The Executive Transition Playbook

by Hilary Potts

  Your personal SWOT analysis can guide your approach to leading in the new organization. You can identify areas to focus on to take advantage of your talents and the current opportunities. You can also see where you will need to rely on others for their skills and talents. Use your transition to make needed changes in your approach.

  Figure 7-1 outlines questions to review as you conduct your analysis. As you answer the questions, identify your leadership behaviors that will be beneficial in your new role — and those you should stop using.

  As you move to a more-senior role, you may have to shift your behaviors subtly, but significantly. What worked in your former role may no longer be appropriate. Others in the company can help you identify when to make these shifts.

  Open lines of communication with people you trust, to get candid feedback on what you’re doing well and where you are keeping others from doing their best work. Performance reviews, leadership assessments, and feedback are great sources of information. Family and friends can also offer valuable insights into your personal leadership abilities, which likely relate to how you will lead the business.

  Identify Leadership Behaviors for Performing at Your Best

  The results from the personal SWOT analysis, along with other feedback, can give you a perspective on your current leadership behaviors. This information can also provide insights into certain behaviors you need to either develop or improve. Use the worksheet in Figure 7-2 to organize this input and start planning your leadership behavior in your new role.

  At this point, you are capturing ideas on how to approach your new role. Keep your analysis simple: Focus on the one or two things that seem to be the top priorities. As you complete this exercise, make sure you relate the behaviors to your role and responsibilities as well as to the expectations of your company and boss. When you are in meetings and interacting with others, become more aware of how your comments and actions affect others. Could you deliver the same messages using different language, tone, and tenor and still get your points across? Often it’s not the message that bothers others but how that message was communicated and how people are supported over time.

  This new approach may not feel comfortable at first. New behaviors require practice if they are to become habit. Identify which actions are needed to reinforce and cultivate new behaviors so that they can become part of your leadership toolkit.

  Chapter 8

  Communicating Your Personal Brand

  The greatest advantage of speaking the truth is that you don’t have to remember what you said.

  – Anonymous

  A good way to connect with others is through communicating your personal brand — who you are, what you stand for, and what you bring to your new role. Colleagues will be interested in both your business accomplishments and your personal interests, including your business background, family activities, leadership style, values, and what they can expect from you.

  Elements of Your Personal Brand

  Collect the information you want to share, and develop messages to communicate on the following points.

  Your Business Background

  Be ready to share your business background through succinct, clear stories that provide the context for who you are and why you will be effective in this new role.

  Charting your career history line can provide a helpful visual image. Depending on the audience, you can pick out highlights that would help others understand who you are and how you lead. Keep it short and simple. This isn’t the time to monopolize the conversation. Give people a high-level overview to establish your credibility and share your expertise. Your stories should include what you did, why you did it, how you did it, and what was accomplished. You can use your stories as a springboard to ask others questions about their experiences.

  Personal and Family Interests and Activities

  People want to find common ground on which they can relate to you. When people feel they know you, they will get a sense of what to expect from you and how you will react in business situations that involve them. Pull together a set of key points you want to share with people about your personal and family interests.

  Leadership Values

  One of the best ways to present your leadership approach is to share your values. Values express how you like to work with and interact with others. Values offer insights into what is important to you and what others can expect in their interactions with you. When people know what you value, they can tailor their actions to follow your lead. If your actions and values are not aligned, people lose confidence and trust in you. Identify three to five core values that shape the way you lead and work. Develop statements and tell stories about these values that help others understand what you mean.

  Your Personal Brand and Your Value Proposition

  People want to know what special value you bring to the business and how best to work with you. A personal brand describes how you differentiate yourself and how you contribute to the organization. At this stage of your career, you probably can articulate your brand in many ways. A new role is a great time to refresh how you talk about yourself.

  You can articulate your personal brand by developing your own value proposition statement. Make sure you write one, as this can also become your elevator introduction (what you say to others about yourself during a 30-second ride). As you develop your value proposition, you can ask yourself:

  ◆Who am I as a leader?

  ◆What is my purpose?

  ◆Why do I do what I do?

  ◆What are my core leadership skills?

  ◆How does my leadership affect others?

  Your answers will give you the input to write two to four inspiring sentences that form your personal brand and value proposition.

  Develop Core Messages or Guiding Principles

  Your fellow workers expect a new leader to bring a fresh perspective and point of view to the role and the organization. You can help them learn about you and your approach by developing core messages and sharing them with others. These may be the statements, or mantras, you say when talking about how you want to operate the business. Some leaders call them business principles.

