Clarify Roles and Align Incentives
Transition support is a team sport. For any given new leader, typically there are many people who potentially can impact the success of the transition. Key players may include bosses, peers, direct reports, HR generalists, coaches, and mentors. Although primary responsibility for supporting a transition may be vested with one individual—typically a coach or HR generalist—it is important to think through the supportive roles that others could play and to identify ways to encourage them to do so.
A boss, for example, has an obvious stake in getting the new leader up to speed quickly but also may be dealing with other pressing demands. Careful thought must be given to providing bosses and other key players with guidelines and tools that allow them to be highly focused and efficient in supporting their new direct reports. HR generalists likewise can provide invaluable support to leaders who are onboarding by helping them navigate the new culture. But once again, they both need to know what to do and have incentives to do it.
Integrate with Other Talent Management Systems
Acceleration systems work best when they’re linked with the company’s recruiting and leadership development systems. This need for integration seems obvious on the face of it, because the best onboarding systems can’t compensate for the sins of poor recruiting. If the company hires people who aren’t likely to fit with the culture, then little can be done to reduce the risk of derailment through onboarding.
It’s surprising, therefore, that many companies still do not do a good job of integrating recruiting and onboarding. Often, people in these functions report up through different parts of the organization and are led by people with different, perhaps even divergent, goals, measures of success, and incentives. A necessary first step is to have them under the same organizational umbrella and align their goals and incentives.
Beyond that, the company should think about transition risk when it engages in recruiting. Doing so means, as illustrated in figure 10-2, making transition risk tolerance part of the process of setting up searches. Often, businesses practice “best athlete” recruiting—hiring people because they have a needed set of capabilities and not paying enough attention to fit. It’s fine to take a significant risk in bringing in someone from a very different culture, as long as you have been thoughtful about the trade-offs between individual capabilities and cultural fit, and as long as transition risk is explicitly evaluated during recruiting. Of course, doing this requires the company to have a good understanding of its culture and the reasons people might struggle to assimilate. This understanding can be refined, as illustrated in the figure, by feedback from successes and failures in onboarding.
FIGURE 10-2
Linking recruiting and onboarding
There also is great value in feeding information about potential risks from recruiting to the onboarding process. Recruiting typically involves multiple forms of assessment, including psychometric instruments and in-depth interviews. The instruments can provide transition coaches and workshop facilitators with valuable insight into leaders’ styles and ways they might struggle in adapting to the culture. Interviews likewise can provide rich information about likely transition risks, as long as interviewers are explicitly asked to make assessments and develop a transition risk profile for new hires.
Then there is the relationship between leadership development systems and transition acceleration systems. Leadership development systems prepare talent to go to the next level. Transition acceleration systems should help them make the leap. Although this description makes the two seem distinct, in reality there are opportunities for connecting development and acceleration.
One example is including familiarization with the organization’s core transition acceleration model in development programs. Doing so helps leaders take on a transition state of mind and think about how they will enter their next roles when the time comes. It also provides a foundation on which to build during the transition, a foundation that is valuable given the high demands that new leaders typically experience.
A second example is strengthening leadership development by assessing leaders’ experience with different types of transitions using the STARS model. This model provides a basis for charting the progression of high-potential leaders through a series of positions that build their capability to manage a broad range of business situations. It also identifies potential development gaps—for example, that a leader has mostly managed turnarounds and needs to be channeled into experiences that provide exposure to a broader range of business situations.
To illustrate, think of your own job history. Take time to fill out the development grid, a tool for charting professional development shown in table 10-3.
TABLE 10-3
The development grid
The rows represent functions in which you have worked, and the columns represent types of business situations you have experienced. Chart every position you have held, plus any major project or task force assignments. For example, if your first job was in marketing in an organization (or unit) in the midst of a turnaround, place a circled 1 (indicating your first management position) in the corresponding cell of the matrix. If your next position was in sales in a new unit (or dealing with a new product or project)—a start-up situation—enter a circled 2 in that cell. If at the same time you were on a task force dealing with operations issues for the start-up, enter a 2 inside a triangle (indicating a project assignment) in the appropriate cell. Record all your jobs, and then connect the dots to illuminate your professional trajectory. Are there any blank columns or rows? What do they signify about your readiness for new positions? About your potential blind spots?
Putting It All Together
Given the many transitions that occur in organizations and the substantial impact they have, it makes sense to evaluate the costs and benefits of designing and deploying companywide acceleration systems. Best-in-class systems are founded on a core transition acceleration framework and toolkit, provide support just in time, are customized to some degree for types of transitions, and are deployed in cost-effective ways throughout the organization. They also take the organizational context into account by aligning and incentivizing key stakeholders and by linking to recruiting and leadership development systems.
