by Hilary Potts
Treat your direct reports as you would treat your valued customers. Customer visits usually entail preparation. So create a strategy and plan for the series of conversations with direct reports and other key stakeholders. The first meeting is intended to establish an interpersonal relationship. The second is for discussing the business. The third is for doing a deeper dive into the business. (Of course, you can change this structure to fit the business situation.)
Meeting 1: Getting Acquainted
The first meeting with a direct report is about getting to know each other on a personal level. The best thing is to schedule the first meeting in a neutral location, preferably not your offices but somewhere you can have a casual, uninterrupted conversation. Direct reports will be listening to find out if you are someone they want to follow, or if their job might be in jeopardy. Be curious and interested. Ask questions, and really listen.
While you want to put the direct reports at ease, be careful not to make any promises or commitments you can’t keep. Above all, be yourself. Demonstrate your values and behaviors.
Keep the conversation as informal as possible. Some individuals may feel a bit uncomfortable, so work to put them at ease. Ask plenty of open-ended questions to get them talking about themselves. This informal conversation will likely lead to a discussion about their roles, accomplishments, and business interests. Use this time to assess whether each person would be a valuable member of your team.
Try posing these types of questions at this first meeting:
◆Tell me about your work and your role. What skills do you bring to your role?
◆What are the most rewarding aspects of your job?
◆Why do you do your job, besides for the paycheck?
◆How can I support you?
◆What brings out the best in you? What are your work preferences and styles?
◆How would you describe the business and what’s working or not working?
◆What are you most proud of in this past year? Why?
◆What do you like to do when you’re not working?
◆If you could make a request of anyone in the company, what would you ask for? Why?
You can help your direct reports prepare for this meeting. I suggest sending a short agenda or set of objectives for the meeting. Because they will assume you are reviewing their career and performance, they too will want to be prepared for this important discussion. Consider these possible thought-provoking topics for the agenda:
◆What I would like my new leader to know about me is…
◆I would describe my own leadership style as…
◆What excites me most about my role is…
◆My single greatest concern is…
◆The two things that would help us be more successful are…
◆To get the most out of my performance, it helps to…
◆The most effective way to give me feedback is…
◆What requires our immediate attention is…
◆I consider your top three priorities to be…
◆My personal priorities and goals are…
Direct reports will be assessing you, as well. Be prepared to answer questions from them. The most likely ones are:
◆Why are you here?
◆What is your experience with this industry, this business, and these products?
◆What are your plans to…?
◆What is your impression of our product or service mix?
◆What changes do you intend to make?
◆What can I expect?
◆What is the best way to work with you?
Some unspoken questions could be: “Are you really as good as people say you are?” Or “Can you really help us improve our business performance?” Or “You’re the fifth leader in five years — how long will you be around, and can you make a significant contribution in that time period?”
While you can’t change the past, you can have a great impact on the present. Your actions and ability to help others focus will aid in getting the work done.
Leave enough time to share ideas and get all questions answered. Save a few minutes at the end to wrap up the discussion and set the next steps. Do not end the meeting abruptly; the direct reports will take that as a negative sign.
Follow up after each meeting with a short email or note with further comments and suggested actions. People will appreciate this extra effort.
Meeting 2: Discussing the Business
Use this second meeting to talk about the business. Tailor each discussion to match each direct report’s roles. Ask open-ended questions, and stay in learning mode. This is a good time to listen carefully and stay present. Try not to interrupt in an attempt to move things along. You can learn a lot about what each person does and how the organization really works when you let the discussion unfold naturally.
Discuss the following topics to help you learn how the organization works:
Business Performance – Objectives, Goals, Strategies, Tactics, Financials
People and Team – How are things working in your area? How do we engage our people? Who are our high performers? What is the level of engagement?
Customers – What do customers say about our products?
What challenges are we facing in the market?
Vendors and Partnerships – What is our strategy with working with others? Who are considered strategic partners?
Working Together – Roles and Expectations
Processes – How are the processes enabling or hindering work outputs?
Enterprise Initiatives – Which are we planning?
Working across the Organization – How do you and your team work with other areas?
Opportunities and Challenges – Give examples.
Support – What support do you need from me, and what other resource requirements do you have?
Professional Career Development – What are your career aspirations?
