Starting In A New Leadership Role – PART I
What is expected from you once you start your new job as a manager?
Not surprisingly, quite a bit. It is a big puzzle you need to put together. You have five significant areas of focus and tasks you need to accomplish in the first several months. It would be best if you had a plan for each of them so you know what support to ask once you start.
There is a lot behind these five areas, and you need to be very thoughtful in how you approach them. Let’s talk about the first two.
Company: Diagnose The Organization
In The First 90 Days, Michael Watkins suggests you tailor your approach based on the situation you are coming into. To help you with that, use the STARS model. It describes five common situations you can find yourself in, start-up or building something new, turnaround or fixing the company, accelerated growth or facilitating rapid expansion, realignment or energizing formerly successful business that is slipping, and sustaining success or taking to the next level already successful organization. To what environment did you come? What is expected from you? Each may need a different approach towards business strategy, management, and even different timelines for onboarding and integration.
From a change management perspective, turnaround is the easiest place to be in. Everyone already understands that things are not going well and change is required. There might be diverging opinions about what is needed, but quick and decisive action is expected and accepted. In these situations, you most likely start making decisions before you have all the facts. You will make some mistakes, but it is still better than inactivity. It contrasts with the sustaining success situation, where hasty action can mess things up without good reason.
Realignments are in the middle as employees may be in denial and believe everything is still fine. You need to break through that wall to explain why the change is necessary.
In accelerated growth, you are turning the organization into a corporation. It is exciting as the company is growing, but some of the original employees may not like where it is going. You will need to introduce systems, structures, and processes that would help manage the growth, and it will not feel the same for the original crew. More people will be joining, and the culture can suffer.
In a sustaining success situation, you have the most to lose. Everyone feels that the organization is doing well, and any changes will be looked at with increased worry. However, sustaining doesn’t mean doing nothing. You need to keep reinventing the business step by step to stay relevant to the ever-changing environment.
Start-ups are probably the most fun and craziest. There is a lot of energy and excitement; your role is to channel it in the right direction. Getting everyone aligned and focused on the right things is the key. There might be resistance as the culture is often of innovation and trying new things. But the resources and time are limited, so cutting non-essentials is often needed.
Success is easiest measured in start-ups, accelerated growth, and turnarounds. Everyone can see the organization growing or getting better. It is very different in realignments and sustaining success situations as there the goal is not to mess things up. Success is measured by things not getting worse. People will blame you when things go wrong, but they won’t cheer you for maintaining the status quo. Not much fun.
When diagnosing the past performance in the organization, look at hard data to see how it performed and then ask questions.
When diagnosing the future-readiness, consider why the current strategy is set.
When you talk to people, don’t focus only on the functional leaders who often have an in-depth understanding of their area but a narrow view of the whole business. Talk also to those who run cross-departmental projects. They are often best suited to point out how to navigate organizational politics and influence things. They are also well-connected and can introduce you to other key people you may need in the future. And, of course, don’t forget the long-tenured employees who can give you the organization’s history and how it evolved into the state it is today. They can often point out how some of the weird things you see came to life and for what reasons.
Work: Define A Strategy And Get Early Wins
Early wins are important, but getting them the right way is even more critical. No shortcuts or shady practices. You need to build your credibility, which means standing by your principles and doing things the right way. You want to avoid any early losses. It is much more challenging to recover from them when you still don’t have a reputation for getting things done.
Once you are established, a failure is tolerated and forgotten more easily than at the beginning. Don’t take on more work than you can successfully finish. The easiest way to fail, or fail at least at something, is to grab more than you can chew. And for what? To impress someone? Worry about saying no, so you don’t disappoint people? They will be much more disappointed when you don’t deliver something you knew from the beginning you don’t have time for. If you are leading people, then early wins are important not only for you but also for them. Early wins give you credibility and energize the team. They get more comfortable with you as they see that you can help them succeed.
Getting the early wins doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to do everything personally. It could be counterproductive. What you need is to launch early win initiatives or projects and give other people the opportunity to shine. Identify those who care about the project and give them a chance to lead and contribute. Then give them the well-deserved credit. Not only will you have a successful project under your belt, but you will start building fierce loyalty. People will see that you care about them more than about yourself. That counts for a lot. It might be your agenda that is being implemented, but it is their personal growth and success that it enables.
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One of the key early wins is to set up a long-term strategy or a goal that everyone will work towards. You need to show the organization where do you lead them. Everyone needs to understand that to do their best to help the team get there.
Putting it all together
Starting a new managerial job at a new company can feel overwhelming. Therefore, it is vital to have a plan, and the best way to build a plan and then execute it is to split it into smaller manageable areas.
There are five areas you need to take care of. Diagnose the organization, get some work done, diagnose the team, build relationships, and adapt to the new culture.
When diagnosing the organization, adjust your approach according to the situation you are coming into. Are you joining a start-up, asking for a turnaround, facilitating a rapid expansion, realigning the business, or sustaining success? Each will require a different approach.
When it comes to working, get the initial strategy in place so everyone can align around it, and then work on some first wins that can help build your credibility so people are willing to follow.
If you are curious about the other three areas, I will discuss them next week. Subscribe to the newsletter and stay tuned!
More on topics of Leadership and Career:
What is your take on the topic? What are the biggest pitfalls when joining a new organization? What are the things to focus on? What are the first steps to take?
Originally posted on my blog about management, leadership, communication, coaching, introversion, software development, and career The Geeky Leader or follow me on Facebook and Twitter: @GeekyLeader