Identifying Cultural Norms
The following domains are areas in which cultural norms may vary significantly from company to company. Transitioning leaders should use this checklist to help them figure out how things really work in the organizations they’re joining.
Influence. How do people get support for critical initiatives? Is it more important to have the support of a patron within the senior team, or affirmation from your peers and direct reports that your idea is a good one?
Meetings. Are meetings filled with dialogue on hard issues, or are they simply forums for publicly ratifying agreements that have been reached in private?
Execution. When it comes time to get things done, which matters more—a deep understanding of processes or knowing the right people?
Conflict. Can people talk openly about difficult issues without fear of retribution? Or do they avoid conflict—or, even worse, push it to lower levels, where it can wreak havoc?
Recognition. Does the company promote stars, rewarding those who visibly and vocally drive business initiatives? Or does it encourage team players, rewarding those who lead authoritatively but quietly and collaboratively?
Ends versus means. Are there any restrictions on how you achieve results? Does the organization have a well-defined, well-communicated set of values that is reinforced through positive and negative incentives?
Armed with a deeper understanding of the business situation, political networks, expectations, and culture, you will be in a much stronger position to figure out how to strike the right balance between adapting to the new organization and working to alter it. See table 1-1 for issues and action items related to each of the four pillars as you onboard into a new organization.
The challenges of entering new cultures arise not only when new leaders are transitioning between two different companies, but also when they move between units—the “inboarding” challenge—as well as when they make international moves. Why? It’s because both kinds of change typically require new leaders to grapple with new work cultures. The same basic approach to cultural assessment and adaptation can be applied (with suitable modifications) in these situations.2
Preparing Yourself
With a deeper understanding of the types of transition challenges you face, you can now focus on preparing yourself to make the leap. How can you be sure to meet the challenges of your new position? You can focus on basic principles for getting ready for your new role, as discussed next.
TABLE 1-1
Onboarding checklists
Business orientation checklist
As early as possible, get access to publicly available information about financials, products, strategy, and brands.
Identify additional sources of information, such as websites and analyst reports.
If appropriate for your level, ask the business to assemble a briefing book.
If possible, schedule familiarization tours of key facilities before the formal start date.
Stakeholder connection checklist
Ask your boss to identify and introduce you to the key people you should connect with early on.
If possible, meet with some stakeholders before the formal start.
Take control of your calendar, and schedule early meetings with key stakeholders.
Be careful to focus on lateral relationships (peers, others) and not only vertical ones (boss, direct reports).
Expectations alignment checklist
Understand and engage in business planning and performance management.
No matter how well you think you understand what you need to do, schedule a conversation with your boss about expectations in your first week.
Have explicit conversations about working styles with bosses and direct reports as early as possible.
Cultural adaptation checklist
During recruiting, ask questions about the organization’s culture.
Schedule conversations with your new boss and HR to discuss work culture, and check back with them regularly.
Identify people inside the organization who could serve as culture interpreters.
After thirty days, conduct an informal 360-degree check-in with your boss and peers to gauge how adaptation is proceeding.
Establish a Clear Breakpoint
The move from one position to another usually happens in a blur. You rarely get much notice before being thrust into a new job. If you’re lucky, you get a couple of weeks, but more often the move is measured in days. You get caught up in a scramble to finish your old job even as you try to wrap your arms around the new one. Even worse, you may be pressured to perform both jobs until your previous position is filled, making the line of demarcation even fuzzier.
Because you may not get a clean transition in job responsibilities, it is essential to discipline yourself to make the transition mentally. Pick a specific time, such as a weekend, and use it to imagine yourself making the shift. Consciously think of letting go of the old job and embracing the new one. Think hard about the differences between the two, and consider how you must now think and act differently. Take the time to celebrate your move, even informally, with family and friends. Use the time to touch base with your informal advisers and counselors and to ask for advice. The bottom line: do whatever it takes to get into the transition state of mind.
Assess Your Vulnerabilities
You have been offered your new position because those who selected you think you have the skills to succeed. But as you saw in the cases of Julia Gould and David Jones, it can be fatal to rely too much on what made you successful in the past.
One way to pinpoint your vulnerabilities is to assess your problem preferences—the kinds of problems toward which you naturally gravitate. Everyone likes to do some things more than others. Julia’s preference was marketing; for others, it may be finance or operations. Your preferences have probably influenced you to choose jobs where you can do more of what you like to do. As a result, you’ve perfected those skills and feel most competent when you solve problems in those areas, and that reinforces the cycle. This pattern is like exercising your right arm and ignoring your left: the strong arm gets stronger, and the weak one atrophies. The risk, of course, is that you create an imbalance that leaves you vulnerable when success depends on being ambidextrous.
