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
Want Your New Employees’ Personal Commitment? Take Their Onboarding Personally
You get the employee engagement you deserve. If you don’t engage with them, they won’t engage with you. If all you need is compliance, indirect communication is fine. If you want them to contribute, you’ll need direct communication. If you want them to commit to the...
Three Things First-Time Leaders Should Know
The number one problem first-time leaders face is failing to understand that leading requires entirely different strengths than does doing or managing. We’ve all experienced first-time managers who come in with guns blazing. They think they can be successful by doing...
Examples To Follow From The Mid-Market Convention Honorees
The mid-market—defined as companies with revenues between $100 million and $3 billion—continues to be commonly under-appreciated in the United States, even though it accounts for more than $5 trillion of the U.S. GDP and represents upwards of 40 million employees....
Do. Help. Or Get Out Of The Way.
Ultimately it’s about impact. The very best thinking has no value to anyone else until it is turned into action. That requires someone to take the first step. Be that someone. Or help someone else. Or get out of the way. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a...
Affordable Debt: The Better Angel to Fuel Growth
Small businesses continually ask “To be or not to be” questions. What business should you be in? Should you continue to be or stop? And should you be in debt or not? The traditional route is to invest your own money, then friends and family’s money, then angel...
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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