Indian School of Business| | Vol 5

- By CAS and CAC

10 steps to a successful leadership transition in the first 90 days of a new job

The President of the USA has a 100 days to prove himself. You only have 90 if you have
taken over a new leadership position. If you can’t build a suitable positive new
momentum during this time, there might be hard work ahead of you or your leadership
might even be doomed to failure. The main reasons for a failed transition include a
business situation not consistent with the leader’s abilities. But just like swimming, a
successful transition to a new position is merely a skill that can be learned.
The most important part of a successful transition lies in shortening the learning curve.
A shorter learning period is the main secret of successful new leaders. This goes for all
types of transitions, from job promotions, company reorganization, launch of your own
company, implementing new big projects, or working outside your native country.

An especially big challenge for a successful transition is when an external person takes
over the leadership position, because they are not familiar with the organizational
structure, informal networks, culture and climate in the company. People are also
skeptical towards new people.

A successful transition encompasses ten steps, namely –

ODDBALL POST, DECEMBER 2020 | ISSUE 1

| Sep 2019
Indian School of Business| | Vol 5

The first step towards a successful transition is for you to mentally prepare yourself for the new
role, let go of the past and accept your new duties and responsibilities. You need to have a good
mental starting point. The biggest common problem with a mental shift is the conviction that you
will be successful in the new position if you do the same things you did before. Usually any sort of
promotion demands completely different skills. For example, the higher up in the organization you
are, the more you are a strategic architect, the more important are soft skills, knowing the culture
and politics, building partnerships inside the company, conflict management etc. Changing your
mentality has to be strategic and first includes an evaluation of your weaknesses and advantages
(SWOT analysis in other words) depending on the abilities that the new position demands. For some
time, you can compensate for your weaknesses with discipline, a team and network of consultants.
With advantages, you have to be very careful that the advantages of the previous position haven’t
become weaknesses in the new position.
An important part of the new mindset is also building a new network of consultants and making the
fastest possible evaluation of who in the organization could hinder your success. There is always
someone in the organization who doesn’t want you to progress.

Action item 1: Prepare a personal SWOT analysis for your new position
Action item 2: Prepare a list of consultants, supporters, blockers and neutrals
Action item 3: Prepare a list of actions that you will stop, start and continue doing

Successful and effective learning decreases the timeframe of your vulnerability. This is why, you
need an incredible strategic plan of what and how you will learn. If you don’t acquire enough
knowledge about the organization and its business operations, you can set wrong hypotheses,
which are fatal for the company and your career. Usually the biggest challenge in learning is
running out of time. But being too busy for learning often leads to the spiral of death. If you don’t
learn enough, you make bad decisions, bad decisions lead to a bad mark in credibility, consequently
people share less information with you, and this leads to even worse decisions.
Successful and effective learning means that you first find out what you truly need to learn. What
makes most sense is to prepare a list of things that you must know. The list of things has to refer to
the past as well as to the present and future of the organization. A suitable plan has to include
what you will learn and how. External information sources for your learning are customers,
distributers, suppliers, analysts. Internal information sources are development engineers, sales and
other staff. You also shouldn’t forget about integrators and old timers who reflect the company’s
natural history. Accelerated learning also has to include getting to know the organization’s culture.

Action item 4: Prepare a learning list

Action item 5: Timebox weekly time for learning
Action item 6: Get to know organizational culture – write down how you perceive it

ODDBALL POST, DECEMBER 2020 | ISSUE 1

| Sep 2019
Indian School of Business| | Vol 5

Creating a strategy first includes the diagnosis of the current state. That’s because the strategy
always needs to be adapted to an individual situation. In a rough division, there are four types of
situations, namely company launch, company reorganization, reorientation of business operations
or continuation of successful business operations. The emphasis is mostly on the following:

• Company launch = Execution + Offense

• Reorganization = Execution + Defence
• Reorientation of business operations = Learning + Offense
• Continuation of success = Learning + Defence

No matter the situation, the goal is the same: a successful and growing business. And no matter the
situation, new leaders face difficult decisions very early on. Different situations also demand
different skills. For the launch of a new company or reorganization, the most suitable type of people
are “hunters”, who are fast and know how to take advantage of new opportunities. In case of
reorienting business operations or continuing business successes, “growers” are a lot more suitable
type of a person. A suitable strategy also includes a plan of where you’ll focus your energy.

Action item 7: Analyze the current company's position

Action item 8: Build a growth strategy and decide where you'll focus your energy

After the end of a transitional period, you want bosses, co-workers, subordinates and others to feel
like something new and positive happened. Early wins strongly increase an individual’s credibility.
Of course it is crucial to avoid early defeats, because that has an incredibly negative effect on your
further development in a new function. The most frequent reasons behind early defeats are that
you don’t focus, don’t make a good assessment of the situation and don’t create a suitable strategy,
don’t adapt to a new culture, don’t reach the results that the boss expects, and reach results
following the principle of “the goal is more important than the means”, which makes you lose a large
measure of credibility. If you carry out too many changes too quickly, that is an excellent recipe for
a burnout in people, and you also never truly know what actually works and what doesn’t.