  Examples of core messages include:

  ◆Understand the business from outside in

  ◆Build on recent success and brand strength

  ◆Create a culture that cultivates a winning team

  ◆We will go slow, to go fast

  ◆Work with a sense of urgency, passion, and commitment

  ◆While I cannot promise you anything, I will always bring you my best effort

  Clearly, the core messages you want to share depend on the business situation, your leadership preferences, and how you wish to operate the business. Your core messages may change when you move from your initial transition period to leading in the future.

  Establish Expectations

  Set mutual expectations, so that people know where they stand. You probably have some favorite expectations that have helped prior groups work with you. What you expect in your first months in your role may change after you learn more about the business situation. But be clear about your expectations, and identify what you want

  others to do to support you both in the transition and afterward — while always leaving space to revisit your expectations.

  Figure 8-1 presents examples of expectations of a leader in transition, while Figure 8-2 suggests a template for organizing these expectations as well as the other personal branding information you want to communicate.

  Chapter 9

  Learning about the Business

  Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

  – John F. Kennedy

  Leaders starting in a new role can be so anxious to get going that they miss opportunities to gather information about the business. You will want to use your transition time to gather information, ask questions, dig deep, and study the business.

  Remove Obstacles to Learning

  Before you set out to
learn about the business, you will need to clear your mind of obstacles that can interfere with your objective learning. During times of change, it’s easy to want to quickly sort through information so you can make comparisons and judgments to build your understanding. Work to look at the business with fresh eyes and notice if you find yourself making any of the following obstacles to learning:

  1. Discounting Ideas and Concepts

  When ideas and concepts do not fit your current way of thinking, you may find yourself dismissing them. While you are learning about the business, keep your biases in check and look for the objective truth about the business. Focus on understanding what people are telling you, take good notes, and consider what is being said. Listen to different perspectives with an open mind.

  2. Low Levels of Presence

  Your coworkers know when you are not truly listening. They expect you to be on your best behavior during the transition and to show a level of interest. The last thing they want is to see you get flustered, act inappropriately in a situation, or fail to pay attention. Remain present, as you talk with people and gather information.

  3. Arrogance and Superiority

  If you come into your new role expecting that you know all the answers, you can seem to be intellectually closed to the ideas and information people are presenting to you. If people perceive that you have a set agenda, they will stop sharing information with you; they may even resist the changes you are bringing to the organization. It’s best to check your ego at the door and find common ground with those throughout the company.

  4. Fear of Failure

  As you are stepping into your new role, you may feel anxiety about entering unfamiliar territory. Some of your fears may drive stronger performance, but many fears will paralyze you and keep you from learning and entering fully into your new role. Executives rarely express their fears. Acknowledging, at least to yourself, that your fears exist and then doing something to address them helps to smooth your transition from the unknown to the known. When you face your fears, you can open up learning opportunities for yourself.

  5. Ineffective Learning Styles

  When you understand how you learn and absorb information, you can make better use of your time in gathering the input you need. If you are clear on how you best learn, you can accelerate your learning by incorporating appropriate activities into your transition plan.

  Gather Information about the Business

  Use your transition period to take a deep dive and gain a 360-degree view of the business. As you look at the business, see how things fit together at an enterprise level, as well as at the divisional, regional, country, and functional levels. Identify what needs to be similar across the organization and what requires local strategies.

  Gather as much information as you can, and be sure to look at the business from various perspectives. This will allow you to observe how things are actually working.

  By pulling the information together and taking an enterprise view, you may find other solutions that weren’t evident when looking at the business by individual functions and segments. Look at the business from different vantage points — top to bottom, bottom to top, and cross-organizationally. Notice how well, or how poorly, the business is executing the strategy. Reviewing the business from several perspectives will uncover areas that need attention. Keep a balance between high-level views and a deep dive into the specifics. Notice when you find yourself focusing too much in one area or getting into too much detail, or even just skimming the surface of an important issue.

  You can employ many models and ways of looking at the various business elements. Figure 9-1 shows a simple model that depicts the key business areas that comprise a business system. Use this model to create a learning plan for gathering information about each aspect of the business.