Miscellaneous – What other advice do you have as we move forward?
You may not have time to fully cover all these topics during this second meeting. What you are looking to do is get a high-level overview that will enable you to delve into more-detailed discussions in future meetings.
To minimize the time that people need to prepare for these one-on-one meetings, ask your direct reports to use only existing documents for your review. The key is to have the high-level business conversation with your direct reports. This way, you will learn about the business and observe how your direct reports work. With this information, you will have a better idea about what you want them to keep doing as well as how to shape the process to meet the needs of both of you.
Meeting 3: Performing a Deep-Dive Business Review
By the time you hold the third one-on-one meeting with a direct report, you are getting familiar enough with the business that you can make intelligent comments and ask thought-provoking questions. It will be natural, then, to begin to move into a routine business interaction. Some of your direct reports will look to you for guidance on, decisions about, or confirmation of what they are doing. It is important for you to stay in learning mode and be clear about what you can commit to now, or what you need to follow up on later.
You have come too far in your business analysis not to spend one more meeting further assessing the business. It’s best to remind yourself to maintain a broad organizational view and not react to people’s functions or business interests. Use this meeting as an opportunity to both dive deeper and look for cross-organizational alignment and interdependencies. When you move into the Assessment and Sharing phases of the Executive Transition Playbook, in Chapters 23 and 24, you will have time to share cohesive next steps.
By this stage, you should have established a cadence and rhythm with your direct reports. You now know far more about how the business operates. Now, you are looking for clear, candid insights about the business’s challenges and opportunities. You can ask direct reports for further information about issues, disconnects, and solut
ions tried in the past. Stay objective, without letting your own opinions leak into the conversation. Until you have fully assessed the entire business, much of what you say may be conjecture and may even fuel rumors or miscommunications about what will happen.
It might be a good idea in this session to let your direct report know that you are taking a “deep dive” into the details and that this won’t be your normal way of operating. Your transparency may put people at ease and allow the two of you to use this session for what it is intended: for your learning and education about the business.
Remember: As you share ideas, it can be easy to slip into the mode of talking about how you did things in the past. Instead, ask thought-provoking questions. You can share your ideas without needing to validate these ideas in terms of your former company. By your third meeting, you may find yourself slipping into former ways of working, which may not be appropriate in this role. Focus instead on using the leadership styles and behaviors appropriate both to what you are learning and to the business situation at hand.
In this discussion, you will want to validate and confirm what you know about the business, as well as seek input from your leaders on next steps. This is a time to stay in active listening mode and come prepared with probing questions. Be sure to allow time for people to answer the questions fully. Discussion topics for the third meeting can include a deeper dive from the second meeting, as well as the following:
◆Continued discussion of the business and topics raised in Meeting 2
◆Key initiatives in which the direct reports are involved
◆Opportunities and challenges for all parties
◆Risks that the company faces
◆Resource requirements
◆Process or system requirements
◆Talent review
This chapter outlined a series of one-on-one meetings. To build on the data and insights gleaned from them, you will want to create a series of business team review meetings to gain information from the entire team. Use your one-on-one meetings to prepare for the team meetings.
Chapter 18
Finding the Right Talent
Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Shape the Executive Team
Getting the right people into the right roles doing the right things takes keen observation and assessment. It requires assessing whether the team of leaders can work together to solve problems and advance the business strategy. Of course, you want the best talent you can find and afford. However, keep in mind that a group of brilliant individuals who can’t work together can be worse than a group of mediocre players who complement each other and make up for each other’s weak spots.
In essence, you are creating your “A” team, the best team you can assemble. A key activity during your transition is assessing the current team members and determining the best group of individuals to create a high-performing team. This requires getting to know the business, the people, and their skills. Based on the vision and strategy, what is the optimal combination of people to work with you to make the vision a reality? Your job is to find people capable of working with a diversity of people, ideas, and situations. Additionally, you will want individuals who have the breadth and depth to be able to grow with the business. Consider the interpersonal capabilities of others, as this is important when implementing enterprise solutions.
Your boss, or the Board, may ask you to explain your choices, so be prepared to articulate why each person is on the team. Expect others to provide input on the talent decisions you want to make. This exercise may take considerably longer than you planned.