Table 1-2 is a simple tool for assessing your preferences for different kinds of business problems. Fill in each cell by assessing your intrinsic interest in solving problems in the domain in question. In the upper-left cell, for example, ask yourself how much you like to work on appraisal and reward systems. This isn’t a comparative question; don’t compare this interest with others. Rank your interest in each cell separately, on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 10 (very much). Keep in mind that you’re being asked about your intrinsic interests and not your skills or experience. Do not turn the page before completing the table.
TABLE 1-2
Assessment of problem preferences
Assess your intrinsic interest in solving problems in each of these domains on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means very little interest and 10 means a great deal of interest.
Now transfer your rankings from table 1-2 to the corresponding cells in table 1-3. Then sum the three columns and the five rows.
The column totals represent your preferences among technical, political, and cultural problems. Technical problems encompass strategies, markets, technologies, and processes. Political problems concern power and politics in the organization. Cultural problems involve values, norms, and guiding assumptions.
If one column total is noticeably lower than the others, it represents a potential blind spot for you. If you score high on technical interests and low on cultural or political interests, for example, you may be at risk of overlooking the human side of the organizational equation.
The row totals represent your preferences for the various business functions. A low score in any row suggests that you prefer not to grapple with problems in that functional area. Again, these ar
e potential blind spots.
TABLE 1-3
Preferences for problems and functions
The results of this diagnostic exercise should help you answer the following questions: in what spheres do you most enjoy solving problems? In what spheres are you least eager to solve problems? What are the implications for potential vulnerabilities in your new position?
You can do a lot to compensate for your vulnerabilities. Three basic tools are self-discipline, team building, and advice and counsel. You need to discipline yourself to devote time to critical activities that you do not enjoy and that may not come naturally. Beyond that, actively search out people in your organization whose skills are sharp in these areas, so that they can serve as a backstop for you and you can learn from them. A network of advisers and counselors can also help you move beyond your comfort zone.
Watch Out for Your Strengths
Your weaknesses can make you vulnerable, but so can your strengths. To paraphrase Abraham Maslow, “To a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”3 The qualities that have made you successful so far (it’s worth being clear in your own mind what your hammer is) can prove to be weaknesses in your new role. For example, Julia was highly attentive to detail. Though clearly a strength, her attention to detail had a downside, especially in tandem with a high need for control: the result was a tendency to micromanage people in the areas she knew best. This behavior demoralized people who wanted to make their own contributions without intrusive oversight.
Relearn How to Learn
It may have been some time since you faced a steep learning curve. “Suddenly I realized how much I didn’t know” is a common lament from leaders in transition. You may have excelled in a function or discipline, like Julia, and now find yourself in a project-leadership position. Or like David, you may be joining a new company where you lack an established network and sense of the culture. In any case, you suddenly need to learn a lot, fast.
Having to start learning again can evoke long-buried and unnerving feelings of incompetence or vulnerability, especially if you suffer early setbacks. You may find yourself mentally revisiting a juncture in your career when you had less confidence. Perhaps you will make some early missteps and experience failure for the first time in ages. So you unconsciously begin to gravitate toward areas where you feel competent and toward people who reinforce your feelings of self-worth.
New challenges and associated fears of incompetence can set up a vicious cycle of denial and defensiveness. Put bluntly, you can decide to learn and adapt, or you can become brittle and fail. Your failure may be dramatic, like Julia’s, or it may be death by a thousand cuts, but it is inevitable. As I discuss in the next chapter on accelerating your learning, denial and defensiveness are a sure recipe for disaster.
Relearning how to learn can be stressful. So if you find yourself waking up in a cold sweat, take comfort. Most new leaders experience the same feelings. And if you embrace the need to learn, you can surmount them.
Rework Your Network
As you advance in your career, the advice you need changes. Preparing yourself for a new role calls for proactively restructuring your advice-and-counsel network. Early in your career, there is a premium on cultivating good technical advisers—experts in certain aspects of marketing or finance, for instance, who can help you get your work done. As you move to higher levels, however, it becomes increasingly important to get good political counsel and personal advice. Political counselors help you understand the politics of the organization, an understanding that is especially important when you plan to implement change. Personal advisers help you keep perspective and equilibrium in times of stress. Transforming your advice-and-counsel network is never easy; your current advisers may be close friends, and you may feel comfortable with technical advisers whose domains you know well. But it is essential to step back and recognize where you need to build your networks to compensate for blind spots and gaps in your own expertise or experience.
