such that a functional structure may be warranted? Perhaps the team is made up of several functional generalists and a vertical business structure may be in order.

Third, you should consider the performance needs of your new business.?As an example, is the right “go to market” (i.e. sales/commercial) structure in place? Is the right technology engine (i.e. R&D structure) in place? Is the cost structure in line with profitability requirements? Is your new organization structured for efficient delivery of your product or service?

Fourth, a new leader must always consider the needs of the parent organization.?Does the broader organization operate in a matrix or non-matrix reporting structure? What communication and reporting needs are required by the broader group? Are there specific timelines and/or protocols that must be followed?

Finally, as a new leader, you must ensure that any new structure meets your needs – for information sharing, decision making, issue ownership, personal responsibility, functional accountability, role clarity, and as I speak to next, business processes, protocols, and procedures (i.e. systems).

S#5: Systems

Soon after taking over a new business, the new leader should evaluate if he/she has the right business systems in place to effectively lead the organization. Such systems may include all of the following if you are a General Manager or any of the following if you are a functional leader:

• Sales management processes
• Financial reporting systems
• New product development and launch processes
• Quality management systems
• Human resource processes
• Customer service processes
• Communication processes and protocols
• Daily and weekly management systems and processes
• Operations performance metrics and key performance indicators?

It is important that this assessment of business systems occurs prior to making final judgments on team members to preserve the ability to objectively evaluate inherited talent; otherwise you may make snap judgments on good people who may be under-performing because they are operating with bad processes. I know this from experience, because this happened to me once in my career. I took on a new leadership role in a business that essentially had no basic business management systems. Within a few months, I had a good idea which team members were “keepers” and which team members likely would not survive. However, because the business did not have good management processes, I was uncertain if I had bad people or good people trapped in bad processes. As a result, I spent the first 6 months of my tenure in this business implementing systems – reward systems, standard processes for effective daily / weekly management and monthly reporting, internal communication processes, external communication protocols, customer service processes, and shoring up performance metrics and key performance indicators. Once these systems were in place, I had a means to assess the sixth “S”: my inherited “society”.

S#6: Society

At the beginning of your tenure as a new leader, even if you are wildly successful at managing the relationship with your Supervisor, communicating your Style to your new team, putting a winning Strategy in place, creating a successful Structure to deliver your strategy, and implementing effective governance Systems, all will be for naught if you do not have the right Society (i.e. People) in place.?

When assessing a new team, I look for four basic characteristics. First, are the individuals competent? I ask myself: do they have a grasp of their area of responsibility? Have they made good decisions in the past? Are course corrections needed to address past decisions? Can they manage complex problems within their purview? How do members of the team feel about the contributions of other members?

Second, I evaluate the general attitude and way of thinking for everyone on my new team. Are they generally positive or negative??Are they forward-thinking? Are they solution-oriented in their thinking??Do they embrace (or are they resistant to) change? Are they synergistic in their thinking?

Third, I assess the behavior of each team member.?Are they inherently proactive in approach? Are they solution-oriented in their behavior? Are they improvement-oriented??Do they act collaboratively??Do they encourage interdependence amongst the team? Are they goal and/or achievement oriented?

Fourth, I look for leadership qualities. For instance, are the individuals encouraging to one another and to their teams? Are they motivating? Are they decisive? Are they inspiring? Are their teams inspired? Can they collectively lead the business in my absence?

S#7: Schedule

There is one additional element of success which I have purposely omitted up until this point – schedule. How quickly should you act on these prior six elements and in what sequence??The truth is, there is no clear answer to this question. The urgency of your timing will largely depend on the situation you inherit and, of course, on your going in objective from your supervisor.

But if I were to offer guidance, it would be this. The relationship with your supervisor is critical and must be proactively managed from the day he/she offers you your new role – meaning BEFORE day one on the job. For instance, once you have officially accepted your new position, I suggest you begin preparing by securing as much information you can from your new boss. Your personal leadership style and expectations you establish with your team should be set early in your tenure. Your initial 1-1 meetings are a terrific venue for this to take place. Three to four months should be enough time to get indoctrinated into the business well enough to make a judgement on the existing strategy and structure. Assessing the business’s processes and systems should start on day one with the largest gap(s) getting immediate attention.?Finally, evaluating your inherited talent is an ongoing process that that will naturally occur at the start of your tenure.

Conclusion

These are my 7 points for success when taking on a new team. I have covered them individually, but they are all interrelated and success as a new leader is dependent on mastering all seven. This 7S Leadership? model that I present above and depict below is not intended be all inclusive for all situations at all times; different situations require different approaches. However, it does provide a road map of what I feel are the seven most critical elements that a new leader of a team or business should consider when starting a new role. Best of luck to you as you march on your leadership journey.

References

1. Watkins, M. (2003). The first 90 days. Critical strategies for new leaders at all levels.?Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
2. Hargrove, R. (2011). Your first 100 days in a new executive job. Boston, MA: Masterful Coaching Press.
3. Neff, T.J. and Citrin, J.M. (2005). You’re in charge – now what? The 8 point plan. Crown Business. New York, NY.

Thank you for reading my article. 7S Leadership?: A Recipe for Success When Leading a New Team is the 26th?article from Dr. Michael Edwards. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe to my Newsletter,?Leadership Explained,?to get notified when I publish a new article. Please 'share' this article with your network, click 'like', and/or leave a comment.?Click 'Follow' if you wish to follow me on LinkedIn. Have a look at my other Leadership Explained articles by clicking here.