As you are looking at the team composition, also delve several layers into the organization to see if the talent exists. If it doesn’t, the organization will struggle when trying to implement initiatives.
You may have to make some tough choices about people that will require you to handle situations with care and compassion. You will need to determine whether you can develop the skills you need from within the organization or whether you must recruit outside talent. You will want to set everyone up for success, whether or not they remain on the team. Others will be watching how you act and will project how you might handle other personnel changes.
Find Your Chief Lieutenants
A leader’s role, whether that of a CEO or an Army Chief of Staff, can be very isolating. The key people you worked with in your previous job are no longer around. You need to find new individuals you can count on. Your predecessor likely had a group of internal and external advisors. So take the time in your transition period to determine whether you can, or want to, depend on the same people. Know the type of person you want to surround yourself with, and try to create a balanced group of voices.
Leaders often rely on their Financial, Human Resources, or Marketing executives. Be on the lookout for the people you can count on to be your “chief lieutenants” — the people who will work alongside you and help you formulate business options. Seek out people who will share the unvarnished reality with you, and will help you build collaboration. Additionally, this is a good time to search for high-performing associates who may be able to take on additional projects.
Build Trust
In the early days of your transition, people will be assessing whether they can trust you. Your actions will be a key indicator. Get very clear on what’s important to you and how you work with others.
Observing the organization’s culture will give you clues about the level of trust that exists. Consider simple things, like: How does information get shared? How are people kept in the loop? Do leaders actually do what they say they will do? What happens when someone makes a mistake? How are interpersonal differences handled? You’ll soon find out that when people in a company at all levels have high trust and respect for one another, it becomes easier to discuss problems up and down the chain of command. When trust is low, people spend too much time blaming, defending, and even avoiding one another.
Create a Sustainable Organization
It’s never too early to start looking at succession planning, by understanding and making note of the depth of talent in the organization. The last thing you want is to implement an initiative only to find out that the organization lacks the talent and capability to implement it. Start by understanding the talent management process. What are the core competencies for success? How is the talent management process used to find, develop, and manage the talent?
If you were hired from the outside, there will likely be some talent gaps and positions to fill before you can build a solid succession plan. A strong talent bench provides an organization with the resources to take on many initiatives that will grow the company. Speak with Human Resources heads and various business leaders about the current talent in the company and the organization’s plans to cultivate and retain talented individuals. Engage such leaders in working with you on a talent management strategy. If you aren’t fortunate to have strong Human Resources department capabilities, it might make sense to engage an outside firm to help you set up the appropriate systems, so that your talent strategy matches your business strategy. Both are critical for accomplishing your business goals.
PART IV
Managing Effectively through the Transition
Chapter 19
Keeping the Business on Track
Surround yourself with the strongest, most knowledgeable people, and give them room to express themselves.
– Phil Jackson
Focus on What Matters
In today’s work environment, outgoing leaders usually want to move on to their next assignments. You may not get the full attention from them that you need as you move into your new role.
While the first few months in a new position are a time to learn, there most likely will be urgent business issues that require direction and decisions. There may even be a fair amount of pressure from the Board or management to make
decisions early in the transition. Some people, while not close to the problem, may believe they know enough about the issue and may press you hard to make a decision. There could be personal agendas creating hype to take action. Your job, whatever the case, is to find a process to make an informed decision even though you are not fully up-to-speed.
How do you keep the business on track and still give yourself some leeway so that you can minimize making fatal errors? Start by recognizing that you may make some mistakes early on that later you will wish you had avoided. Of course, it’s easy to look back over a year with more experience and information and be able to see a better path.
The best plan of action is to establish a simple process for addressing key decisions that must be made before you have all the information. You will want to rely on other leaders and trusted advisors to make sure that you and the organization have a full view of the situation. This may mean asking people who are closer to the problem to take the lead in crafting a solution. If there are items that need your immediate attention, create a plan for how you will get involved. Be clear about what you will do and how you will stay on top of the situation. A simple process may look like the following:
◆Name the two or three things that need your attention in the next three months.
◆Identify what it will take to keep the business on track while giving yourself a chance to learn.
◆Name someone you can rely on to oversee the initiative in the interim.
◆Define your role in these discussions.
◆Outline how decisions will be made and how you will be involved in the decision.