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You're in Charge--Now What?
Getting a new job or a big promotion is like building a house: You need to get the foundation right for both. With a job, the quick-drying cement is how well you do in your first hundred days, since they establish the foundation for long-term momentum and great performance.
Tom Neff and Jim Citrin are two of the world’s leading experts on leadership and career success. As key figures at Spencer Stuart (hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the number one brand name in executive search), they must understand the criteria for success when they recruit top executives for new leadership positions.
Through compelling, first-hand stories you will hear from people such as Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, on how his career has been a series of successive first hundred days. Larry Summers, president of Harvard University, talks candidly about what he could have done differently in his early days to avoid dissipating goodwill among the diverse constituencies important for his future success. Gary Kusin of Kinko’s shares the specifics of the hundred-day action plan he crafted for himself before he started his new job. Paul Pressler of Gap Inc. shows how he developed a general strategic agenda that established fundamental principles and goals, waiting to prepare a more detailed strategic plan until later in his tenure.
Tom Neff and Jim Citrin’s actionable eight-point plan will be the foundation for your success—whether you are moving to a new organization or being promoted—showing how to:
• Prepare yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally from the time you accept until the time you begin
• Manage others’ expectations of you—bosses, colleagues, and subordinates
• Shape and build the team that will work with you
• Learn the lay of the land and find out how things “really work around here”
• Communicate your story effectively to people inside and outside the organization
• Avoid the top ten traps that confront every new leader, such as disrespecting your predecessor, misreading the true sources of power in the organization, or succumbing to the “savior syndrome”
When you start a new job you are in what AOL’s Jon Miller calls a “temporary state of incompetence,” faced with having to do the most when you know the least. But with the eight-point plan of You’re in Charge—Now What? you’ll understand and be able to take action on the patterns that will build your success.
Also available as an eBook
From the Hardcover edition.
Tom Neff and Jim Citrin are two of the world’s leading experts on leadership and career success. As key figures at Spencer Stuart (hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the number one brand name in executive search), they must understand the criteria for success when they recruit top executives for new leadership positions.
Through compelling, first-hand stories you will hear from people such as Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, on how his career has been a series of successive first hundred days. Larry Summers, president of Harvard University, talks candidly about what he could have done differently in his early days to avoid dissipating goodwill among the diverse constituencies important for his future success. Gary Kusin of Kinko’s shares the specifics of the hundred-day action plan he crafted for himself before he started his new job. Paul Pressler of Gap Inc. shows how he developed a general strategic agenda that established fundamental principles and goals, waiting to prepare a more detailed strategic plan until later in his tenure.
Tom Neff and Jim Citrin’s actionable eight-point plan will be the foundation for your success—whether you are moving to a new organization or being promoted—showing how to:
• Prepare yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally from the time you accept until the time you begin
• Manage others’ expectations of you—bosses, colleagues, and subordinates
• Shape and build the team that will work with you
• Learn the lay of the land and find out how things “really work around here”
• Communicate your story effectively to people inside and outside the organization
• Avoid the top ten traps that confront every new leader, such as disrespecting your predecessor, misreading the true sources of power in the organization, or succumbing to the “savior syndrome”
When you start a new job you are in what AOL’s Jon Miller calls a “temporary state of incompetence,” faced with having to do the most when you know the least. But with the eight-point plan of You’re in Charge—Now What? you’ll understand and be able to take action on the patterns that will build your success.
Also available as an eBook
From the Hardcover edition.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 11, 2005
130 people are currently reading
1117 people want to read
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February 14, 2013
Chapter 1: The Countdown: Preparing for the Race Before You Reach the Starting Line
How do you get set to go when you're moving into a new industry or area?
1) Call on customers. Without being overly direct, you can learn how the industry is viewed.
2) Watch consumers. For consumer goods manufacturers or retailers, time spent in the store pays huge dividends.
3) Find retirees. Alumni know more about the industry and the company's culture than anyone else.
4) Read everything. The internet makes it easy to find obscure books d articles.
5) Talk to a mentor. Even though he or she may not know the prospective industry well, your mentor does have an objective opinion of your abilities and capacity to adapt.
6) Phone a friend.
7) Keep notes from every conversation. When you have time to reflect, these notes can help you put together the puzzle pieces of the new job or industry.
8) Write down your goals for the first hundred days. What do you plan to bring to the new company? What knowledge can you transfer from your former industry? What do you need to learn quickly? How will you do it?
9) Commit fully. Always look forward, instead of being distracted by the could-haves, would-haves, and should-haves of your old job.
-Don't need to set a vision in the first hundred days. Can ask everyone a series of questions to gather information:
1) What about this company do you want to preserve and why?
2) What do you hope I do?
3) What are you concerned I might do?
4) What are you concerned I might not do?
5) What is your most important tool for figuring out what the consumer wants?
Ten Guidelines for Optimizing the Countdown Period
1) Effective planning will help you spend the scarce time available (about twelve hundred hours) in your first hundred days wisely.
2) Get set to learn. Perform an assessment of the company's strategy, competitive positioning, and financials using public information and available internal plans and documents.
3) Meet with the smartest observers you can find - employees, alumni, customers, suppliers, and analysts - to garner their insights.
4) Do not feel compelled to walk into your new role with a strategy already developed - it will be wrong, incomplete, and/or lack buy-in. Instead, integrate all the information into four or five issue areas or themes to discuss and focus on.
5) When you are a candidate for a top position, put together a draft hundred-day plan. Doing so well will help you win the job, and it will also begin to align expectations and allow you to hit the ground running.
6) Determine what "listening" questions you would like to ask key managers or employees and to whom you would like to ask them and in what time frame; keep the questions to five or six and plan to ask the same ones of everyone you meet with; doing so will build trust and accelerate the identification of key themes and issues.
7) Assess your own knowledge, skill, and experience gaps in terms of specialized training or functional expertise.
8) Use the countdown period to lay the groundwork for establishing strong relationships with your boss, board, and future colleagues; be open and receptive.
9) Prepare your family for the intense ride ahead. If you are relocating, seriously consider leaving your family at home for several weeks or even months; this will enable you to immerse yourself in your new role and minimize their disruption and angst.
10) Get in physical shape for the intense period ahead; do not defer or neglect your conditioning and fitness.
Chapter 2: The First Steps: Aligning Expectations
Ten Guidelines for Aligning Expectations
1) Ask the board or hiring manager, "What is the underlying objective of this appointment?" Make sure to find common ground about key goals.
2) When you introduce yourself to the management team for the first time, prepare to answer these questions: Who am I? What is my background? Why did I join? What do I hope to accomplish? How do I hope to work together?
3) Recognize that in that first meeting and other early gatherings, most employees will be listening through the lens of their own self-interest: "Is this new boss going to be good or bad for me?"
4) Use your early management team meetings to do more than meet and greet; this is the moment to establish what you expect of them, to communicate your management philosophy, and to set the tone for weeks to follow.
5) You do not have to have all the answers, on day one or throughout the first hundred days. Ask a lot of questions, too. When you are posed with a good question, make sure to pause, and when you don't have the answer, promise to get back to them, and then do so.
6) Be a receiver as much as a broadcaster - listen and learn. People genuinely like to be listened to and heard.
7) Even if you are taking over in a crisis, take whatever time you can to listen, question, and consider before pronouncing.
8) Create an agenda for active listening. Engage in one-on-one meetings to pose key questions on the market, the company, the product, the financials, the people, and the management process. All of this will accelerate your diagnosis and help you solidify relationships with key constituents.
9) Don't necessarily restrict your one-on-one meetings to company insiders. When possible and appropriate, reach out to customers, suppliers, analysts, and alumni for their views.
10) Synthesize your learning and provide feedback to the organization and those with whom you've met, whether through memos, presentations, intranets, videos, and the like. By giving feedback to the organization, you help create a new shared reality and improve the chances for broad-based buy-in. This is the beginning (which is the subject of Chapter 1) of the process to develop your strategic agenda.
1) The Market
-What are the markets you serve?
-What are the issues facing the company in those and in new markets?
-What do you have to do to be successful?
-Who are the most innovative competitors?
-Why are they so successful in their core areas of strength?
-Are we setting the right goals?
