The Executive Transition Playbook
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I wish you the best in your new role, and I hope my ideas and tools will help you transition successfully. If you find this book useful, please recommend it to others who are making transitions. For more information and ideas on leader transitions, you are always welcome to visit my website, www.executivetransitionplaybook.com. I would appreciate your comments.
May you have much success in making a smooth transition into your new role!
Hilary Potts
Middlebury, Connecticut
PART I
Assembling the Elements for a Successful Transition
Chapter 1
Taking Charge of Your
Transition
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
– Colin Powell
Set Yourself Up for Success
Corporate boards, investors, and senior management alike all count on the talents and accomplishments of a new executive to guide their business forward. They visualize the contributions — in terms of revenue and earnings — that the new leader will deliver. They expect a fairy-tale story: With a wave of a magic wand, or so they think, associates are inspired, customers abound, and innovative solutions lead to expanding markets.
Unfortunately, the reality is that an estimated 40 percent of executives in new roles fail in the first two years. The cost of failure and lost productivity can add up to millions of dollars merely in recruiting expenses, signing bonuses, and compensation packages, in addition to the costs to the business. And you, the new executive, face the possibility of looking for another new role in less than two years.
Since you are reading this book, you are most likely looking for a better way to ensure your successful entry into a new role. You may want to make changes to effectively integrate into the business, but you aren’t quite sure how to approach these changes. Maybe you have seen too many of your colleagues get tripped up in their transitions and do not want this to happen to you. Perhaps you realize that the transition plans you used in the past may not be adequate for this new role. Whatever the reason, I commend you for this awareness. The Executive Transition Playbook presented in this book will assist you in navigating your entry into a new role.
Often, executives spend all their time on what the business needs, and they run out of time for themselves. It’s easy to assume you know how to transition, as you’ve probably changed roles many times throughout your career. Unfortunately, some leaders equate transition plans with onboarding and orientation checklists, instead of seeing a transition plan as a strategic planning tool.
The ideas in this book come from actual executive transitions. Not every issue will apply to your situation. Still, I truly care about helping you avoid common mistakes so you can successfully integrate into your new role.
I have seen far too many executives decide to forego a transition plan, assuming they could make a positive contribution without the plan. Sadly, these leaders find themselves 8 to 12 months into the new role struggling with business relationships or lacking the full understanding of the business that’s needed for them to make strategic decisions. Many don’t even realize that the lack of a transition plan is a key cause of their struggles. A tool such as the Executive Transition Playbook helps leaders create a strategy and a prioritized transition plan to avoid making any missteps when entering a new role.
At times, I may be stating the obvious. I have found that the simplest and most obvious leadership concepts are easily intellectualized, but harder to apply on a routine basis. Simple leadership fundamentals can be overlooked when more challenging issues present themselves.
Let’s face it: Expectations are high, whether they come from the Board, the market, the new team, or senior management. Extraordinary leaders know their role is to serve the people and the business and to take the necessary actions to ensure that they are fully equipped to support others. Leaders are keen to get started, as they have quite a bit of ground to cover in a short time. You may prefer to pay attention to what interests you versus what’s important and needs attention. Successful leaders know, though, that a transition is a time to thoroughly learn about and assess the new business.
When leaders incorporate simple leadership fundamentals into their transition plans, they are better equipped to navigate challenging situations. These leaders are prepared for the conversations that focus on building relationships and creating unique solutions.
The first few months are critical to getting established and making first impressions. To get the most out of your transition, go beyond seeing your transition as a one-off, three-month project and create a strategy and a plan to extend the themes of your transition into the next 6, 12, or 18 months. This allows you to move effectively from the “honeymoon” period to making a full contribution to the team. This requires having a way to quickly review and assess the business. It entails building the relationships and developing plans appropriate to the business situation. The Executive Transition Playbook is designed to do just that: to help you identify what you need to learn and to make plans to get up-to-speed. In Chapter 2, I present the Executive Transition Playbook and talk about its components.
First, though, take a look at yourself: Are you ready to make a successful transition? Are you prepared to handle the personal and interpersonal characteristics a transition requires?
Assess Your Transition Readiness
Before you develop and implement your transition plan, use the questions below to assess your transition readiness. In your analysis, consider the willingness of the organization to accept you in your new role. Figure 1-1 outlines questions to help you get ready for the transition.
As you answer these questions, you can see what you need to address to make your transition successful. The transition readiness assessment gives you a starting point to create your Executive Transition Playbook.
