|
Table 1 Common Traps |
|
|
Trap |
Results |
|
Being isolated |
Failure to build the relationships and sources of information
necessary to understand what really is going on |
|
Coming in with “The Answer” |
Narrow fixes
proposed to complex problems alienate people and
opportunities for an optimal solution are missed |
|
Staying too long with the existing team |
Time and
energy are wasted trying to compensate for the team’s weaknesses |
|
Attempting to do too much |
The
organization becomes confused and a critical mass of resources
cannot be brought to bear on a set of focused initiatives |
|
Being capture by the wrong people |
Information is
inadequate and potential supporters are alienated; decisions are based on poor
advice |
|
Setting unrealistic expectations |
Failure to
negotiate the initial mandate and to meet superiors’ expectations |
Meeting the Challenge
How can new leaders avoid these traps and make successful
transitions? Research on transition management points to seven core principles
that can help new managers take charge more effectively.
1.
Leverage the time before entry so you can
hit the ground running.
2.
Organize to learn so you acquire needed
knowledge efficiently once you are on the job.
3.
Secure early wins to build momentum fast.
4.
Lay a foundation for major improvements
in operational and financial performance that must be achieved in a two to
three year period in order to win promotion.
5.
Create a personal vision of what the
organization can be that focuses employees efforts and “pulls” the organization
towards the future.
6.
Build winning coalitions to marshal the
necessary political support for your key change initiatives.
7.
Manage yourself in order to deal with the
inevitable stresses and stay on the “rested edge.”
Principle #1. Leverage the Time before Entry
The transition begins with the recruiting process, not
with formal entry into the organization. New
leaders who fail to use the time before entry effectively, undermine their
ability to get on top of the job right
at the outset of their tenure.[4]
There is a strong tendency to put off getting to the job until the last minute
because you’re trying to organize personal affairs or take a break or complete
things at the old job. But the time prior to entry is a priceless period during
which a new leader can absorb information about an organization and begin to
plan. Upon formally entering a new organization, the new leader is invariably
swept up in the day-to-day demands of the office and has little time to do
preparatory research.
Anticipating the day-to-day demands of starting a new job,
the wise new leader uses the time between the decision to take a new position
and formal entry to jump-start the transition process. This pre-entry period
provides precious, uninterrupted time to assess the organization and begin to
formulate hypotheses about what needs to be done. New Leaders should, before
setting foot in their new offices, understand as much as possible about their
organizations’ strategy, strengths, and weaknesses and have formulated some
hypotheses to begin testing.
Principle #2. Organize to Learn
Entering a new organization can be akin to sailing in a
dense fog. Able to see only a short distance, new leaders must exercise caution
as they strive to get their bearings. Because expectations are high and time is
precious, they must learn as efficiently as possible everything that they can
about the organization’s markets, strategy, and capabilities.
Effective leaders make preparations for three distinct types of learning.[5]
·
Technical learning comprises an
understanding of (1) the nature and key success factors of products and target
markets and customers, (2) the current strategy and its organizational
requirements, and (3) an organization’s technological and human capabilities.
·
Cultural learning consists in identifying
an organization’s cultural strengths and weaknesses, norms and values, accepted
“ways of working,” and habits that have, over time, contributed to its unique
character; understanding how the organization relates to customers, investors,
suppliers, and employees; and assessing the capacity of the organization’s
people, processes, and systems to change.
·
Political learning entails assessing how
decisions are made; understanding who is consulted and who most influential,
evaluating which coalitions are most influential and which likely to be
supportive of intended changes; and identifying the locus and source of power.
In the face of the rapid pace of the transition period,
new leaders often must struggle to stay focused on what they need to learn.
Apart from deploying basic principles of time management, new leaders would do
well to set specific learning targets for the first six months. Although,
clearly such targets must be tailored to specific sets of circumstances, the
set of targets reproduced as Table 2 developed by a leader brought from
the outside to head a major division of a corporation in a different industry,
provides a useful starting point for planning the learning process.