-Are those goals consistent with the external environment?
2) The Product
-How are we going to deliver a service to customers that people value and want to buy?
-What is our product's unique selling proposition?
-What is the pricing strategy?
3) The Finances
-How do we fund our efforts?
-Where does the business create profits?
4) The People
-Do we have the right people to address the issues and implement the strategy?
-Who are the gatekeepers?
-Who are the people who really make things happen?
5) The Processes
-How do people tend to work together?
-How do decisions get made and implemented?
Chapter 3: No One Can Do It Alone: Shaping Your Management Team
Ten Guidelines for Shaping Your Management Team
1) Establishing a strong team is the best first step a manager can take toward executing a vision and implementing his or her strategic agenda. Simply stated by Jim Collins, "First who, then what."
2) Avoid surrounding yourself with people of similar backgrounds. Focus on building a team of people with similar values and passions but complementary skills.
3) Recognize that everyone is endowed with certain aptitudes and areas of natural strengths and weaknesses. Create a team in which everyone is playing to their greatest strength such that the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.
4) Determine whether you have a strong enough management team to reach your aspirations. Gain a sense of each member of the team individually and how they contribute to the overall team dynamics. The composition of the team should match the company's challenges, enable you to do your best job, and also reflect the values and standards that you want to prevail throughout the enterprise.
5) To assess legacy managers, talk to them about their business and dive deep via operational reviews and Socratic questioning. If they are not in control and don't have command over their numbers, it may require a change.
6) Unless the company is in utter crisis, try to avoid making critical personnel moves immediately. "Think quickly, but act thoughtfully" to avoid the natural inclination to make key people decisions too quickly. Recognize that people have enormous capacity if you give them a chance, set clear expectations, and hold them accountable.
7) Call it partner or confidant, you need someone trustworthy, discreet, and possessed of superior judgment with whom to brainstorm, discuss sensitive personnel decisions, test waters, and gather opinions, especially in situations when people might not otherwise be completely honest and forthcoming.
8) Your early team meetings will set the tone for the meetings to follow; they should model the kind of team process you want to instill. The messages sent by your words, energy, and conduct will set the example for how topics are raised, worked on, and addressed. Articulate the objectives and desired outcomes, select important but unaddressed issues that have to be resolved, and encourage a frank and open conversation about them.
9) Recognize the power of your predecessor, whose presence is everywhere, whether or not that person is still in the company. While it may be tempting to push out or vilify him or her for the challenges you've inherited, doing so will likely create unnecessary ill will. Acknowledging and in some cases embracing your predecessor can sustain a sense of continuity within the organization and instill a sense of connectivity with employees' shared past.
10) As you forge your team, seek awareness of how each individual is motivated. Great leaders tailor their management styles to the recipient rather than approaching the top team from a one-size-fits-all perspective.
Chapter 4: Crafting Your Strategic Agenda
Ten Guidelines for Crafting Your Strategic Agenda
1) You have more time than you think. You don't have to deliver a fully baked strategic plan on day one...or even in the first hundred days. Find the right balance between creating a compelling picture of where you want the organization to go and not becoming prematurely locked into a plan.
2) In developing your agenda, diagnose the company's (or department's) problems starting with the customer perspective and continuing with a grounded view of what the company stands for.
3) Strictly limit the number of themes and priorities so that they can be easily remembered by the organization.
4) When crafting your short-term agenda, always endeavor to underpromise and overdeliver.
5) Build the strategic agenda in a joint effort with your team versus in a silo.
6) Incorporate an explicit plan to address cultural issues and barriers to change.
7) Define the operating mechanism/process - the meetings, documents, and report formats to conduct the day-to-day business.
8) Secure some early wins; look for obvious flaws in the organization and fix them quickly to establish your credibility as a leader.
9) Expect pushback on your agenda, but rather than resist, coalesce that input in a positive way to maximize buy-in.
10) Don't be a perfectionist; your strategic agenda is by definition a work in progress. Use it to help you and the organization make decisions, see how they work, and make adjustments as necessary.
Chapter 5: Culture Is the Game: Starting to Transform the Corporate Culture
Ten Guidelines for Starting to Transform the Culture
1) As a new leader, work to understand the culture of the organization, diagnose how great a change is required, and take the right steps to start making the transformation.
2) Recognize that many new leaders fail because they cannot make headway against an intransigent culture, pushing too hard in the wrong ways, resulting in the proverbial "body rejecting the organ."
3) The way to start assessing a culture is to listen and observe. How do people really describe the place? Words are powerful clues - within most generalizations there lies an inner core of truth. Look for physical evidence - how people dress, how they communicate, how happy they look, and the kind of furniture and artwork that fill the offices.
4) Next, identify how "things work around here." Hunt for the knowledge networks, key influencers, decision-making protocols, and unwritten and unspoken conventions that are the nervous system of any organization.
5) Be sensitive to the fact that even having a change mandate from your board or boss may not be enough. Understand where other sources of power lie, and make sure you gain the support from that power source.
6) With a truly obstinate culture, you may need to make structural and people changes, but do so with the bought-in support of the key power center and also establish a concerted program to address the cultural legacies of the organization.
7) Create the conditions for cultural transformation: Adopt new measures of success; institute new operating processes; choose a new management team; set new expectations; identify change leaders; and lead by example.
8) Make your first moves count. In your early days, when people are most open to change, you can have a magnified impact by implementing carefully considered, concrete changes to long-established organizational and cultural structures.
9) Experiment with ways to convince employees to pledge their hearts and minds to change. Be aware of what is working and what is not and refine your approach.
10) Remember that too much change can break the culture - or more likely the change-maker. Pace yourself, continually assess the tolerance of the organization, get feedback, and adapt along the way.
Chapter 6: Answering to a Higher Authority: Establishing a Productive Working Relationship with Your Boss (or Board)
Ten Guidelines for Establishing a Productive Relationship with Your Higher Authority
1) Understand the stated and unstated motivations of your boss or board. It's not just about meeting your objectives and building shareholder value; it's also about making them successful and protecting their reputation.
2) If you are a new CEO, initiate an "on-boarding" process with the board similar to what can be done with new managers. Sit down with each board member and interview them to determine what they are looking for; ask questions about their experience on the board, and the areas and disciplines they are most passionate about and expert in. Gather their input about how the board should ideally work in terms of the committee structure, what issues go where, and board mechanics such as meeting frequency and information flow.
3) If you are not a CEO, meet with your new boss and discuss how he or she really likes to work, establish priorities, and communicate. For example, is he more comfortable with formal written updates or more fluid progress reports? Does she prefer email or voicemail?
4) Try to explicitly assess which members of the board or the department are strongest and most experienced - and on which issues; look at which directors are less engaged, and which are truly independent in their thinking.
5) Diagnose the culture of the board, and tailor your communication and management styles accordingly. Is the board formal and relatively distant or more informal and hands-on? As you increase your credibility with the board, migrate the culture to what you believe is most constructive and what you are most comfortable with.
6) If you are a CEO, develop one or more confidants on the board, whether a nonexecutive chairman or a presiding director. Look to them to serve as a sounding board to bounce ideas off of, to help set board agendas, and in the early days even to help manage the board process while you are getting up to speed on the business.
7) Establish your credibility by having a sound strategic agenda, being on top of the details of the business, listening and learning from your boss or board members, building a strong and committed management team, establishing a sound management process, and maintaining humility.
8) Establish an effective communication protocol with your boss or board, including formal information flows such as monthly management letters, as well as an informal communication protocol, such as phone calls before each meeting and informal meetings or meals with your boss or individual directors.
9) Establish the discipline of regular feedback with your board or boss. In the case of the board, encourage an "executive session" as a part of each meeting, where the board discusses your performance in your absence, which can then be delivered in a synthesized and constructive way.
10) Involve the board members in the business so they become more knowledgeable and effective. Create forums for directors to interact with managers, visit customers and facilities, and dive deeply into key businesses. This will increase their ability to help assess and support strategy and perform their most important function, ensuring optimal succession.
Chapter 7: Communication: The Key to Implementing Your Agenda
Ten Guidelines for Effective Leadership Communications
1) Know your audience so you can tailor your message and your style to their readiness and to what they care about.
