The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan
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Available October, 2011 Bradt, Check, Pedraza – The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan Exec Sum - 6/11/11 - page 1 Contents Preface to the Third Edition – 9 Acknowledgments – 12 Introduction An Executive Summary of the Onboarding Process – 13 PART I Become the Best Candidate for the Job Chapter 1 Position Yourself for a New Role – 30 Tool 1.1 BRAVE Preferences Tool 1.2 Five‐Step Career Plan Chapter 2 Sell before You Buy: Answer the Only Three Interview Questions – 45 Tool 2.1 Negotiating Prep and Guidelines PART II Discover Your New Role: It’s Always More Than You Think It Is Chapter 3 Map and Avoid the Most Common Land Mines ‐ 59 Chapter 4 Do Your Due Diligence before You Accept the Job Offer ‐ 71 Tool 4.1 Risk Assessment Checklist PART III Take Control of Your Own Start Chapter 5 Choose the Right Approach for the Business Context and the Culture You Face ‐ 87 Tool 5.1 Context Assessment Sheet Tool 5.2 Culture Assessment Sheet Tool 5.2b BRAVE Culture Assessment Tool 5.3 Context and Culture map Tool 5.4 Contributor/Watcher Map Chapter 6 Embrace and Leverage the Fuzzy Front End before Day One ‐ 107 Tool 6.1 100‐Day Checklist Tool 6.1b 100‐Day Checklist—Sample: New Company ‐ Head of Marketing Tool 6.2 Stakeholder Map Tool 6.3 Onboarding Conversation Framework Tool 6.4 Relocation Checklist Chapter 7 Take Control of Day One: Make a Powerful First Impression ‐ 138 Tool 7.1 Day One Checklist Tool 7.2 New Manager’s Assimilation Session Chapter 8 Motivate and Focus Your Team with Ongoing Communications (Including Social Media) ‐ 152 Tool 8.1 Broader Stakeholder Map Tool 8.2 Communication Guide Tool 8.3 Communication Campaign Milestones Bradt, Check, Pedraza – The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan Exec Sum - 6/11/11 - page 2 PART IV Implement Your 100‐Day Action Plan Chapter 9 Embed a Burning Imperative by Day 30 ‐ 176 Tool 9.1 Burning Imperative Workshop Tool Chapter 10 Exploit Key Milestones to Drive Team Performance by Day 45 ‐ 187 Tool 10.1 Team Milestones Chapter 11 Overinvest in Early Wins to Build Team Confidence by Day 60 ‐ 197 Tool 11.1 Team Charter Tool Chapter 12 Secure ADEPT People in the Right Roles and Deal with Inevitable Resistance by Day 70 ‐ 206 Tool 12.1 Performance/Role Match Chapter 13 Evolve People, Plans, and Practices to Capitalize on Changing Circumstances ‐ 221 Appendixes Appendix I Deploy Six Basic Elements of Leadership – 229 Appendix II Complete a Situation Assessment to Inform Your Plan ‐ 235 Tool A2.1 5Cs Situation Analysis Guidelines Tool A2.2 SWOT Form Appendix III Leverage These 15 Secrets to Become a Great Communicator ‐ 241 Tool A3.1 Communication Planning Tool Tool A3.2 Press Interviews Appendix IV Bring More Discipline to Your Strategic Planning Process ‐ 249 Appendix V Manage People and Practices with Standardized Processes that Are Public and Visual ‐ 255 Tool A5.1 Role Scope Appendix VI Leading When You Were Promoted from Within or Internally Transferred ‐ 264 Tool A6.1 Announcement Cascade Checklist Appendix VII Leading a Department/Team Merger, Reorganization, or Restart ‐ 280 Appendix VIII The International Manager: Adapting and Building Trust When You’re a Foreigner ‐ 282 Appendix IX Leading through a Crisis: A 100‐Hour Action Plan ‐ 285 Tool A9.1 100‐Hour Action Plan for Crisis Management Appendix X Onboarding: How Organizations and Supervisors Can Dramatically Boost the Odds of a New Leader’s Success ‐ 295 Bradt, Check, Pedraza – The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan Exec Sum - 6/11/11 - page 3 Appendix XI Sample 100‐Day Action Plans ‐ 306 Tool 6.1b 100‐Day Checklist—Sample: New Company—Head of Marketing Tool 6.1c 100‐Day Checklist—Sample: Promoted from Within from Comptroller to CFO Tool 6.1d 100‐Day Checklist—Sample: New Country Manager—France References – 313 About the Authors ‐ 315 Index Bradt, Check, Pedraza – The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan Exec Sum - 6/11/11 - page 4 Introduction An Executive Summary of the Onboarding Process Are you a veteran CEO taking the reins of your next organization? Or starting a new role as a frontline supervisor? Or are you starting to plan ahead for such a transition? Whether you are joining an new organization from the outside, getting promoted from within, hitting a re‐start button with your existing team, or mapping out future possibilities, The New Leader’s 100‐Day Action Plan will help you manage your leadership transition so you can take charge, build your team, and deliver better results faster than anyone thought possible. ““We’ve found that 40 percent of executives