ACCELERATE EVERYONE—CHECKLIST
What are the most important transitions in your organization, and how often do they occur?
Is the organization able to identify where and when transitions are occurring?
Is there a common core transition acceleration framework, language, and toolkit?
Do leaders have the support they need, when they need it, and throughout their transitions? What could be done to provide focused resources for onboarding and promotion transitions?
Are the company’s systems for recruiting and accelerating transitions linked in appropriate ways?
Should transition acceleration be part of your organization’s curriculum for developing high-potential leaders?
How might the 90-day framework be used to accelerate organizational change—for example, restructuring or post-acquisition integration?
NOTES
PREFACE
1. I was aware of two exceptions: John J. Gabarro, The Dynamics of Taking Charge (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1987), and Linda Hill, Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership, 2d ed. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003).
2. Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins, Right from the Start: Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 1999).
3. Michael Watkins, Leadership Transitions Version 3.0 (Boston: Harvard Business Publishing, 2008). This e-learning product won the 2001 Brandon-Hill Excellence in E-Learning Silver Award in the performance-centered design category.
4. “Executive Onboarding: That Tricky First 100 Days,” The Economist, July 13, 2006.
5. Michael Watkins, Shaping the Game: The New Leader’s Guide to Effective Negotiating (Boston: H
arvard Business School Press, 2006).
6. Peter H. Daly, Michael Watkins, and Cate Reavis, The First 90 Days in Government: Critical Success Strategies for New Public Managers at All Levels (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006).
7. Michael Watkins, “The Pillars of Executive Onboarding,” Talent Management, October 2008.
8. Michael Watkins, Your Next Move: The Leader’s Guide to Navigating Major Career Transitions (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009).
9. Michael Watkins, “Picking the Right Transition Strategy,” Harvard Business Review, January 2009, 47.
10. Michael Watkins, “How Managers Become Leaders: The Seven Seismic Shifts of Perspective and Responsibility,” Harvard Business Review, June 2012, 65.
11. Excellent examples are Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams, “Five Ways to Bungle a Job Change,” Harvard Business Review, January 2010, 137; Keith Rollag, Salvatore Parise, and Rob Cross, “Getting New Hires Up to Speed Quickly,” Sloan Management Review, January 15, 2005; and Jean-François Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux, “New Leaders: Stop Downward Performance Spirals Before They Start,” HBR Blog Network, January 16, 2009, http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2009/01/new-leaders-stop-downward-perf.html. Many surveys also have been done by executive recruiting companies, including some very solid research on the transition dimensions of CEO succession.
12. All these were introduced in the first edition of The First 90 Days.
13. See chapter 1: The Challenge, in Ciampa and Watkins, Right from the Start.
14. See the introduction to Watkins, Your Next Move.
INTRODUCTION
1. My survey of 1,350 HR leaders affiliated with the IMD business school, 2008, previously reported in Michael Watkins, Your Next Move (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2009).
2. Genesis Advisers, Harvard Business Review, and International Institute of Management Development, unpublished electronic survey, 2011.
3. My survey conducted in 2000 of senior HR executives at Fortune 500 companies, results previously reported in the first edition of The First 90 Days.
4. For each individual who transitions, there also are many others—direct reports, bosses, and peers—whose performance is negatively affected. In a 2009 survey of company presidents and CEOs, I asked for their best estimate of the number of people whose performance was significantly compromised by the arrival of a new midlevel manager. The average of the responses was 12.4 people.
5. My survey conducted in 2000 of senior HR executives at Fortune 500 companies, results previously reported in the first edition of The First 90 Days.
6. This research was conducted by two clients—a Fortune 100 health-care company and a Fortune 500 financial services company—of Genesis Advisers programs and coaching. Both used subjective estimates of improved performance and estimated ROI based on conservative salary cost criteria. The 2006 study by the global health-care company focused on 125 participants in transition programs or coaching. Program participants reported an average 38 percent improvement in performance, and coached executives reported an average 40 percent improvement. The estimated return on investment was 1,400 percent. The financial services company study conducted in 2008 focused on assessing acceleration in time to break-even for 50 participants in a First 90 Days program. Participants reported an average 1.2-month decrease in time to break-even. ROI for the program was calculated to be roughly 300 percent based on salary costs only.
7. Michael Watkins survey of participants in two Harvard Business School General Management Program (GMP) cohorts, 2010 and 2011, unpublished study.
CHAPTER 1
1. Survey of 1,350 HR leaders affiliated with the IMD business school, 2008, previously reported in Michael Watkins, Your Next Move: The Leader’s Guide to Navigating Major Career Transitions (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009). See also Boris Groysberg, Andrew N. McLean, and Nitin Nohria, “Are Leaders Portable?” Harvard Business Review (May 2006): 92–100.