2) Tell stories to establish an emotional connection to your point.
3) Effective communication is more than promulgating a message, it is a continuous give and take in which ideas are explored, assimilated, and adapted before being locked in.
4) Use and reuse your communication in various forums and formats both to reinforce your message and to leverage your time.
5) Communicating is intimately intertwined with corporate culture: adapting an organization's language and shorthand - or introducing a new and agreed-upon language - will help transform that culture.
6) Know the communication settings that you are most comfortable in - be it stirring a large crowd to action or working in small groups - and play to your natural strengths.
7) In a crisis, get the information out as quickly as possible. Acknowledge the challenges of the situation to establish credibility, then act as a "shock absorber" between the uncertainty of the situation and the employees' deep-seated desire for stability.
8) Be conscious of the signals you are sending. In the early days, every move you make is being closely watched, and communication, both explicit messages and implicit signals such as your manner of dress, your allocation of time, your mode of communication, and even your organizational structure, play a direct role in the cultural transformation.
9) Having all the answers is usually the wrong answer. People need to see you listening and assimilating their information. If you don't pause to ask questions and circle back when you have more data, you will lose credibility and trust.
10) Get direct input from the field; while this requires making a significant time investment, it will pay back multiple-fold in enhanced credibility, trust, and stakeholder engagement.
Chapter 8: Resisting Temptation: Avoiding the Top Ten Traps for New Leaders
1) Setting Unrealistic Expectations (don't overpromise)
2) Either Making Rash Decisions or Suffering from Analysis Paralysis (take the time to figure out the right thing to do, but you'll never have all the facts)
3) Being a Know-It-All (listen and learn)
4) Failing to Let Go of Your Past Identity (move on and accept your new position publicly)
5) Sporting "The Emperor's New Clothes" (a leader is often the last to know when something is wrong - encourage delivering bad news early)
6) Stifling Dissent (be a benevolent leader focused on the success of those around you)
7) Succumbing to the Savior Syndrome (don't try to do it all alone)
8) Misreading the True Sources of Power
9) Picking the Wrong Battles (devote ample time to all the key businesses to ensure greater success)
10) "Dissing" Your Predecessor (be respectful of your predecessor)
How do you get set to go when you're moving into a new industry or area?
1) Call on customers. Without being overly direct, you can learn how the industry is viewed.
2) Watch consumers. For consumer goods manufacturers or retailers, time spent in the store pays huge dividends.
3) Find retirees. Alumni know more about the industry and the company's culture than anyone else.
4) Read everything. The internet makes it easy to find obscure books d articles.
5) Talk to a mentor. Even though he or she may not know the prospective industry well, your mentor does have an objective opinion of your abilities and capacity to adapt.
6) Phone a friend.
7) Keep notes from every conversation. When you have time to reflect, these notes can help you put together the puzzle pieces of the new job or industry.
8) Write down your goals for the first hundred days. What do you plan to bring to the new company? What knowledge can you transfer from your former industry? What do you need to learn quickly? How will you do it?
9) Commit fully. Always look forward, instead of being distracted by the could-haves, would-haves, and should-haves of your old job.
-Don't need to set a vision in the first hundred days. Can ask everyone a series of questions to gather information:
1) What about this company do you want to preserve and why?
2) What do you hope I do?
3) What are you concerned I might do?
4) What are you concerned I might not do?
5) What is your most important tool for figuring out what the consumer wants?
Ten Guidelines for Optimizing the Countdown Period
1) Effective planning will help you spend the scarce time available (about twelve hundred hours) in your first hundred days wisely.
2) Get set to learn. Perform an assessment of the company's strategy, competitive positioning, and financials using public information and available internal plans and documents.
3) Meet with the smartest observers you can find - employees, alumni, customers, suppliers, and analysts - to garner their insights.
4) Do not feel compelled to walk into your new role with a strategy already developed - it will be wrong, incomplete, and/or lack buy-in. Instead, integrate all the information into four or five issue areas or themes to discuss and focus on.
5) When you are a candidate for a top position, put together a draft hundred-day plan. Doing so well will help you win the job, and it will also begin to align expectations and allow you to hit the ground running.
6) Determine what "listening" questions you would like to ask key managers or employees and to whom you would like to ask them and in what time frame; keep the questions to five or six and plan to ask the same ones of everyone you meet with; doing so will build trust and accelerate the identification of key themes and issues.
7) Assess your own knowledge, skill, and experience gaps in terms of specialized training or functional expertise.
8) Use the countdown period to lay the groundwork for establishing strong relationships with your boss, board, and future colleagues; be open and receptive.
9) Prepare your family for the intense ride ahead. If you are relocating, seriously consider leaving your family at home for several weeks or even months; this will enable you to immerse yourself in your new role and minimize their disruption and angst.
10) Get in physical shape for the intense period ahead; do not defer or neglect your conditioning and fitness.
Chapter 2: The First Steps: Aligning Expectations
Ten Guidelines for Aligning Expectations
1) Ask the board or hiring manager, "What is the underlying objective of this appointment?" Make sure to find common ground about key goals.
2) When you introduce yourself to the management team for the first time, prepare to answer these questions: Who am I? What is my background? Why did I join? What do I hope to accomplish? How do I hope to work together?
3) Recognize that in that first meeting and other early gatherings, most employees will be listening through the lens of their own self-interest: "Is this new boss going to be good or bad for me?"
4) Use your early management team meetings to do more than meet and greet; this is the moment to establish what you expect of them, to communicate your management philosophy, and to set the tone for weeks to follow.
5) You do not have to have all the answers, on day one or throughout the first hundred days. Ask a lot of questions, too. When you are posed with a good question, make sure to pause, and when you don't have the answer, promise to get back to them, and then do so.
6) Be a receiver as much as a broadcaster - listen and learn. People genuinely like to be listened to and heard.
7) Even if you are taking over in a crisis, take whatever time you can to listen, question, and consider before pronouncing.
8) Create an agenda for active listening. Engage in one-on-one meetings to pose key questions on the market, the company, the product, the financials, the people, and the management process. All of this will accelerate your diagnosis and help you solidify relationships with key constituents.
9) Don't necessarily restrict your one-on-one meetings to company insiders. When possible and appropriate, reach out to customers, suppliers, analysts, and alumni for their views.
10) Synthesize your learning and provide feedback to the organization and those with whom you've met, whether through memos, presentations, intranets, videos, and the like. By giving feedback to the organization, you help create a new shared reality and improve the chances for broad-based buy-in. This is the beginning (which is the subject of Chapter 1) of the process to develop your strategic agenda.
1) The Market
-What are the markets you serve?
-What are the issues facing the company in those and in new markets?
-What do you have to do to be successful?
-Who are the most innovative competitors?
-Why are they so successful in their core areas of strength?
-Are we setting the right goals?
-Are those goals consistent with the external environment?
2) The Product
-How are we going to deliver a service to customers that people value and want to buy?
-What is our product's unique selling proposition?
-What is the pricing strategy?
3) The Finances
-How do we fund our efforts?
-Where does the business create profits?
4) The People
-Do we have the right people to address the issues and implement the strategy?
-Who are the gatekeepers?
-Who are the people who really make things happen?
5) The Processes
-How do people tend to work together?
-How do decisions get made and implemented?
Chapter 3: No One Can Do It Alone: Shaping Your Management Team
Ten Guidelines for Shaping Your Management Team
1) Establishing a strong team is the best first step a manager can take toward executing a vision and implementing his or her strategic agenda. Simply stated by Jim Collins, "First who, then what."
2) Avoid surrounding yourself with people of similar backgrounds. Focus on building a team of people with similar values and passions but complementary skills.
3) Recognize that everyone is endowed with certain aptitudes and areas of natural strengths and weaknesses. Create a team in which everyone is playing to their greatest strength such that the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.
4) Determine whether you have a strong enough management team to reach your aspirations. Gain a sense of each member of the team individually and how they contribute to the overall team dynamics. The composition of the team should match the company's challenges, enable you to do your best job, and also reflect the values and standards that you want to prevail throughout the enterprise.
5) To assess legacy managers, talk to them about their business and dive deep via operational reviews and Socratic questioning. If they are not in control and don't have command over their numbers, it may require a change.