hired at the senior level are pushed out, fail or quit within 18 months. It’s expensive in terms of lost revenue. It’s expensive in terms of the individual’s hiring. It’s damaging to morale.” —Kevin Kelly, CEO of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, discussing the firm’s internal study of 20,000 searches.1 What do these failed leaders not know or see? What do they not do? Why can’t they deliver? In most cases, they dig their own holes by missing one or more of the crucial tasks that must be accomplished in their first 100 days. Some don’t understand the impact of their early words and actions and inadvertently send their new colleagues the wrong messages. Some focus on finding a new strategy, but fail to get buy‐in and fail to build trust with their new team. Some do a lot of work and expend a lot of energy without accomplishing the one or two things that their most important stakeholders are looking for. All are unaware of some of the important steps required to achieve a successful transition. No leader wants this to happen; but it does, at an alarming rate. This won’t happen to you. Not after reading this book! Let’s start at the beginning. Our fundamental, underlying concept is: Leadership is about inspiring and enabling others to do their absolute best together to realize a meaningful and rewarding shared purpose. It’s not about you. It’s about them—those following your lead. How you set the direction and priorities and what you do to inspire and enable them is important. But what is even more important is what they hear, see, believe, feel, and accomplish together as a team. Leadership is about your ability to create an environment where your team can deliver remarkable results and love doing it. Effective leadership occurs when a team’s Behaviors, Relationships, Attitudes, Values, and Environment (per the BRAVE framework) are synchronized to achieve the best results possible. 1 As quoted by Brooke Masters in “Rise of a Headhunter,” Financial Times (March 30, 2009). Bradt, Check, Pedraza – The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan Exec Sum - 6/11/11 - page 5 The Chinese philosopher Lao‐tzu expressed this particularly well more thanover 2,500 years ago: ““The great leader speaks little. He never speaks carelessly. He works without self‐interest and leaves no trace. When all is finished, the people say, “‘We did it ourselves.’”2 With that in mind, we have designed this book as an action plan, with a time‐line and the key milestones you need to reach along the way to accelerate your own and your team’s success in your first or next 100 days. These factors are distilled from insights gleaned from our own leadership experiences and from the work of our firm, PrimeGenesis, whose sole mission is to help executives moving into complex new leadership roles, as well as their teams, deliver better results faster.3 You will read our own and our clients’ stories throughout this book (masked to preserve confidentiality). We hope you will find this to be a practical handbook that helps you know what you need to know, see what you need to see, and do what you need to do to for you and your team to deliver better results faster. Over the years, we have noticed that many new leaders show up for a new role happy and smiling, but without a plan. Neither they, nor their organizations have thought things through in advance. On their first day, they are welcomed by such confidence‐building remarks as: “Oh, you’re here . we’d better find you an office.” Ouch! Some enlightened organizations have a better process in place. If you are lucky, you will be associated with an organization that actually puts people in charge of preparing for a leader’s transition into a new role. Imagine the difference when a new leader is escorted to an office that is fully set up for her, complete with computer, passwords, phones, files, information, and a 30‐day schedule of orientation and assimilation meetings. Better . but still not good enough. Even if the company has done this for you, if you have waited until this moment to start, you are already behind, and you have stacked the odds against yourself. Paradoxically, the best way to accelerate a transition into a new leadership role is to pause long enough to think through and put a plan in place—and then get a head start on implementing it. We started PrimeGenesis in 2002 having noticed the difference between leaders who have a plan, hit the ground running, and make an impact on their first day, and leaders who wait until Day One to start planning. Since then, we have created and deployed a set of tools and techniques that help executives quickly and effectively transition into new leadership roles.