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You have earned a leadership role in a new organization. Now, you face the task of choosing how to make an impact. Make an effort to make a conscious decision for these five leadership choices, and keep your mind open to pivoting later when the timing is right.
Your initial options are limited!
Five things stand out initially for leaders joining from the outside—areas where you don’t have a choice from the start.
- Managing a new team and meeting expectations from the manager and manager’s manager.
- Articulate your first plan – arch of the possible blended with new angles brought with your experience.
- Set Broad brush goals – high level and intended to set your new team’s initial direction, but not defining targeted outcomes.
- Ways of working ideas built on your old success recipes are often vital for bringing you in and triggering change.
- Realize your understanding of your new business is limited to basics.
🧭 Management effort – North/South or East/West
An early strategic choice is to define which stakeholder group to satisfy first
- Stakeholder value driven – value flowing north-south, to and from your team towards executives higher up.
- Customer value driven – value with an east-west gravity
Leverage your team to establish trust north-south and gradually increase customer value-adding activities and flows. Your long-term success comes from maximizing east-west actions and results.
⚖️ Scoping operations – ambitious or specific
You have two main options for scoping what you plan to do:
- An ambitious plan with plenty of wiggle room for interpretation, where you under-deliver
- A specific plan with clear choices often challenged up front but with the potential to over-deliver down the road.
A broader plan for the first 100-day plan gives you room for fine-tuning as you learn more, but the quicker you get to specific objectives, the better your odds you have to over-deliver through the power of focus.
🎚️ Initial team goals – broad yearly or crisp quarterly
The objectives and key results you define and their longevity play a central role where you can choose between two types of goals for your team:
- Broad yearly goals
- Crisp rolling quarterly goals
Broad yearly goals tend to lose relevance over time and be replaced by actions delivering daily or weekly results without a clear direction. Start with quarterly to learn the delivery capabilities of your team. Four good execution quarters each year is an attractive bonus.
🧰 Ways of working – your old success recipes or refining what you inherit
Your choices when it comes to ways of working are two-fold:
- Bringing recipes from your previous organizations
- Refine what you inherit.
As an external hire, there is an expectation that you provide a shake-up or add new ways of working where your previous industry or employer was ahead. Aim for a mix of existing, well-working functions and your best success recipes. Changing the right areas with proven working methods is vital to maintaining and accelerating productivity.
🖇️ Closing your gaps – external or internal mentors
You will always face gaps between what the role demands and your capabilities. Mentoring is powerful for two types of challenges:
- Insiders who know the organization well
- External mentors supporting your growth in areas where other companies are better
Select your mentors carefully and leverage more than one to ensure you can close gaps quickly.
Questions for you
- What is my management baseline on day 1 in a new leadership position?
- Which knowledge gaps surfaced during the interview process that you need to mitigate from the start?
- What will be the most valuable leadership tools you bring with you?
- What is the quality of the goals you inherit in your new organization?
- How long a grace period do you get before presenting and delivering in your first 100-day plan?
Additional reading suggestions
- Winning over and managing a new team – 5 ideas to get you started [BLOGPOST] – Kelly Vo, Ivy Exec
- How to manage a new team: 5 effective tips [BLOGPOST] – Jamie Birt, Indeed
- 6 questions you must ask when start managing a new team [BLOGPOST] – Jason Evanish, Lighthouse Blog
- When a new manager takes charge [ARTICLE] – John J. Gabbarro, Harvard Business Review
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