6) Unless the company is in utter crisis, try to avoid making critical personnel moves immediately. "Think quickly, but act thoughtfully" to avoid the natural inclination to make key people decisions too quickly. Recognize that people have enormous capacity if you give them a chance, set clear expectations, and hold them accountable.
7) Call it partner or confidant, you need someone trustworthy, discreet, and possessed of superior judgment with whom to brainstorm, discuss sensitive personnel decisions, test waters, and gather opinions, especially in situations when people might not otherwise be completely honest and forthcoming.
8) Your early team meetings will set the tone for the meetings to follow; they should model the kind of team process you want to instill. The messages sent by your words, energy, and conduct will set the example for how topics are raised, worked on, and addressed. Articulate the objectives and desired outcomes, select important but unaddressed issues that have to be resolved, and encourage a frank and open conversation about them.
9) Recognize the power of your predecessor, whose presence is everywhere, whether or not that person is still in the company. While it may be tempting to push out or vilify him or her for the challenges you've inherited, doing so will likely create unnecessary ill will. Acknowledging and in some cases embracing your predecessor can sustain a sense of continuity within the organization and instill a sense of connectivity with employees' shared past.
10) As you forge your team, seek awareness of how each individual is motivated. Great leaders tailor their management styles to the recipient rather than approaching the top team from a one-size-fits-all perspective.
Chapter 4: Crafting Your Strategic Agenda
Ten Guidelines for Crafting Your Strategic Agenda
1) You have more time than you think. You don't have to deliver a fully baked strategic plan on day one...or even in the first hundred days. Find the right balance between creating a compelling picture of where you want the organization to go and not becoming prematurely locked into a plan.
2) In developing your agenda, diagnose the company's (or department's) problems starting with the customer perspective and continuing with a grounded view of what the company stands for.
3) Strictly limit the number of themes and priorities so that they can be easily remembered by the organization.
4) When crafting your short-term agenda, always endeavor to underpromise and overdeliver.
5) Build the strategic agenda in a joint effort with your team versus in a silo.
6) Incorporate an explicit plan to address cultural issues and barriers to change.
7) Define the operating mechanism/process - the meetings, documents, and report formats to conduct the day-to-day business.
8) Secure some early wins; look for obvious flaws in the organization and fix them quickly to establish your credibility as a leader.
9) Expect pushback on your agenda, but rather than resist, coalesce that input in a positive way to maximize buy-in.
10) Don't be a perfectionist; your strategic agenda is by definition a work in progress. Use it to help you and the organization make decisions, see how they work, and make adjustments as necessary.
Chapter 5: Culture Is the Game: Starting to Transform the Corporate Culture
Ten Guidelines for Starting to Transform the Culture
1) As a new leader, work to understand the culture of the organization, diagnose how great a change is required, and take the right steps to start making the transformation.
2) Recognize that many new leaders fail because they cannot make headway against an intransigent culture, pushing too hard in the wrong ways, resulting in the proverbial "body rejecting the organ."
3) The way to start assessing a culture is to listen and observe. How do people really describe the place? Words are powerful clues - within most generalizations there lies an inner core of truth. Look for physical evidence - how people dress, how they communicate, how happy they look, and the kind of furniture and artwork that fill the offices.
4) Next, identify how "things work around here." Hunt for the knowledge networks, key influencers, decision-making protocols, and unwritten and unspoken conventions that are the nervous system of any organization.
5) Be sensitive to the fact that even having a change mandate from your board or boss may not be enough. Understand where other sources of power lie, and make sure you gain the support from that power source.
6) With a truly obstinate culture, you may need to make structural and people changes, but do so with the bought-in support of the key power center and also establish a concerted program to address the cultural legacies of the organization.
7) Create the conditions for cultural transformation: Adopt new measures of success; institute new operating processes; choose a new management team; set new expectations; identify change leaders; and lead by example.
8) Make your first moves count. In your early days, when people are most open to change, you can have a magnified impact by implementing carefully considered, concrete changes to long-established organizational and cultural structures.
9) Experiment with ways to convince employees to pledge their hearts and minds to change. Be aware of what is working and what is not and refine your approach.
10) Remember that too much change can break the culture - or more likely the change-maker. Pace yourself, continually assess the tolerance of the organization, get feedback, and adapt along the way.
Chapter 6: Answering to a Higher Authority: Establishing a Productive Working Relationship with Your Boss (or Board)
Ten Guidelines for Establishing a Productive Relationship with Your Higher Authority
1) Understand the stated and unstated motivations of your boss or board. It's not just about meeting your objectives and building shareholder value; it's also about making them successful and protecting their reputation.
2) If you are a new CEO, initiate an "on-boarding" process with the board similar to what can be done with new managers. Sit down with each board member and interview them to determine what they are looking for; ask questions about their experience on the board, and the areas and disciplines they are most passionate about and expert in. Gather their input about how the board should ideally work in terms of the committee structure, what issues go where, and board mechanics such as meeting frequency and information flow.
3) If you are not a CEO, meet with your new boss and discuss how he or she really likes to work, establish priorities, and communicate. For example, is he more comfortable with formal written updates or more fluid progress reports? Does she prefer email or voicemail?
4) Try to explicitly assess which members of the board or the department are strongest and most experienced - and on which issues; look at which directors are less engaged, and which are truly independent in their thinking.
5) Diagnose the culture of the board, and tailor your communication and management styles accordingly. Is the board formal and relatively distant or more informal and hands-on? As you increase your credibility with the board, migrate the culture to what you believe is most constructive and what you are most comfortable with.
6) If you are a CEO, develop one or more confidants on the board, whether a nonexecutive chairman or a presiding director. Look to them to serve as a sounding board to bounce ideas off of, to help set board agendas, and in the early days even to help manage the board process while you are getting up to speed on the business.
7) Establish your credibility by having a sound strategic agenda, being on top of the details of the business, listening and learning from your boss or board members, building a strong and committed management team, establishing a sound management process, and maintaining humility.
8) Establish an effective communication protocol with your boss or board, including formal information flows such as monthly management letters, as well as an informal communication protocol, such as phone calls before each meeting and informal meetings or meals with your boss or individual directors.
9) Establish the discipline of regular feedback with your board or boss. In the case of the board, encourage an "executive session" as a part of each meeting, where the board discusses your performance in your absence, which can then be delivered in a synthesized and constructive way.
10) Involve the board members in the business so they become more knowledgeable and effective. Create forums for directors to interact with managers, visit customers and facilities, and dive deeply into key businesses. This will increase their ability to help assess and support strategy and perform their most important function, ensuring optimal succession.
Chapter 7: Communication: The Key to Implementing Your Agenda
Ten Guidelines for Effective Leadership Communications
1) Know your audience so you can tailor your message and your style to their readiness and to what they care about.
2) Tell stories to establish an emotional connection to your point.
3) Effective communication is more than promulgating a message, it is a continuous give and take in which ideas are explored, assimilated, and adapted before being locked in.
4) Use and reuse your communication in various forums and formats both to reinforce your message and to leverage your time.
5) Communicating is intimately intertwined with corporate culture: adapting an organization's language and shorthand - or introducing a new and agreed-upon language - will help transform that culture.
6) Know the communication settings that you are most comfortable in - be it stirring a large crowd to action or working in small groups - and play to your natural strengths.
7) In a crisis, get the information out as quickly as possible. Acknowledge the challenges of the situation to establish credibility, then act as a "shock absorber" between the uncertainty of the situation and the employees' deep-seated desire for stability.
8) Be conscious of the signals you are sending. In the early days, every move you make is being closely watched, and communication, both explicit messages and implicit signals such as your manner of dress, your allocation of time, your mode of communication, and even your organizational structure, play a direct role in the cultural transformation.
9) Having all the answers is usually the wrong answer. People need to see you listening and assimilating their information. If you don't pause to ask questions and circle back when you have more data, you will lose credibility and trust.
10) Get direct input from the field; while this requires making a significant time investment, it will pay back multiple-fold in enhanced credibility, trust, and stakeholder engagement.
