The first hundred days
Posted by Grant Brewer on 07 Feb 2007
So you've been promoted, or taken on a new role or a fresh direction in your career. Maybe you've taken on the turnaround job of a lifetime. So the question is: where are you going to start, how are you going to leave your mark on your first one hundred days? A fresh start brings the opportunity to reshape and sweep the slate clean (or at least a little cleaner!). As a manager, you often need to be able to take a new situation and impart an immediate sense of leadership and focus on the team and their situation. Your thinking might incorporate these ideas.
So you've been promoted, or taken on a new role or a fresh direction in your career. Maybe you've taken on the turnaround job of a lifetime. So the question is: where are you going to start, how are you going to leave your mark on your first one hundred days? A fresh start brings the opportunity to reshape and sweep the slate clean (or at least a little cleaner!). As a manager, you often need to be able to take a new situation and impart an immediate sense of leadership and focus on the team and their situation. Your thinking might incorporate these ideas.
Understand the business — Make sure that you understand the business or team you've just taken over. What is the purpose of the team; does it have a clear purpose. Destination—less journeys are good for backpacking but usually not good for business. So make defining a clear purpose for the team a priority. A purpose helps create focus and creates a sense of meaning for the team. Although you might be able to benefit from involving other team members, don't fall into the illusion that a team definition is necessarily better. Sometimes leaders need to be decisive and act.
Also make sure that you understand how the business makes money (sometimes referred to as the value chain by consultants). It is surprising how many managers don't really understand where the value is created and how the business creates value. Use this understanding to gain a sense of perspective — how urgent is change and redirection? Is the cash flow sustainable? Understand the sources of value provides a great sense of focus too — get things happening in the areas that create or have the potential to create the most value.
This also becomes a great opportunity to think about what should be left behind and whether there are new people, products or processes that you should be bringing on board. One of the largest challenges for leaders is to leave things behind. It is difficult to stop a project, halt the production of a product or close down a team or a division. Sometimes these are the things that transform business and free them to become something more valuable or more focused.
Make sure you have a committed team that you believe in — You're going to struggle to make any impact at all if you don't have a team you can rely on and a team that believes in themselves and in you. Loose the deadwood early. You can be firm on expectations and performance without being unfair, but realise that people don't really change that much. A senior manager that fundamentally doesn't believe in the ideas that you're bringing to the business or that doesn't have the right skills or attitude, is not likely to change. So don't bet your success on being able to change people. You're better off making sure you have a hand picked team of people that you know you can work with. You should be encouraging different thinking and people that challenge you, but at the core the team needs to be able to work together.
Listen — Get around the business and listen. Just listen. Hear what the people at all levels are saying. Listen to their frustrations, their complaints and their ideas. Withhold judgement for a while, but not for so long that you're paralysed into inaction. Use their ideas to reframe your own view of the business. Work out how you can see things differently. Listening doesn't mean that you have to follow the advice given, but it does meant that the decisions that you will subsequently make will be more informed.
Create momentum — Act. Communicate. You have only one hundred days to make people believe you have ideas, that you're serious and that they should come along for the ride. That means they need to feel the momentum of action. Of course, you also need to tell your teams about what you're doing. Nothing creates misinformation faster than a communication vacuum. If your message is absent, team members are likely to fill the gap with their own interpretation of your ideas.
Tell a compelling story — In previous columns we've explored the benefit of strategic conversation and using the art of storytelling to make the strategy come alive for people of all levels in the organisation. Find a compelling way to describe what you're asking the team to do. Don't expect a dry PowerPoint presentation of margin or process improvements to propel people into action. Instead make your plans exciting. Thread the milestones into a story that is exciting, challenging and empowering. Make your team want to come along with you to experience the fun, the challenges and the successes that you're describing.
If you've got a real sense of purpose and are willing to share it with your team, they can share in your enthusiasm and understand the reasoning behind your decisions. A compelling story will go along way to shaping a team and enabling you to create an impact.
The first hundred days was published in Intelligence Magazine as Strategym #45 in February 2007.
Categories
Essays | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym
Tags
implementation (10) | leadership (7) | value chain (1) | turnaround (1)
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