|
Table 2
Learning Goals |
|
By end of Week 1 |
|
• Get
a general sense of the place. • Review current performance
metrics. • Tour plant and laboratory
and lock in plan to learn the business. • Secure detailed
technical/product review. • Clarify boss’s performance
expectations. • Have two to three
conversations with each person on my team. • Take a first pass at what
they believe to be the biggest issues. • Decide
which issues to raise at first staff meeting one (week 2). |
|
By end of Month 1 |
|
• Cultivate
detailed understanding of strategy. • Develop capacity to meet
performance expectations. • Visit key customers • Visit field and distribution
sites. • Refine
assumptions about CEO’s style and agenda and how senior group operates. • Assess capabilities of top
management group. • Spend time with each peer;
assess whether a plus or minus in terms of own goals. • Identify
possible influential allies. |
|
By end of Month 3 |
|
• Have solid grasp of the business. • Be clear what it will take to make annual
targets. • Assess
technical and operational capabilities. • Be
clear on market structure and competitive realities. • Refine
assumptions on capacity to realize strategy. • Clarify
assessment of customers’ assessments of what it is like to do business with
us. • Refine
assumptions about major competitors’ strengths. • Assess
preliminarily who can be counted on, who are likely “keepers.” • Identify
major priorities and possible problems to concentrate on in the short term. |
|
By end of Month 6 |
|
• Be clear on boss’s priorities and on
style of learning the organization as well as achieving his/her priorities. • Articulate
image of the company in its ideal state. • Know
who should stay on and who leave the team and a plan to implement changes. • Clarify
broad changes needed to improve and sustain performance. • Plan
to succeed managerially, politically, and personally over the next 18-36
months. |
Principle #3. Secure Early Wins
Within six months, a new leader must have made substantial
progress energizing people and focusing them on solving the business’s most
pressing problems using techniques that have a quick, dramatic impact. It is
crucial that employees perceive momentum to be building during the transition.
Tangible improvements in performance motivate employees and encourage them to
further experiment. Early wins are a powerful way to get people pumped up.
New leaders secure early wins by identifying significant
problems that can be tackled in a reasonable period of time the solutions to
which will yield tangible operational and financial (not just behavioral and
attitudinal) improvements in performance. Examples include bottlenecks that
limit productivity and misaligned incentive systems that undermine performance
by generating internal conflict. Efforts at team building or improving the
effectiveness of meetings, although they might make eventual contributions to
the business, do not provide early wins.
How early wins are achieved is also important. The manner
in which tangible results are achieved should create models of behavior
consistent with the new leader’s vision of how the organization should work.
This suggests careful design and oversight of the processes employed to secure
early wins, specifically involving the right people, defining stretch goals,
marshaling resources, setting deadlines, pushing for results, and rewarding
success. The ultimate goal is to set up a virtuous cycle that reinforces
desired behaviors by continually building from modest, initial improvements to
more fundamental ones.
To secure early wins, a new leader should therefore take
three, discrete steps.
·
Establish A-item priorities. A-items are
statements of the major objectives for the first couple of years of a new
leader’s tenure. When A-items are defined, goals for the transition period can
be seen in the context of the next two to three years, allowing near-term
actions to do double duty by helping the new leader secure early wins that move
the organization towards longer-term objectives.
·
Identify a center of gravity. Initial assessments
of a company’s strategy and performance should enable a new leader to
identify a center of gravity, an
operational area or process in which
substantial and noticeable early wins can be achieved. Examples are a consumer goods company’s distribution system, a
mutual funds business’s investment process, and the hand-off from research to
marketing in a pharmaceutical company.
·
Initiate pilot projects. Articulating A-items
and identifying a center of gravity lead immediately to pilot projects,
specific initiatives within the center of gravity that can be attacked right
away to secure early wins. Implementation plans for pilot projects should
define the standards to be adhered to, the resources that will be needed, and
the methodology to be employed, and specify both tangible and intangible goals.
Improvement will be measured both by early wins and by the models of behavior
that are created for the future.
Principle #4. Lay a Foundation for Major Improvements
Early wins can help a new leader get off to a good start,
but they are not sufficient for continued success. To meet the boss’s and their
own expectations, new leaders must also lay a foundation for the deeper
cultural changes needed to support sustained improvement in the organization’s
performance. The process is not unlike the launching of a two-stage rocket into
orbit; securing lifts a new leader off the ground, and efforts at
foundation-building provide the thrust necessary to achieve orbit and avoid
falling back to earth.
Are there steps a new leader can take during the
transition period to begin the process of cultural change? Yes, but it is
important here to emphasize the obvious: there are intrinsic limits to what a
new leader can do during the transition period beyond laying a foundation for
change. Except under the most unusual circumstances, key people will not be let
go, strategy will not be changed, major plants will not be closed or relocated,
new products will not be scrapped, and acquisitions will not be consummated
solely on the initiative of the new leader. A new leader’s efforts during the
first six months to lay a foundation for long-term improvements must focus on
diagnosing cultural problems and taking early actions that begin to change
perceptions.