Chapter 8: Resisting Temptation: Avoiding the Top Ten Traps for New Leaders
1) Setting Unrealistic Expectations (don't overpromise)
2) Either Making Rash Decisions or Suffering from Analysis Paralysis (take the time to figure out the right thing to do, but you'll never have all the facts)
3) Being a Know-It-All (listen and learn)
4) Failing to Let Go of Your Past Identity (move on and accept your new position publicly)
5) Sporting "The Emperor's New Clothes" (a leader is often the last to know when something is wrong - encourage delivering bad news early)
6) Stifling Dissent (be a benevolent leader focused on the success of those around you)
7) Succumbing to the Savior Syndrome (don't try to do it all alone)
8) Misreading the True Sources of Power
9) Picking the Wrong Battles (devote ample time to all the key businesses to ensure greater success)
10) "Dissing" Your Predecessor (be respectful of your predecessor)
February 24, 2017
Maybe it's because I didn't read the latest edition, but this thing is not for women, or anyone who works in a creative field. It's really really geared toward CEOs no mater what the back flap says.
Things that threw me off:
1) It recommended that if you need to move, that you move first, and spend the first 100 days alone, apart from your family. I'm not sure I would have a family if I did that.
2) It said that to set the tone, sometimes it's fun to mix things up and wear bright ties! OOooooooo. That really sends a signal. Oh! Or a guy who ran IBM wore something other than a white shirt. WOW! That's real leadership.
/side eye
Things that threw me off:
1) It recommended that if you need to move, that you move first, and spend the first 100 days alone, apart from your family. I'm not sure I would have a family if I did that.
2) It said that to set the tone, sometimes it's fun to mix things up and wear bright ties! OOooooooo. That really sends a signal. Oh! Or a guy who ran IBM wore something other than a white shirt. WOW! That's real leadership.
/side eye
December 30, 2013
As this genre goes, this book is more helpful than most. Good initial tactics that can evolve into more longterm strategies. Much less proscriptive and guilt-inducing than First 90 Days.
November 9, 2019
A must for aspiring and new leaders!
Fantastic read for aspiring and fresh leaders. My advice would be: Read 2-6 weeks before you start on the new role!
Fantastic read for aspiring and fresh leaders. My advice would be: Read 2-6 weeks before you start on the new role!
February 29, 2012
Central Truths:
1. Leader who starts to make decision based on the premature assumption that her reality is the one that everybody else has may be in for a rude reality check.
2. When you start a new job, you are in a temporary state of incompetence. You cannot have all the answers.
3. If you cannot get a shared reality, political support, and alignment, you are in the ditch.
4. In troubled times, you need as many brains as possible working on the issue.
5. Focus on building a team of people with similar values and passions but complementary skills.
6. You can make B players into A players if you work with them, but it is hard to take C players and make them into A players.
7. One of the key talents of any leader is the ability to identify the truly critical issues and establish a short list of top priorities to keep people focused.
8. Big promises or pronouncements made early can come back to haunt you.
9. One of the imperatives of any new leader is both understanding the organization’s culture and determining whether change is needed. Failure to assess the culture and readiness for change can be lethal.
10. A strategic agenda is by definition a work in progress.
11. People like to be led, they like milestones and scorecards.
12. Communication skills is one of the most important attributes of effective leadership.
13. Relating to people early on is key to the success of any new leader.
14. Most important tool as you move into leadership role is an open, questioning mind and manner.
15. Preparing for a new job requires understanding how the company operates, where it has been, where it is headed, how the management team works, and where your own abilities fit into the mix.
16. Most important tool as you move into new role is an open, questioning mind and manner.
17. Establishing a strong team is the best first step a manager can take toward executing vision and strategy.
18. Bosses want three things from their managers: loyalty, good advice, and have their personal brand polished.
19. Management does not change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.
20. Find a few things that were serious flaws and fix quickly. Good way to establish credibility. Keep an inventory of evidence that supports your claim to have accomplished them.
21. One of the imperatives of any new leader is both understanding the organization’s culture and determining whether change is needed.
22. Failure to assess the culture and readiness for change can be lethal: who gets promoted, how employees interact with one another, what motivates employees, how are decisions made, and how people actually go about their work.
23. Change agents don’t usually make it through the entire process, normally get assassinated or ostracized.
24. First 100 days is a political campaign: have to win the hearts and minds of the electorate.
Application
1. First 100 days on a new job: resist temptation to hit the ground running. Take the time to listen before you do anything else. You will set the tone; it is hard to reset it.
2. Find a few things that were serious flaws in the organization and fix them quickly to establish credibility.
3. Ask employees for input: what should the new _____ do? Will tell you the places you can be a hero.
4. Move quickly to articulate a few simple themes- agenda is the right word. It is not a plan or strategy. It is what you stand for and what you are focusing on. Keep it simple.
5. Avoid gratuitous battles, put goodwill in the bank whenever possible.
6. Learn as much as possible about the new world you are about to enter.
7. Don’t walk into new leadership job with an established strategic plan; walk in prepared to lead a strategic process.
8. Preparing for a new job requires understanding how the company operates, where it has been, where it is headed, how the management team works, and where you own abilities fit into the mix.
9. Good questions to ask: what about __________ do you want to preserve and why? What do you hope I do? What are you concerned I might do? What are you concerned I might not do?
10. Build foundation of trust, help make important personnel assessments, gather input for developing company’s strategy going forward.
11. Guidelines for countdown period to new leadership job: get set to learn, meet with smartest observers, put together a draft 100 day plan, determine listening questions, get in physical shape, prepare family for the intense ride ahead, and assess own KSA gaps in terms of specialized training or functional expertise.
12. Make sure you have shared understanding with hiring manager or board regarding the important issues facing organization.
13. Find common ground even before you accept the position: make sure everyone agrees on the important issues/priorities.
14. Five Essential questions that people are waiting to have answered: Who am I? Where do I come from? Why am I here? What do I plan to accomplish? How do I hope to do it?
15. Guidelines to make the very best first impression; You don’t have to have all the answers; address doubts/fears, neutralize lingering resentment, don’t disrespect your predecessor.
16. Listen, listen, and listen: process the information and integrate it with your own prior understanding and them recycle it. Proven listening questions: what are the most important things (top 5) about the company that we should be sure to preserve and why? What are the top three thing we need to change and why? What do you most hope I do? What are you most concerned I might do? What advice do you have for me?
17. Be aware of the following questions: who are the gatekeepers? Who are the people who really make things happen? How do people tend to work together? How do decisions get made?
18. Need limited and focused agenda for change: identify 2-4 major priorities and drive them hard and fast.
19. Need to assess whether you have the right people. Evaluate personal contribution and impact each person makes both on the team and on the rest of the organization: are they a positive influence on the people they work with? Do they nourish their peers/subordinates or exploit them? Do their actions uphold my standards and values or do they merely pay lip service to them?
20. When assessing, keep in mind the environment in which people have gotten used to operating and how it may have shaped their past decisions and actions.
21. Conduct one-on-one meetings with each team member to gain their observations and insights about the business. Discuss their aspirations and goals: how do they connect to your own road map?
22. Make sure short-term agenda is based on a foundation principle of under promising and over delivering.
23. Don’t be a perfectionist; strategic agenda is by definition a work in progress. Use it to help you make decisions, see how they work, and make adjustments as necessary.
24. Assessment should take approximately four months, and then go through the more detailed strategic planning. A leader must take action immediately to fix obvious problems. You will have more time than you think to develop strategic agenda.
25. Assess culture; look for clues throughout company: how do people dress? Do they look happy? Notice office architecture and the kind of furniture and artwork that fill offices. Does it create an informal and upbeat physical environment?
26. Focus only on the things you can get your mind around at any one time.
27. Find a few things that were serious flaws and fix quickly; you can establish credibility. Keep an inventory of evidence that supports your claim to have accomplished them.
28. Try not to change world in your first 100 days. Patience is often an essential virtue.
29. Invite workforce to change the culture: adopt new measures of success, institute new operating processes, choose a new management team, set new expectations, identify change leaders, lead by example.
30. Too much change can break the culture or more likely destroy the change maker. You must pace yourself and continually assess the tolerance of the organization.
31. Make sure everyone fully comprehends whatever situation the business in – good or problematic. Share facts with them in as much detail as is possible and appropriate for each audience.