Chapter 2
Understanding the Executive Transition Playbook
The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
– Mark Twain
Don’t Talk Yourself Out of a Transition Plan
You have transitioned so many times that you know the drill. You are busy with your new duties, and the business comes first. Things come up that need your immediate attention, so you decide to forego a transition plan. Maybe you plan to make leadership adjustments once you know the business needs and after you get settled. Taking time to create a plan may feel like it’s cutting into valuable face time with colleagues and potential allies. However, if Benjamin Franklin were here he would say, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”
Imagine a veteran pilot who says he doesn’t need to review the flight plan because he’s flown the same route so many times. In essence, executives who elect to work without their own transition plans are like pilots operating without flight plans. You might know what to do; however, each situation is a bit different. When an issue arises, as it does with every pilot, you will want to know how to respond.
Use your transition to create a strategy to test out assumptions and leadership approaches. When colleagues know you are actively engaged in your transition, it opens the door for others to share information and give you the feedback to keep your transition on track. Many leaders confuse “onboarding,” or orientation, programs with leader transitions. Onboarding and orientations help introduce a new employee to the company and cover logistics, training programs, policies, procedures, and other basics about the company.
Transition planning is more strategic and can shorten the learning curve to achieve success quickly, but not every organization offers such assistance in a formalized way. The Executive Transition Playbook provides a strategy for how to review the business and get engaged. The Playbook easily incorporates onboarding and orientation items. Ultimately, you will want to look at your transition more strategically to make sure it covers the key le
arning, communications, and social interactions you need to get up-to-speed.
The Executive Transition Playbook
The Executive Transition Playbook takes a strategic approach to prioritizing and sequencing a series of interactions, so that a new leader can move swiftly to take full responsibility for the business. Figure 2-1 presents the five steps in the Executive Transition Playbook: Set Goals, Develop the Transition Plan, Assess the Business, Share Observations, and Step into Action.
The process starts with Setting Goals for the transition, ones that are aligned with what you and the organization want to accomplish in that transition. The next step is to create a Transition Plan using the six components — Learn, Connect, Assimilate, Lead, Communicate, and Balance. The remaining steps of the Executive Transition Playbook show you ways to Assess what you have learned, Share your information with your stakeholders, and Step into Action, as you help lead the organization forward.
One executive I worked with said the Playbook updated his own toolkit. He described the Playbook as a sophisticated, laserlike approach that enabled him to streamline his transition activities. The Executive Transition Playbook keeps you focused on what matters while you create the version of the Playbook that works for you in your particular transition.
Throughout the rest of this book, you will have an opportunity to explore each of the components of the Executive Transition Playbook.
Establish Your Transition Strategy and Goals
Goal setting is the first step to goal achieving.
It’s surprising how many executives believe that merely taking on a new role is the goal itself. They celebrate the promotion or hiring and miss the opportunity to use the transition to create new leadership milestones. Then these executives quickly turn their attention from the promotion to the next goal: achieving the business’s targets. But these executives bypass the critical interim process of assessing their entrance into the role and estimating the impact their leadership will have on future business performance. Without an Executive Transition Playbook, it can be difficult to measure how well the leader is truly serving the organization.
Being a servant leader means focusing on the growth and well-being of the people and the communities the leader serves. It’s about taking care of the business by attending to others. When employees can perform at their best, the company thrives.
The Executive Transition Playbook gives the leader a preview to all aspects of the business so as to be of best service. You can create the work environment that achieves the desired results in the right way. The best way to start this process is through establishing clear goals for the transition. What is written down, gets done. Clear goals enable you to check your plans against what you want to accomplish, and against what the organization wants you to accomplish, to ensure that what you do makes a substantial contribution. At times, what others expect you to do and what you think is important may not be in sync. As the leader, your role is to find ways to ensure that there is clear goal alignment.
Figure 2-2 outlines Leader Transition Goals and Strategy as the first step in the Executive Transition Playbook. It has separate sections to capture the business goals versus your personal goals. By establishing both business and personal goals, you will be able to find ways to develop both the business and yourself.
It’s a mistake to move from goal setting to action without first outlining a strategy and a set of plans to achieve your goals. Throughout the transition period, revisit your Leader Transition Goals and Strategy to stay on track.
Align Your Transition Strategy to the Business Situation
You need a strategy for determining the right way to approach a leader transition. Many leaders focus too much on what they want to do, and forget to consider the business environment and the people. What works in one situation could fail in another.