2. Michael Watkins, Your Next Move: The Leader’s Guide to Navigating Major Career Transitions (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009).
3. The original quotation is, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance (New York: Harper Collins, 1966), 15.
CHAPTER 2
1. N. M. Tichy and M. A. Devanna, The Transformational Leader (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1986).
CHAPTER 5
1. For an early discussion of the importance of early wins, see Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins, Right from the Start: Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999), chapter 2.
2. See John J. Gabarro, The Dynamics of Taking Charge (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1987).
3. See wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias.
4. George Will, “Price of Safety Sometimes Paid in Technology-Boosted War,” Washington Post, June 12, 1994.
5. My colleague Amy Edmondson developed this very useful distinction.
6. See Michael Watkins and Max Bazerman, “Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming,” Harvard Business Review (March 2003): 5–12.
CHAPTER 6
1. This is an adaptation of the McKinsey “7-S” organizational analysis framework. See R. H. Waterman, T. J. Peters, and J. R. Phillips, “Structure Is Not Organization,” Business Horizons, 1980. For an overview, see Jeffrey L. Bradach, “Organizational Alignment: The 7-S Model,” Case 9-497-045 (Boston: Harvard Business School, 1996). The seven S’s are strategy, structure, systems, staffing, skills, style, and shared values.
2. See wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis. For an early description of SWOT, see Edmund P. Learned, C. Roland Christiansen, Kenneth Andrews, and William D. Guth, Business Policy: Text and Cases (Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1969).
3. Building “ambidextrous” organizations that can do both of these well is a challenge. See Michael L. Tushman and Charles O’Reilly III, Winning Through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal, rev. ed. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002).
CHAPTER 7
1. For a discussion of types of players, see T. DeLong and V. Vijayaraghavan, “Let’s Hear It For B Players,” Harvard Business Review (June 2003): 96–102, 137.
2. M. Huselid, R. Beatty, and B. Becker, “‘A Players’ or ‘A Positions’? The Strategic Logic of Workforce Management,” Harvard Business Review (December 2005): 110–117, 154.
3. See, for example, A. Edmondson, M. Roberto, and M. Watkins, “A Dynamic Model of Top Management Team Effectiveness: Managing Unstructured Task Streams,” Leadership Quarterly 14, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 297–325.
4. For a discussion of the importance of perceptions of fairness in group process, see W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne, “Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy,” Harvard Business Review (July–August 1997): 127–136.
CHAPTER 8
1. David Lax and Jim Sebenius coined this term. “Thinking Coalitionally,” in Negotiation Analysis, ed. H. Peyton Young (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991).
2. See D. Krackhardt and J. R. Hanson, “Informal Networks: The Company Behind the Chart,” Harvard Business Review (July–August 1993).
3. See the seminal work on human motivation by David McClelland. Human Motivation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
4. See L. Ross and R. Nisbett, The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology, 2d ed. (London: Pinter & Martin, 2011).
5. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, trans. H. Lawson-Tancred (New York: Penguin Classics, 1992).
6. See James Sebenius, “Sequencing to Build Coalitions: With Whom Should I Talk First?” in Wise Choices: Decisions, Games, and Negotiations, ed. Richard J. Zeckhauser, Ralph L. Keeney, and James K. Sebenius (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996).
CHAPTER 9
1. See Ronald Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1
994), 251.
2. This was originally developed as a model of anxiety. See R. M. Yerkes and J. D. Dodson, “The Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit Formation,” Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology 18 (1908): 459–482. Naturally, this model has limitations and is most useful as a metaphor. For a discussion of limitations, see “How Useful Is the Human Function Curve?” www.trance.dircon.co.uk/curve.html.
3. For a discussion of going to the balcony in the context of negotiation, see chapter 1 of William Ury, Getting Past No: Negotiating Your Way from Confrontation to Cooperation (New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1993).
CHAPTER 10
1. Independent study by Fortune 100 global health-care company focused on 125 participants in Genesis Advisers transition programs or coaching. Program participants reported an average 38 percent improvement in performance, and coached executives reported an average 40 percent improvement.
2. Direct quotations taken from the same study of Genesis Advisers programs and coaching processes.
3. For a wonderful discussion of set-up-to-fail dynamics, see J. Manzoni and J. L. Barsoux, The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome: Overcoming the Undertow of Expectations (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2007).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MICHAEL D. WATKINS is the world’s leading expert on accelerating transitions and a cofounder of Genesis Advisers (www.genesisadvisers.com), a leadership development consultancy that specializes in the design of onboarding and transition acceleration solutions, workshops, and coaching for Fortune 500 companies. He is also a professor of leadership at the IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he teaches in the school’s senior executive programs. Previously he was a professor at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
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