32. Prepare monthly comment letter to supervisor: what are you working on, what do you see as the primary challenges of your business, what I am worried about and what I think the initiative and priorities are.
33. Sit down with boss and ask how he or she would like to work. How does he like to establish priorities? How and how often does she want to be updated? Is he more comfortable with formal or written updates or more fluid progress reports? Does he prefer email or voicemail? Figure out how she likes to work and how to support her success; tailor my efforts accordingly.
1. Leader who starts to make decision based on the premature assumption that her reality is the one that everybody else has may be in for a rude reality check.
2. When you start a new job, you are in a temporary state of incompetence. You cannot have all the answers.
3. If you cannot get a shared reality, political support, and alignment, you are in the ditch.
4. In troubled times, you need as many brains as possible working on the issue.
5. Focus on building a team of people with similar values and passions but complementary skills.
6. You can make B players into A players if you work with them, but it is hard to take C players and make them into A players.
7. One of the key talents of any leader is the ability to identify the truly critical issues and establish a short list of top priorities to keep people focused.
8. Big promises or pronouncements made early can come back to haunt you.
9. One of the imperatives of any new leader is both understanding the organization’s culture and determining whether change is needed. Failure to assess the culture and readiness for change can be lethal.
10. A strategic agenda is by definition a work in progress.
11. People like to be led, they like milestones and scorecards.
12. Communication skills is one of the most important attributes of effective leadership.
13. Relating to people early on is key to the success of any new leader.
14. Most important tool as you move into leadership role is an open, questioning mind and manner.
15. Preparing for a new job requires understanding how the company operates, where it has been, where it is headed, how the management team works, and where your own abilities fit into the mix.
16. Most important tool as you move into new role is an open, questioning mind and manner.
17. Establishing a strong team is the best first step a manager can take toward executing vision and strategy.
18. Bosses want three things from their managers: loyalty, good advice, and have their personal brand polished.
19. Management does not change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.
20. Find a few things that were serious flaws and fix quickly. Good way to establish credibility. Keep an inventory of evidence that supports your claim to have accomplished them.
21. One of the imperatives of any new leader is both understanding the organization’s culture and determining whether change is needed.
22. Failure to assess the culture and readiness for change can be lethal: who gets promoted, how employees interact with one another, what motivates employees, how are decisions made, and how people actually go about their work.
23. Change agents don’t usually make it through the entire process, normally get assassinated or ostracized.
24. First 100 days is a political campaign: have to win the hearts and minds of the electorate.
Application
1. First 100 days on a new job: resist temptation to hit the ground running. Take the time to listen before you do anything else. You will set the tone; it is hard to reset it.
2. Find a few things that were serious flaws in the organization and fix them quickly to establish credibility.
3. Ask employees for input: what should the new _____ do? Will tell you the places you can be a hero.
4. Move quickly to articulate a few simple themes- agenda is the right word. It is not a plan or strategy. It is what you stand for and what you are focusing on. Keep it simple.
5. Avoid gratuitous battles, put goodwill in the bank whenever possible.
6. Learn as much as possible about the new world you are about to enter.
7. Don’t walk into new leadership job with an established strategic plan; walk in prepared to lead a strategic process.
8. Preparing for a new job requires understanding how the company operates, where it has been, where it is headed, how the management team works, and where you own abilities fit into the mix.
9. Good questions to ask: what about __________ do you want to preserve and why? What do you hope I do? What are you concerned I might do? What are you concerned I might not do?
10. Build foundation of trust, help make important personnel assessments, gather input for developing company’s strategy going forward.
11. Guidelines for countdown period to new leadership job: get set to learn, meet with smartest observers, put together a draft 100 day plan, determine listening questions, get in physical shape, prepare family for the intense ride ahead, and assess own KSA gaps in terms of specialized training or functional expertise.
12. Make sure you have shared understanding with hiring manager or board regarding the important issues facing organization.
13. Find common ground even before you accept the position: make sure everyone agrees on the important issues/priorities.
14. Five Essential questions that people are waiting to have answered: Who am I? Where do I come from? Why am I here? What do I plan to accomplish? How do I hope to do it?
15. Guidelines to make the very best first impression; You don’t have to have all the answers; address doubts/fears, neutralize lingering resentment, don’t disrespect your predecessor.
16. Listen, listen, and listen: process the information and integrate it with your own prior understanding and them recycle it. Proven listening questions: what are the most important things (top 5) about the company that we should be sure to preserve and why? What are the top three thing we need to change and why? What do you most hope I do? What are you most concerned I might do? What advice do you have for me?
17. Be aware of the following questions: who are the gatekeepers? Who are the people who really make things happen? How do people tend to work together? How do decisions get made?
18. Need limited and focused agenda for change: identify 2-4 major priorities and drive them hard and fast.
19. Need to assess whether you have the right people. Evaluate personal contribution and impact each person makes both on the team and on the rest of the organization: are they a positive influence on the people they work with? Do they nourish their peers/subordinates or exploit them? Do their actions uphold my standards and values or do they merely pay lip service to them?
20. When assessing, keep in mind the environment in which people have gotten used to operating and how it may have shaped their past decisions and actions.
21. Conduct one-on-one meetings with each team member to gain their observations and insights about the business. Discuss their aspirations and goals: how do they connect to your own road map?
22. Make sure short-term agenda is based on a foundation principle of under promising and over delivering.
23. Don’t be a perfectionist; strategic agenda is by definition a work in progress. Use it to help you make decisions, see how they work, and make adjustments as necessary.
24. Assessment should take approximately four months, and then go through the more detailed strategic planning. A leader must take action immediately to fix obvious problems. You will have more time than you think to develop strategic agenda.
25. Assess culture; look for clues throughout company: how do people dress? Do they look happy? Notice office architecture and the kind of furniture and artwork that fill offices. Does it create an informal and upbeat physical environment?
26. Focus only on the things you can get your mind around at any one time.
27. Find a few things that were serious flaws and fix quickly; you can establish credibility. Keep an inventory of evidence that supports your claim to have accomplished them.
28. Try not to change world in your first 100 days. Patience is often an essential virtue.
29. Invite workforce to change the culture: adopt new measures of success, institute new operating processes, choose a new management team, set new expectations, identify change leaders, lead by example.
30. Too much change can break the culture or more likely destroy the change maker. You must pace yourself and continually assess the tolerance of the organization.
31. Make sure everyone fully comprehends whatever situation the business in – good or problematic. Share facts with them in as much detail as is possible and appropriate for each audience.
32. Prepare monthly comment letter to supervisor: what are you working on, what do you see as the primary challenges of your business, what I am worried about and what I think the initiative and priorities are.
33. Sit down with boss and ask how he or she would like to work. How does he like to establish priorities? How and how often does she want to be updated? Is he more comfortable with formal or written updates or more fluid progress reports? Does he prefer email or voicemail? Figure out how she likes to work and how to support her success; tailor my efforts accordingly.
August 21, 2018
The first hundred days has become an ingrained feature of business management perception, vocabulary and subsequently real practice. In media often referred to as a grace period, the days in question are hardly ever graceful. The first hundred days are the first few months for a new manager – CEO or other. They are vital from a number of aspects, as you never get a second chance to make a first impression. With this book the authors want to help the reader to get the best possible start in their managerial position by helping him to construct his own agenda and a First 100 Day Plan and also avoid the many pitfalls that will be encountered during the period.
During the first 100 days the rules are different: the manager to some extent gets a free pass from the many small day-to-day emergencies as he must familiarize himself with the company and he also has a golden opportunity to make changes – in fact he’s expected to make them. After the first few month changes will be harder as the mandate for disrupting the status quo is less explicit. A clear well thought out agenda and good preparations are thus of more importance than many realize. The authors with backgrounds from board work, consultancy and academia did a three year study of leadership transitions – both the successful ones and the less so. The authors structure the book with eight building blocks after one of the more successful examples of CEO initiations - that of Paul Pressler joining GAP.