  The questions in Figures 9-2 are meant to start you thinking about the key areas in your new business ecosystem. Carefully reviewing this table is a crucial step: You may believe that you already know

  some of these business considerations, or at least know how to gather data about each one. Nevertheless, do take a consultative approach to systematically review each area. You will likely see more by using an objective view. Be sure to investigate the interactions and interdependencies between all the business elements. Chances are that, if you are new to the company or division, you will want to cover each area in depth. If you are expanding your role, it’s helpful to look at each of these areas with fresh eyes.

  Make a list of the areas you wish to learn more about and the individuals and groups who can help you with this learning. Figure 9-3 is a worksheet on which you can capture the particular business items you wish to learn about. Be as specific as possible. Create questions to prepare for discussions with others. Notice if there are business elements you seem to gloss over. These could be areas that you need to learn more about or pay more attention to.

  One company president I worked with avoided looking at the business’s processes and focused instead on a new business strategy. After some coaxing, he reviewed several key processes. It became apparent the processes weren’t aligned with the strategy. He saw that adjusting the strategy alone wasn’t going to solve the problems. So he and his team created a new strategy and modified the processes to fit the strategy. The alignment of the two business elements enabled his people to work on the right things to achieve the business targets.

  Use a three-month timeline to outline a high-level schedule, then match your business learning activities with your meeting schedule. The key is to give yourself enough time to analyze the business and meet key people. Depending on your situation, the time needed to develop a working knowledge of the business will vary. Prepare questions and ask for information to review ahead of time, so that you can use key meetings and touch points to delve into each area. Sort, sequence, and align the learning checklist with the meetings and interactions, then fill in the gaps through additional conversations.

  Learning is an iterative process. Different information will present itself as you engage in a series of meetings and interactions. Pay special attention to areas that may not get readily populated with information, as these are potential blind spots.

  Using these questions and worksheets in Figures 9-2 and 9-3 helps you collect all your questions and use different venues and forums to discuss a variety of topics. Be sure to look at the timing and sequencing of your meetings to maximize your learning.

  Some leaders like to create an Executive Transition Sourcebook, which is a binder with sections and tabs to collect all the pertinent information. Others use an electronic version. The Executive Transition Sourcebook is described in detail in Chapter 21.

  Understand the Culture, Agendas, and Politics

  “Ways of working” and other cultural nuances are typically learned by trial and error. During the transition period, become a student of the organization’s culture and make deliberate efforts to assess the impact of that culture on business results.

  ◆What are the company’s values? Are they visible in everyday work discussions?

  ◆How do people express those values?

  ◆What is never tolerated?

  ◆Who in the organization best exhibits the values?

  ◆What will you need to do to adapt to the culture?

  Through direct observation and discussions, gain an understanding of how the organization operates. This information will help you enormously when it’s time to implement change.

  New leaders frequently shy away from or ignore office politics, hoping they will disappear or not be a problem. Instead, you need to identify the people (every organization has them!) who act politically and carry personal agendas. Find out what initiatives and agendas they are promoting, and why. Listen for the topics that easily offend people. How are historical events inhibiting people’s ability to work together? When you become aware of the dynamics of the social interactions and personal agendas that exist, you will be more able to manage these situati
ons for the greater good of the business.

  I advise my clients to talk less and observe more in the early days in a new role. The little things you notice will add up, till you can define the existing culture. Ask yourself a series of hard questions in your first few weeks and months: Do meetings start and end on time? How are difficult discussions handled? How are things done, and how are people engaged with each other? How is information shared, authority deployed, and decisions made? How are the company’s values socialized throughout the organization, and what are other characteristics of the business’s culture?

  Use your transition period to learn how others work, before you try to impose your own methodologies and techniques on the organization. Once you demonstrate that you understand the current culture, then you have earned the right to help shift and shape the organization into a better future.

  Create an Influence Map

  Work is rarely done alone. Most of the time, leaders are interacting, exchanging information, and providing work products to one another. Leaders may be comfortable deciding on their own actions. However, are such individuals actually aware of how their actions influence what others do and say? Remember that key influencers may not necessarily be in senior positions.

  As part of your learning, endeavor to understand how work in the organization is influenced by others. This influence can come from a variety of places — hierarchies, friendships, old connections, past patterns, and so forth. Sometimes these key influencers can be helpful, and at other times they can stagnate and block work progress. Indeed, these unofficial influences can mean the difference between success and failure for you and the business.

  When you understand how influence works in the organization, you can navigate through it more efficiently. You can see whom you should work with and which relationships will be important to develop. You can even use the influencers to communicate your own messages and expectations.