Whatever the particular cultural change challenge to be
met, a new leader must get people to think
differently and consider new ways of operating. Short of altering strategy,
reinventing structure, or replacing key people, there are at least five
ways new leaders can initiate culture change.
·
Set up
pilot projects. As discussed
above, initiate experiments in which employees have the chance to try out new
tools and new behaviors
· Change the way performance is measured. Adjust the metrics by which success is judged and
align managers’ and employees’ objectives with the new metrics.
·
Educate and involve. Expose employees to
new ways of operating and thinking about the business; in particular, help them
through visits and benchmarking, to develop new perspectives on customers and
competitors.
·
Build up on islands of excellence. Identify
and encourage units and groups in the organization that have taken positive
steps and hold them up as examples to be emulated.
· Collectively envision new ways to operate. Establish mechanisms that bring people together in
order that they might envision new approaches to doing business.
Principle #5. Create a Personal Vision
Visioning is a process through which a new leader
conceives a personal vision for an organization and prepares to make it a
shared vision. Visioning begins during, but continues beyond, the transition
period. A shared vision begins with a mind’s-eye image consistent with the
leader’s style and situation, that is subsequently subjected to progressive and
overlapping stages of clarification, testing, and exposure to others. It
evolves gradually as others become involved with it and progress through the
same stages, into a common vision that provides both inspiration and a more
unified sense of purpose.[6]
An effective vision encompasses three key elements: consistency
with the new leader’s A-item priorities; linkage to core values that provide
meaning and purpose; and clear embodiment in the form of evocative descriptors.
· Consistency
with A-item priorities. The vision
must be consistent with the A-item priorities defined by the new leader for the
organization.
· Linkage to core values. An effective vision is built on a foundation of
values such as integrity and loyalty that imbue it with meaning and provide a
sense of purpose.
· Embodiment in evocative descriptors. A-items and core values must describe in graphic
terms the organization as envisioned: how it will be organized; what will be
different about it; what will be seen and heard; and how it will be
perceived by those who work in and do
business with it.
Effective
visioning proceeds through cycles of observation, imaginative visualization,
and clarification. The new leaders best able to formulate a vision of what they
wanted to see were the most careful observers of how their new organizations
worked. Thoughtful analysis of the situation at hand and the subtle ways
behavior influences performance is the foundation of efforts to imagine what
might be. But powerful visions rarely can be developed in complete isolation.
Whether it is from subordinates who are becoming trusted aides, or bosses or
external advisors, effective new leaders find people they can trust to help
them test and clarify their personal visions.
Whether
visioning comes naturally or not, all new leaders can enhance their capacity
for observation, imaginative visualization, and clarification by
imposing some discipline on the process. By
writing down thoughts and observations as they come, the new leader has a basis
for reflection while moving towards a visualization of the ideal. Similarly,
keeping a journal of thoughts during the imaginative visualization phase can
capture insights.
Principle #6. Build Winning Coalitions
For an
organization to be transformed, powerful people and groups must perceive it to
be in their interest to help realize the new leader’s goals for the
organization. New leaders can learn and plan, but alone can achieve little. To
ensure that employees act in ways that support what they want their
organizations to become, new leaders must build supportive coalitions and
either change the orientation or diminish the influence of existing coalitions
that are not supportive. Done well, this alters the power structure to favor
the implementation of key change initiatives.
To build winning coalitions, new leaders should:
·
Analyze the
key political arenas. To
understand organizational politics, a new leader must analyze three
political arenas in which it is important to build supportive coalitions: top management; middle management; and the work
force. Mastering the first arena involves cultivating and retaining the boss’s
confidence and building productive working relationships with top-level
subordinates and peers. In the second arena, a new leader must build supportive
coalitions among those in middle management who control key decision-making
processes and can assemble enthusiastic support for necessary changes. In the
third arena, new leaders must build a base of trust and respect sufficient
to dissuade working level employees from reflexively resisting needed change.
·
Identify
key groups. Because much of an
organization’s day-to-day work is accomplished through processes that do not
appear on any organization chart, new leaders must look beyond organizational
units and functions. Information technology steering committees, distributor
advisory groups, and all manner of working groups often are the places where
the battle for change is lost or won.