The building blocks for the “great first 100 days”, that also make up most of the chapters, are quite self-explanatory so here they are: 1. Prepare yourself during the countdown (from acceptance until day one), 2. Align expectations (day one until end of first month), 3. Shape your management team (the whole 100 days), 4. Craft your strategic agenda (the whole 100 days), 5. Start transforming culture (month’s three and forward), 6. Manage your board/boss (the whole 100 days), 7. Communicate (the whole 100 days) and 8. Avoid common pitfalls (the whole 100 days). To some extent the advice presented is fairly obvious. This does not mean that it is of no value. Having a well- crafted systematic plan, addressing the multiple demands on a new CEO should be a tremendous help when the pressure of the day-to-day business sets in. There are a number of psychological traps for the rookie boss and the ability to take a step back and consult a First 100 Day Plan should be highly beneficial even if the terrain never really resembles the map.
Some of the more common sources of not so great first 100 days are discussed in a useful chapter. They include for example trying to impress and therefore setting unrealistic or unsustainable expectations – or for that matter talking down the predecessor, lack of communication, not finding a good balance between making rash decisions and suffer from analysis paralysis, inability to understand where the true power of the organization lies or to leave the previous employer behind mentally and much more.
Now and then the advice becomes a bit too generic in my opinion, for example general advice on how to handle the board instead of focusing on handling those first 100 days. All the better then, that there is an example of a full First 100 Day Plan in the appendix – this makes the topic more concrete and the reader gets the chance to ponder on how he would have crafted the plan differently. The book is full of examples and the name dropping of well known CEO:s is extensive. As I’m a rather academic person the number of war stories at times become too many for my taste, but taste is obviously something individual. In the end, any leader who uses this text when preparing for his coming assignment will most likely do a better job and so the book delivers.
The authors’ own condensed version of the building blocks is: “Listen and learn. Underpromise and overdeliver”. That’s good advice.
During the first 100 days the rules are different: the manager to some extent gets a free pass from the many small day-to-day emergencies as he must familiarize himself with the company and he also has a golden opportunity to make changes – in fact he’s expected to make them. After the first few month changes will be harder as the mandate for disrupting the status quo is less explicit. A clear well thought out agenda and good preparations are thus of more importance than many realize. The authors with backgrounds from board work, consultancy and academia did a three year study of leadership transitions – both the successful ones and the less so. The authors structure the book with eight building blocks after one of the more successful examples of CEO initiations - that of Paul Pressler joining GAP.
The building blocks for the “great first 100 days”, that also make up most of the chapters, are quite self-explanatory so here they are: 1. Prepare yourself during the countdown (from acceptance until day one), 2. Align expectations (day one until end of first month), 3. Shape your management team (the whole 100 days), 4. Craft your strategic agenda (the whole 100 days), 5. Start transforming culture (month’s three and forward), 6. Manage your board/boss (the whole 100 days), 7. Communicate (the whole 100 days) and 8. Avoid common pitfalls (the whole 100 days). To some extent the advice presented is fairly obvious. This does not mean that it is of no value. Having a well- crafted systematic plan, addressing the multiple demands on a new CEO should be a tremendous help when the pressure of the day-to-day business sets in. There are a number of psychological traps for the rookie boss and the ability to take a step back and consult a First 100 Day Plan should be highly beneficial even if the terrain never really resembles the map.
Some of the more common sources of not so great first 100 days are discussed in a useful chapter. They include for example trying to impress and therefore setting unrealistic or unsustainable expectations – or for that matter talking down the predecessor, lack of communication, not finding a good balance between making rash decisions and suffer from analysis paralysis, inability to understand where the true power of the organization lies or to leave the previous employer behind mentally and much more.
Now and then the advice becomes a bit too generic in my opinion, for example general advice on how to handle the board instead of focusing on handling those first 100 days. All the better then, that there is an example of a full First 100 Day Plan in the appendix – this makes the topic more concrete and the reader gets the chance to ponder on how he would have crafted the plan differently. The book is full of examples and the name dropping of well known CEO:s is extensive. As I’m a rather academic person the number of war stories at times become too many for my taste, but taste is obviously something individual. In the end, any leader who uses this text when preparing for his coming assignment will most likely do a better job and so the book delivers.
The authors’ own condensed version of the building blocks is: “Listen and learn. Underpromise and overdeliver”. That’s good advice.
September 2, 2019
The big ideas:
List the constituents that you think are important and what goals you have for each one and your plan of attack (how you will communicate with them).
Hold one on one meetings with your top senior leaders, ask them each the same 5 questions:
1. What about the company do you want to preserve and why?
2. What do you hope I do?
3. What are you concerned I might do?
4. What are you concerned I might not do?
5. What is your most important tool for figuring out what our customer wants?
When you introduce yourself, you need to answer:
1. Who am I?
2. Where do I come from?
3. Why am I here?
4. What do I plan to accomplish?
5. how do I hope to do it?
As you prepare your introduction, remember:
You don’t have to have all the answers. (Don’t be a know it all)
Address doubts and fears.
When a new leader takes over, convene a meeting with that persons new team members during the first week. With the leader in the room give all the members a chance to introduce themselves and say a bit about who they are and what they do.
Then when the leader is out of the room, have the team answer these questions:
1. What do we expect of this new person?
2. What do we want the new leader to know about us? What do we do well? Where do we need improvement?
3. What do we want to know about the new leader? What are our concerns about him?
4. What are the burning issues at the company?
5. What are the major obstacles the new leader will face?
Put the answers on a chart but ensure they are anonymous so that the new leader cannot connect them to a person.
After a break, reconvene with the new leader and go over the items on the chart. Give the new leader a chance to ask questions about them and explore ways to take action on some of the issues.
This discussion is a great way for the entire team to discover with the new leader some of the unspoken issues, misunderstandings, and disconnects. The anonymity of this exercise can bring more issues to the surface in one day than in weeks of 1 on 1 meetings. Dirty laundry is aired. And in an open atmosphere the team can begin to gel. The new leader can now form an agenda for the first few months.
Neutralize lingering resentment.
The way to build new relationships is to ask”
1. What should I be thinking about that I wasn’t before?
2. What should I know that I might not have known before?
3. What’s on your mind?
4. What would you like the new leader to be doing?
List the constituents that you think are important and what goals you have for each one and your plan of attack (how you will communicate with them).
Hold one on one meetings with your top senior leaders, ask them each the same 5 questions:
1. What about the company do you want to preserve and why?
2. What do you hope I do?
3. What are you concerned I might do?
4. What are you concerned I might not do?
5. What is your most important tool for figuring out what our customer wants?
When you introduce yourself, you need to answer:
1. Who am I?
2. Where do I come from?
3. Why am I here?
4. What do I plan to accomplish?
5. how do I hope to do it?
As you prepare your introduction, remember:
You don’t have to have all the answers. (Don’t be a know it all)
Address doubts and fears.
When a new leader takes over, convene a meeting with that persons new team members during the first week. With the leader in the room give all the members a chance to introduce themselves and say a bit about who they are and what they do.
Then when the leader is out of the room, have the team answer these questions:
1. What do we expect of this new person?
2. What do we want the new leader to know about us? What do we do well? Where do we need improvement?
3. What do we want to know about the new leader? What are our concerns about him?
4. What are the burning issues at the company?
5. What are the major obstacles the new leader will face?
Put the answers on a chart but ensure they are anonymous so that the new leader cannot connect them to a person.
After a break, reconvene with the new leader and go over the items on the chart. Give the new leader a chance to ask questions about them and explore ways to take action on some of the issues.
This discussion is a great way for the entire team to discover with the new leader some of the unspoken issues, misunderstandings, and disconnects. The anonymity of this exercise can bring more issues to the surface in one day than in weeks of 1 on 1 meetings. Dirty laundry is aired. And in an open atmosphere the team can begin to gel. The new leader can now form an agenda for the first few months.
Neutralize lingering resentment.
The way to build new relationships is to ask”
1. What should I be thinking about that I wasn’t before?
2. What should I know that I might not have known before?
3. What’s on your mind?
4. What would you like the new leader to be doing?
Read
March 18, 2025Active listening is my main takeaway.
- crisis management and shifting the playing field in your favour during first 100 days by using your disadvantage to your advantage. this comes through not acting like you know everything and showing tact.