New leaders usually increase their credibility if they are:

• Demanding but can be satisfied
• Approachable but not familiar
• Determined but reasonable
• Focused but flexible
• Executive but don’t cause too big shocks

Action item 9: Prepare a plan of changes that will lead to your early wins

ODDBALL POST, DECEMBER 2020 | ISSUE 1

| Sep 2019
Indian School of Business| | Vol 5

Negotiating success means that you proactively include your boss into the entire game, so that you
have a real chance of achieving the desired goals. Less control can be a happy coincidence if you
truly need that for success, or a curse if the rope is long enough for you to hang yourself. When
you’re building a productive relationship with a new boss, it’s important that you:

• Don’t make excuses and highlight the past that brought the organization to where it is now
• Don’t avoid the boss but meet up with them regularly
• Don’t only go to them with problems or surprises

You must strive for early wins in areas that are important to your boss and be in a good standing
with the people that your boss values. You and your boss should have at least five different
conversations:

• About the situation diagnosis

• The boss’ expectations
• Style of collaboration
• Resources that you have at your disposal
• Your personal progress and development.

In this it’s important to identify the untouchable parts and people in the company, you should keep
educating your boss, clarify things on the fly and do more than you promise

Action item 10: Prepare a strategy how you will build a relationship with your boss
Action item 11: Identify the untouchable parts and people in the company

Every organization has five key elements:

• Strategy
• Organizational structure
• System of processes
• People’s competences
• Culture

All five elements have to be suitably synchronized. The strategy has to correspond with the
competences in the company, the system of processes, and the organizational structure. Alignment
in an organization is similar to preparing yourself for a long journey. First you need a destination –
goal and mission; then a journey plan – strategy; then you need to find out what kind of a vessel
you even need – organizational structure; how to equip and set the rules of the structure’s
functioning – system; and what kind of a crew is most appropriate – skills of the people you need.

Action item 12: Find alignment in strategy, structure, processes, competences and culture
ODDBALL POST, DECEMBER 2020 | ISSUE 1
| Sep 2019
Indian School of Business| | Vol 5

You can in no way afford to have the wrong people beside you. If you succeed in building the right
team around you, you can have incredible leverage in value creation. No leader can achieve great
things alone, so a team is crucial, and a bad team means a lot of problems and few results. The
usual mistakes of new leaders include keeping the existing wrong people in a team for too long
because they avoid difficult decisions, as well as not admitting the team’s weaknesses and not
hiring suitable experts. They also include not keeping incredible people or starting to build a team
before it’s clear who the team members are. When you take over a new function, it is crucial to
evaluate the current team, focusing on competences as well as on an individual’s judgement,
energy, focus, relationships and level of trust. Besides every individual team member, it is incredibly
important to also evaluate the team. Based on the assessments, you must decide, for every
individual team member, whether to keep them and ensure their development or to keep them but
in a different position. Observe for a while and then decide whether to swap them with a low
priority or swap them with a high priority. No matter your decision about individual team
members, you must treat all people with high respect.

Action item 13: Evaluate the current team members and team as a whole
Action item 14: Decided who to keep, who to swap and what kind of people to bring on board

Formal authority is never enough for a big enough win. Informal influential networks amongst
co-workers in an organization usually have an important influence on how successful you will be in
implementing your ideas and goals. Sooner or later, you need the support of people over whom you
have no authority. The recipe for this is simple. Start early. It’s never a good idea to approach
someone for the very first time when you need something from them. It is completely pointless to
introduce yourself to the neighbours when your house is already on fire. It is thus crucial to
discipline yourself and build social relationships in the company from the very beginning, even with
the people you’ll work with in the future or whose support you’ll need. When you are identifying the
key people, it is also necessary to identify the source of their power. This can be:

• Competence
• Access to information
• Status
• Control over resources

In this you must realize that you will always have supporters, opponents and those you can
convince with an informed opinion.

Action item 15: Identify key people and influential groups in the company
Action item 16: Start building relationships, ask boss for the introductions

ODDBALL POST, DECEMBER 2020 | ISSUE 1

| Sep 2019
 Indian School of Business| | Vol 5

The life of a leader is always looking for balance. Even more so during transition.
Uncertainty and lack of clarity are huge psychological pressures. As a leader, you can’t succeed
alone. You always need support. The biggest mistakes in keeping balance is:

• Not focusing
• Not setting clear boundaries of what you are prepared to do and what you aren’t
• Being spineless
• Isolation
• Bad judgement
• Avoiding work or making difficult decisions.

On the other hand, in order to keep balance it’s important to be disciplined, plan suitably, say
no when it’s necessary, reserve time for hard work, take the time for difficult decisions, focus on
the process, quit early enough when necessary, and keep checking if you are on the right path.
It is also important to build an appropriate work infrastructure as soon as possible, have
suitable support in the family and not additional battlegrounds, and to build a suitable network
of mentors and consultants.

Action item 17: Find a balance in your life, so you don't get burned out
Action item 18: Build yourself support environment in your personal life
Action item 19: Don't avoid tough conversations and decisions

The faster that your co-workers and subordinates go through the transition, the faster you will
reach the breakthrough point. You shouldn’t look at the transition from a Darwinian point of
view, throwing the leader or anyone in a situation and letting them swim. Instead, you should
help people with the knowledge of how to successfully carry out the transition. An unsuccessful
transition means a lot of damage for the individual as well as for the company. Meanwhile the
knowledge of how to successfully carry out the transition means a faster contribution of value
in the company and a shining future in your new career position.

Action item 20: Read the book The First 90 Days and teach others how to successfully thrive
in the transition

Source: https://www.mudamasters.com/en/change -management-leadership/first-90-days-mwatkins-summary

ODDBALL POST, DECEMBER 2020 | ISSUE 1
| Sep 2019