·
Map
influence networks. Having
identified important groups, a new leader can understand their internal
structure by mapping their influence networks, that is by identifying who
within a group defers to whom on crucial issues. Successfully convincing
pivotal people of the need for change translates into much broader acceptance
on the part of those whose resistance can mean lack of support generally
·
Consolidate sources of support. A new
leader armed with knowledge of the political landscape, can reach out and
consolidate latent sources of support. This may include employees who,
frustrated by the way the company has operated, have pushed for ways of working
that are, perhaps, more in line with behaviors advocated by the new leader.
·
Persuade the persuadable. Beyond
consolidating support, a new leader must also strive to convince those who can
be convinced. Early in the transition, many people will be neither dedicated
supporters nor implacable opponents. They will be indifferent or undecided and,
hence, persuadable.
Principle #7. Manage Oneself
Finally, new leaders must manage themselves if they are to stay on the
rested edge. The physical demands of a transition are high; new leaders log
many hours traveling to field sites and attending meetings only to face more
work as they return at night with bulging briefcase. Emotional demands are also
great as new leaders must cope with not only the challenges at work, but also
disruptions in the usual rhythms of home life.
An inability to manage stress can impede efforts to learn about a new
organization and establish the political base necessary for success. A clear
head can provide a substantial edge, given the amount of knowledge most leaders
need to amass about new products, technical skills, distribution practices, and
customer service capabilities. Likewise, emotional balance contributes
significantly to a new leader’s capacity to recognize existing coalitions and
develop productive working relationships.
New leaders must prepare for the emotional impact of transition by
developing mechanisms that help them maintain equanimity. What can new leaders
do to manage the inevitable tensions of transition? The key is to find ways to
exercise clear-headed judgment, stay focused, and maintain emotional evenness.
Knowing and managing oneself is as important as knowing and managing the
organization.
Build self-awareness. Above all a new leader must
find ways to maintain perspective and avoid isolation. Self-diagnosis and
reflection are an important set of tools for achieving this. Maintaining
perspective entails (1) finding opportunities for self-reflection, (2)
developing productive approaches to self-diagnosis, and (3) translating the
resulting insights into better strategies for coping. A crucial part of
self-diagnosis is understanding one’s leadership style, that is, the
characteristic ways one learns, makes decisions, motivates, and deals with
power structures. New leaders will better appreciate the nature of the power
they can wield over the organization and the visioning task they face to the
extent that they understand their preferred leadership styles and how they
differ from those of their bosses and key subordinates.
Use advice and counsel. New leaders can gain
additional perspective by soliciting appropriate kinds of advice and counsel.
The most common form of advice new leaders seek is technical, including help
with strategy, technologies, and functional aspects of the business (e.g.,
marketing, finance, engineering, and manufacturing). But the most common causes
of failure do not arise in the technical realm. Rather, they are either
political (failure to read and react to political currents) or personal (failure
to manage the internal challenges of the transition). New leaders are more
likely to succeed if they build and utilize a balanced network of technical,
political, and personal advisors. Advantage accrues to new leaders who are
adept at finding advisors appropriate to specific situations, and to their
leadership style and who learn to be accomplished consumers of the right kinds
of help.
Putting It All Together
The seven principles elaborated above must be pursued in
an integrated, methodical manner. To do so requires that the relationships
among key activities be understood on three distinct levels: goals, process,
and activities.
At the first level, the overarching goal is to build
momentum towards achieving A-item priorities, the objectives the new leader wants
to achieve within two to three years. Success during this transitional period
relies on the new leader securing early wins and laying a foundation for deeper
change. A new leader’s ability to do this rests, in turn, on a deeper
foundation of skill in learning, visioning, and coalition building. These
relationships are captured in the transition pyramid depicted in Figure 1.
At the second level, new leaders must cope with the inescapable messiness of the transition process. It involves many overlapping activities and iterations as a new leader learns, plans, and begins to take action. There is, nevertheless, a logic to how the process unfolds. Initial assessments help a new leader identify a center of gravity, which permits a deeper assessment of organizational capabilities, which supports a more focused set of priorities. (see Figure 2).
At the third and final level, the effort a new leader devotes to each of
the foundational activities of learning, visioning, and coalition
building shifts as the transition proceeds (see Figure 3). At the “fuzzy front-end” before taking the job, a
new leader’s attention should be focused on learning.[7]
In the period immediately following entry, the emphasis remains on learning,
but as the transition proceeds it shifts gradually towards visioning and
coalition building.
It’s Up To You
Success in putting the seven principles
into practice isn’t a guarantee of effectiveness. Even the best-laid plans can
go awry. But care in planning for and undertaking a transition can substantially
improve one’s chances of success and thereby, better prepare one to exploit
opportunities to make further transitions in the future.