Depending on the business, you may inherit a business strategy, or you may need to create a whole new strategy. Knowing the business situation gives you an indication of what you need to do. If the business is achieving its goals, you have the opportunity to listen and learn. In a turnaround situation, you may need to begin setting direction sooner. A start-up business could require a faster-paced transition to get things up-and-running. Knowing the situation will help you set your goals for the transition.
◆Take a good look at the business today to determine its current situation.
◆Is the business a high-growth start-up or a well-established business?
◆Does the business need some major adjustments or just minor ones?
◆Is it a mature business in a state of stagnation or decline that could use a boost in revenue growth?
◆Is the company in the midst of a business transformation, or are key initiatives in progress?
◆What other leadership changes are occurring at the same time as yours?
Understanding the business environment is critical in determining how you will lead through the transition and beyond. This may mean making adjustments to how you prefer to lead in favor of what the business requires. Remember, simply because the business could be in trouble doesn’t mean you can forego a transition plan. In fact, this situation may require a more thoughtful transition strategy to ensure that your entry helps the performance of the business, instead of taking the business further off-track.
Determine the factors that led the Board, the owners, or the senior managers to make a change in the leadership at this time. Take a look at how the business situation will affect your interactions and decision-making in the first 30-, 60-, or 90-day period.
The Components of the Executive Transition Playbook
The second step in the Executive Transition Playbook is to create a transition plan using the six components: Learn, Lead, Connect, Assimilate, Communicate, and Balance. The Playbook is designed to provide both the structure and the flexibility to enable you to develop a customized transition plan to meet your transition goals and assess the business situation.
The six components help you review key business elements. The Playbook helps you capture your learning and pertinent activities and events in one place, so that when opportunities arise you can make adjustments. With the information in one place, it is easier to look at scenarios and see the business interdependencies to make fact-based conclusions. You will also be able to incorporate pauses, to give you time to think and reflect on your observations. The time to think aids in assimilating the information and making any adjustment in your transition activities.
Using the six components helps maximize learning and engagement and allows you to stay organized and on track. Let’s take a closer look at the six components:
1. Learn
Do not miss the opportunity to learn and get a fresh look at the business before making changes. Engage the team in taking an objective look at the business with you. Assess the business elements and avoid making hasty assumptions based on preconceived notions.
2. Lead
It can be a mistake for you to assume you can lead in this business situation in the same way you did in your last one. Transitions are a great time to make enhancements and shed old behaviors that can hold you back in the new role. Embrace new behaviors that will allow you to become more effective and efficient in carrying out the role.
3. Connect
Foster stronger relationships by getting to know the people inside the company, as well as external constituents. Understand how work gets accomplished through the interactions of all those people. Find ways to quickly build mutual trust and respect through open, candid communication. Be willing to help solve problems and commit to follow-through.
4. Assimilate
High-performing teams are critical to an organization’s success. The entry of a new leader changes the dynamics of a team. It’s up to you to engage with the executive team early in the process. An Assimilation Work Session (see Figures 16-1 and 16-2) is a wonderful way to facilitate dialogue and accelerate your onboarding. The session provides an opp
ortunity to understand how the executive team currently operates. Moreover, it allows you to assess the overall talents and capabilities of the collective team. You can quickly determine if the right people are in the right roles doing the right things.
5. Communicate
Most people will want to know how the new leader will impact their work. They will be listening for signs of change. People want to quickly get to know and understand how the new leader will approach the business. Direct communication gives people the information they need and gives you the ability to see how your messages are socialized throughout the company. You can also use communication to reduce rumors and keep people focused on achieving the business’s desired results.
6. Balance
A new role typically means extra hours and additional stress. Daily practices, along with attention to family and personal time, can often take a back seat to the long hours it takes to get up-to-speed in the new role. Incorporating healthy practices into your transition plan aids in the elimination of stresses and imbalances that frequently accompany a transition. Paying attention to family and personal time can give you the necessary break to stay grounded, energized, and focused.
The six key components are interrelated — they form a circle, always a strong shape—and work best using an iterative approach. Chapters 4 through 22 will provide the tools for you to create your transition plan. As you work on your transition plan, you will find yourself reviewing the various components when it makes sense for you. Similarly, as you work in one component, you will find yourself gaining strengths in another.
As noted above, each transition is unique to the business situation; you create your own transition to meet your individual needs. Figure 2-3 suggests activities that you may want to carry out in relation to each component to help you build the knowledge, relationships, and skills needed to succeed in your new role.