-emphasized communication channels with BOD and internal staff
- culture and the lens other's view you with while in leadership
- some things on tact and restructuring as well
- importance of leaning on team and *some small* things on systems
-shows how to properly serve as a successor for a company, how to treat those you're succeeding, and how to gain goodwill by keeping continuity for employees and board without the decision making of prior leadership
-making decisions with too much info being detrimental, better to make a decision with what info you can and move on to the next than churn
I found some of the bits a bit contradictory about styles of different ceos , but i think that just serves to further the emphasis of tailoring your approach to the situation you find yourself in; adaptability; beysian thinking
- crisis management and shifting the playing field in your favour during first 100 days by using your disadvantage to your advantage. this comes through not acting like you know everything and showing tact.
-emphasized communication channels with BOD and internal staff
- culture and the lens other's view you with while in leadership
- some things on tact and restructuring as well
- importance of leaning on team and *some small* things on systems
-shows how to properly serve as a successor for a company, how to treat those you're succeeding, and how to gain goodwill by keeping continuity for employees and board without the decision making of prior leadership
-making decisions with too much info being detrimental, better to make a decision with what info you can and move on to the next than churn
I found some of the bits a bit contradictory about styles of different ceos , but i think that just serves to further the emphasis of tailoring your approach to the situation you find yourself in; adaptability; beysian thinking
July 17, 2021
This book is nearly 20 years old but still provides great advice for those entering a new leadership role (whatever level it might be). This was a gift from my mentor and she was spot on with this recommendation.
January 2, 2022
Despite the terrible name, this is actually a pretty helpful book as far as biz-lit goes. Provides a fairly useful checklists for how to approach a new job or position change. Felt a little disorganized and repetitive to me.
February 13, 2023
A great read for anyone starting a new leadership position. Much of it is common sense supported by examples from the industry. The book feels very well researched. A good all around reminder of the do's and don'ts
June 9, 2023
This is an outstanding book about starting a new job in a leadership position. It gives a very strong process for onboarding yourself and becoming established within the responsibility and leadership fabric of your new team.
December 25, 2023
Надихаюча книга для тих, хто має амбіцію великої карʼєри або великий виклик попереду. Підходить для працюючих у корпоративній сфері, пропонує доволі змістовні, просто і матеріальні поради. Не втратила актуальність і багато з неї я бачив своїми очима
December 30, 2023
I found it a big help after taking my first Executive Director job and learning on my third day that the non profit was in crisis. This was comforting to know it just comes with the type of role and gave me some ideas I could try
May 24, 2024
The book's written contents are great, but do not match up with the Audible narration which was very frustrating. The Audible version should visually identify which version of the printed book it corresponds to.
June 22, 2018
Didn't finish; it was more for CEOs than my level of "power."
October 21, 2018
A must read prior to your first 90 days
July 7, 2019
Excellent advice for taking on a new leadership role.
June 7, 2020
I love the book, pretty good points to take home even if you are not the new CEO. I mean soon you will be one.
January 1, 2022
“The place to start assessing a culture is to listen, really listen, to how employees describe a place. We believe that within most generalizations there lies an inner core of truth.”
Good tips!
Good tips!
May 17, 2023
Very CEO focused, but some good ideas for leaders
July 11, 2023
Read for research for work - you already know this stuff - geared to CEO mostly…
October 20, 2016
Better than many business books I've read. I took a lot of notes and wrote down a lot of ideas. It some ways it felt like having the advice of a great mentor.
Be warned that this a book that is intended mainly for CEOs. (I'm a new VP.) The authors do comment once every so often about how to apply some of their advice to other leadership roles.
It's also a book about companies that are large and publicly held. At one point, a CEO has a meeting with 420 managers. Haha, my company has about that many people total. There's a chapter about working with the board. We're private. I took what I could from the chapter about the board and applied it to working with other department heads and C-levels.
Even though my copy was published in 2005, much of the content seems to be about CEO activity from 1998-2001. That could be wrong, but that's my impression. It doesn't detract from the book necessarily, but don't expect to hear much about tech companies, for example.
About business books in general: more diversity, please. Small, medium, and large companies. Private, family owned, public. Different industries. Companies we may not have heard of. Managers of small groups, managers of large departments, managers of business lines. I know those companies may be hard to find, and research is difficult. But you can do it, especially with social media as a tool.
Be warned that this a book that is intended mainly for CEOs. (I'm a new VP.) The authors do comment once every so often about how to apply some of their advice to other leadership roles.
It's also a book about companies that are large and publicly held. At one point, a CEO has a meeting with 420 managers. Haha, my company has about that many people total. There's a chapter about working with the board. We're private. I took what I could from the chapter about the board and applied it to working with other department heads and C-levels.
Even though my copy was published in 2005, much of the content seems to be about CEO activity from 1998-2001. That could be wrong, but that's my impression. It doesn't detract from the book necessarily, but don't expect to hear much about tech companies, for example.
About business books in general: more diversity, please. Small, medium, and large companies. Private, family owned, public. Different industries. Companies we may not have heard of. Managers of small groups, managers of large departments, managers of business lines. I know those companies may be hard to find, and research is difficult. But you can do it, especially with social media as a tool.
June 14, 2015
A fantastic read at the beach yesterday; I had started this book last week but finished reading it as the sun was shining and I looked out to the ocean (a perfect place to think about my new role and how to manage the team) ! The two authors interviewed CEO's and leaders in all industries and wrote about what it takes to success in a new leadership position.The first 100 days pyramid is bookmarked for me and the list of how to spend your time has been my priority the past three weeks. I particularly enjoyed the stories about leaders and the success and failures and why leaders often failed. Learning more about the culture in business and strategies for better communication all were valuable for me. Communication is "the key to implementing your agenda." I will use the 8 Point Plan in the Appendix and the explicit and implicit suggestions for communication. Off to write up a Team Time meeting invitation for work as last week it went well gathering the team at a round table to discuss our work projects and teamwork.
August 4, 2014
Desde Leader Summaries recomendamos la lectura del libro Ya eres el jefe, ¿y ahora qué?, de Thomas J. Neff y James M. Citrin.
Las personas interesadas en las siguientes temáticas lo encontrarán práctico y útil: liderazgo, características de un buen líder.
En el siguiente enlace tienes el resumen del libro Ya eres el jefe, ¿y ahora qué?, Un método para tomar las riendas de cualquier organización: Ya eres el jefe, ¿y ahora qué?
Las personas interesadas en las siguientes temáticas lo encontrarán práctico y útil: liderazgo, características de un buen líder.
En el siguiente enlace tienes el resumen del libro Ya eres el jefe, ¿y ahora qué?, Un método para tomar las riendas de cualquier organización: Ya eres el jefe, ¿y ahora qué?
May 18, 2013
This quick read is packed with good advice for a new leader to follow in their first 100 days and the prep period leading up to the official start. I liked the 8-point framework and the many practical examples. My only substantial criticisms are that they relied very heavily on a small set of top CEOs and all of their scenarios involved the most senior roles of organizations. Their ideas are equally applicable to other levels of leadership, where the need is arguably greater.
August 23, 2016
El libro está centrado en experiencias de nuevos líderes en empresas americanas cotizadas y es del año 2005.
Dicho esto, es concreto, práctico y va al grano. Con lo que salvando las distancias de época, ubicación geográfica y tamaño de la empresa, me sirvió de mucho en mi actual coyuntura vital, así que, sin duda es recomendable a cualquiera que se sienta interpelado por el título tan descriptivo del libro.
Dicho esto, es concreto, práctico y va al grano. Con lo que salvando las distancias de época, ubicación geográfica y tamaño de la empresa, me sirvió de mucho en mi actual coyuntura vital, así que, sin duda es recomendable a cualquiera que se sienta interpelado por el título tan descriptivo del libro.
May 28, 2011
This is a great, easy to read book, especially if you are preparing for a job interview. It offers practical information that is easily applicable to any situation,similar to a blueprint for success. This will definitely help you stay organized as a professional and move into a leadership position smoothly.
August 7, 2011
This book was recommended by my new boss as I was moving from a job supervising 2 people to leading a team of 7. The most helpful part was the advice to put together a 90 day plan. It helped me to get off to a great start.
September 22, 2013
Usefull and practical suggestions are embedded all through the book - real world examples by leaders (mostly CEOs of large US corporations), not just success stories but even of seroius missteps. A very balanced read according to me and very helpful.
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