Watch Out for People Who Want to Hold You Back
Consciously or not, some individuals may not want you to advance. Your old boss, for example, may not want to let you go. So you must negotiate clear expectations, as soon as you know when you will be transitioning, about what you will do to close things out. This means being specific about the issues or projects that will be dealt with and to what extent—and, critically, what is not going to be done. Take notes, and circulate them back to the boss so that everyone is on the same page. Then hold your boss, and yourself, to the agreement. Be realistic about what you can accomplish. There is always more you could do, so keep in mind that time to learn and plan before you enter a new job is a precious commodity.
Colleagues who have become subordinates may not want their relationships with you to change; this challenge is especially sharp when you’re promoted to lead former peers. But change they must, and the sooner you accept that (and help others accept it, too), the better. Others in your organization will be looking for signs of favoritism and will judge you accordingly.
If you have been promoted to supervise people who were once your peers, some may be disappointed competitors. Some may even work to undermine you. This kind of thing may subside with time. But expect early tests of your authority, and plan to meet them by being firm and fair. If you don’t establish limits early, you will live to regret it. Getting others to accept your move is an essential part of preparing yourself. So if you conclude that the people in question are never going to accept your new role and the resulting situation, then you must find a way to move them out of your organization as quickly as possible.
Get Some Help
Many organizations have programs and processes to help leaders make successful transitions. These range from high-potential development programs (which prepare promising leaders for senior levels) to formal onboarding processes (programs or coaching) that focus on key imperatives. You should take advantage of all the organization has to offer.
However, even if your new organization doesn’t have formal transition support, you should engage with HR and your new boss about creating a 90-day transition plan. If you have been promoted, find out whether there are competency models describing the requirements of your new role (but don’t assume they tell the whole story). If you have been hired from the outside, ask for help in identifying and connecting with key stakeholders or finding a cultural interpreter. These people often are natural historians who can give you insight into how the organization has evolved and changed.
Closing the Loop
Preparing yourself for a new role turns out to be hard work, and some of the barriers may lie within you. Take a few minutes to think hard about your personal vulnerabilities in your new role, as revealed by your analysis of your problem preferences. How will you compensate for them? Then think about the external forces, such as commitments to your current boss, that could hold you back. How can you avoid that outcome?
To borrow an old saw, preparing yourself is a journey and not a destination. You will have to work constantly to ensure that you’re engaging with the real challenges of your new position and not retreating to your comfort zone. It is easy to backslide into habits that are both comfortable and dangerous. Plan to reread this chapter and its questions periodically, asking, Am I doing all I can to prepare myself?
PREPARE YOURSELF—CHECKLIST
If you have been promoted, what are the implications for your need to balance breadth and depth, delegate, influence, communicate, and exhibit leadership presence?
If you are joining a new organization, how will you orient yourself to the business, identify and connect with key stakeholders, clarify expectations, and adapt to the new culture? What is the right balance between adapting to the new situation and trying to alter it?
What has made you successful so far in your career? Can you succeed in your new position by relying solely on those strengths? If not, what are the critical skills you need to develop?
Are there aspects of
your new job that are critical to success but that you prefer not to focus on? Why? How will you compensate for your potential blind spots?
How can you ensure that you make the mental leap into the new position? From whom might you seek advice and counsel on this? What other activities might help you do this?
CHAPTER 2
Accelerate Your Learning
Chris Hadley headed the quality assurance function at Dura Corporation, a medium-sized software services company. When Chris’s boss left to become vice president of operations at Phoenix Systems, a struggling software developer, he asked Chris to join him as head of the product quality and testing unit. Although it was a lateral move, Chris jumped at the opportunity to lead a turnaround.
Dura was a world-class software development operation. Chris had joined the company right out of engineering school and had risen rapidly in the quality function. He was highly skilled; however, he had grown up in an environment with state-of-the-art technology and a motivated workforce. Having visited the Phoenix product testing group before taking the job, Chris knew that it did not come close to measuring up. He was determined to change that—and quickly.
Soon after arriving, Chris declared Phoenix’s existing processes outdated and went on record as saying that the operation needed to be rebuilt from the ground up “the Dura way.” He immediately brought in operations consultants, who delivered a scathing report, characterizing the Phoenix’s testing technology and systems as “antiquated” and the skills of the workforce as “inadequate.” They recommended a thorough reorganization of the product testing process as well as substantial investments in technology and worker training. Chris shared this information with his direct reports, saying that he planned to act quickly on the recommendations, starting with a reorganization of the product testing teams “the way we did things at Dura.”
The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded_Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter Page 4