The New Leader’s Playbook
A 100-day action plan that jump start strategic, operational and organizational processes
We accelerate leaders and teams through complex transitions
by helping create and implement 100-day action plans that jump start strategic, operational and organizational processes.
We share our ideas on transition acceleration, executive and team onboarding and leadership weekly on Forbes.com.
We have organized these articles
in the categories we think about
when it comes to successful transitions – we call this The New Leader’s Playbook.
“Our clients deliver better results faster ”
Executive Onboarding Overview Articles
Why It’s So Important To Accelerate Onboarding Into A New Job
No matter what they tell you, easing into a new job is a recipe for disaster. You must accelerate your progress up to and through a critical pivot point to optimize your chances of making a successful transition. Key steps include getting a head start before the...
How To Onboard Selfish, Scared And Stupid People
The admonition is to think selfish but act compassionately, manage inherent fears, and simplify. It flows from work by Dan Gregory and Kieran Flanagan who explain, “Our survival brain still calls dibs on our decision making.” Instead of fighting human nature, design...
When You Should Rescind A Job Offer
If you’re considering changing your mind and rescinding a job offer, you probably should – whether or not it has been accepted. The cost of doing so will vary depending upon the circumstances and should impact your decision. But all plans are final until they change....
What Microsoft Must Do To Onboard LinkedIn’s Leadership Successfully
If there ever was a company that epitomized the value of people over technology, that would be LinkedIn. Its core asset is its greater than 400 million membership base. For Microsoft to "accelerate the growth of LinkedIn," it will need to do a good job of onboarding...
Manage New Job Early Warning Signs At Three Stages Of Executive Onboarding
40% of new leaders fail in their first 18 months in a new role. Generally that’s because of poor fit, poor delivery or poor adjustment to changes down the road. Manage this by paying more attention to the basics of executive onboarding and responding appropriately to...
Position for Success
At its core, leadership is an exercise in culture change. It’s about creating and bridging gaps: gaps between you and your new team, gaps between reality and aspiration. Thus, positioning yourself for success as a leader must start with understanding your own cultural preferences and strengths in the context of potential opportunities. Then you should create options and do a real due diligence to mitigate organizational, role and fit landmines.
Get to Work Before Day One
Activate Ongoing Communication
How you approach the time between accepting the job and before you start can have a massive impact on your success after you start. On the one hand, the approach is different if you’re joining a new company, getting promoted or transferred from within, crossing international boundaries or merging teams. On the other hand, the context and culture will inform your choice around whether to assimilate in slowly, converge and evolve or shock the organization with sudden changes. (Go to these articles.)
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Take Control of Day One
Everything is magnified on Day One, whether it’s your first day in a new company, or the day of a big announcement. Everyone is looking for hints about what you as the new leader think and what you’re going to do. You’re going to get positioned – either by others or by yourself. This is why it’s so important to make sure people are seeing and hearing things that will lead them to believe and feel what you want them to believe and feel about you and about themselves in relation to the future of the organization. (Go to these articles.)
Activate Ongoing Communication
The prescription for communication during the time between Day One and co-creating a Burning Imperative is counter-intuitive and stressful for new leaders following this program. The fundamental approach is to converge and evolve. And the time before co-creating a Burning Imperative is all about converging. This means you can’t launch your full-blown communication efforts yet. You can’t stand up and tell people your new ideas. If you do, they are your ideas, not invented here and not the team’s ideas. (Go to these articles.)
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Pivot to Strategy
Build the team strategically, operationally and organizationally. Start with strategy and a Burning Imperative that is a sharply defined, intensely shared, and purposefully urgent understanding from each of the team members of what they are “supposed to do, now,” and how this works with the larger aspirations of the team and the organization. (Go to these articles.)
Drive Operational Accountability
Activate Ongoing Communication
The real test of a high-performing team’s tactical capacity lies in the formal and informal practices that are at work across team members, particularly around clarifying decision rights and information flows. Managing milestones is about mapping and tracking what is getting done by when by whom. Early wins are all about credibility and confidence. So identify potential early wins, their associated milestones and over invest to deliver them —as a team! (Go to these articles.)
Strengthen the Organization
Make your organization stronger by acquiring, developing, encouraging, planning, and transitioning talent:
Acquire: Recruit, attract, and onboard the right people.
Develop: Assess and build skills and knowledge.
Encourage: Direct, support, recognize, and reward.
Plan: Monitor, assess, plan career moves over time.
Transition: Migrate to different roles as appropriate.
This is one of the most important things you do. (Go to these articles.)
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Keep Building
Remember that aligning your people, plans, and practices around a shared purpose is not a one-time event, but, instead, something that will require constant, ongoing management and improvement to sustain momentum and deliver results. (Go to these articles.)
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