Strategy for Successful Transition

You’ve taken a new role in a new organization. You have been promoted to a new leadership position. You’ve changed jobs. In all these cases, how quickly you manage your transition into the new avatar and add value in the new role, determine your success. In the book “The First 90 Days” - Michael Watkins lays out a roadmap for taking charge quickly and effectively during critical career transition periods. This book outlines strategies that will dramatically shorten the time it takes to reach, what Watkins calls, the “breakeven point”: the point at which your organization needs you as much as you need the job. In this blog I publish a few of these strategies.

Start with “Promoting Yourself”. It means making the mental break from your old job and preparing to take charge in the new one. Let go of the past and embrace the imperatives of the new situation thereby getting a running start. Everyone has an urge to work at one level below where they are now. You need to work where are you are, and not where you were. Assess your vulnerabilities and compensate it with self-discipline, team building, advice and counsel. The qualities that have made you successful, so far, can prove to be weaknesses in your new role. So, beware to not overuse your strengths. Transitioning into a new job may revive some deep fears about your capabilities that you thought you had long laid to rest. If you embrace the need to learn, you can surmount them. As you advance in your career, the advice and counsel you need changes. Promoting yourself calls for working proactively to restructure your advice-and-counsel network. Watch out for people who want to hold you back. Getting others to accept your promotion is a very essential part of promoting yourself. However, if you conclude that the people in question are never going to accept the situation, then you must find a way to quickly move them out of your organization.

“Accelerate your learning”. It is essential to figure out what you need to know about your new organization and then to learn it as rapidly as you can. Try to know the history of the organization. Beware of the near-compulsive need to take action without systematically learning about the new organization. The most destructive mistake to make is to come to the new organization “with answers” on how to solve the organization’s problems. What works well in one organizational culture may fail miserably in another. Identify promising sources that make your learning process more complete and more efficient. You need to listen to key people, both inside and outside the organization, and even old-timers as well. Talking to people with different points of view will deepen your insights. The best way to get a health-check of an organization is to have one-on-one discussion with the employees. Ask the same questions to everyone. This approach is powerful because the responses you get are comparable. This helps you gain insight into which people are being more open or less. It also tells a lot about the team and politics. Distill the discussion and feedback your impressions with questions to your direct reportees. Then invite some discussions.

“Match your strategy to the business situation”. Depending on whether the business situation is a start-up, Turn-around, Realignment or sustaining, the strategy to be adopted is very different. For example in a sustaining business situation, the challenge is that of living in the shadow of the revered leader and dealing with the team the he or she created. One has to find ways to take the business to the next level. However the advantage this situation presents is that a strong team may already be in place. Foundations for continued success may be in place. The leader has to invent challenges to keep people motivated. Gaining and displaying the understanding of what made the organization successful is a key to early win. One has to play good defense by avoiding decisions that cause problems. Compared to other business situation, the leader has little bit more time before he can call shots. He should avoid early mistakes that risk traditional strengths of the organization.

Securing early win is a critical factor in successful transition. Early wins excite and energize people and build personal credibility. Potential pitfalls to watch out for, in seeking early wins, is failing to focus, ignoring the business situation and not adjusting to the culture. Understand what matters to the boss and make sure that it is addressed as part of the early wins. Early wins should be consistent with the A-item business priorities – critical ones that have greatest opportunities for dramatic improvement in performance. These priorities should offer clear direction. As you make progress in getting connected, identify and act as quickly as you can to remove minor but persistent irritants, in your new organization. Focus on strained external relationships and begin to repair them. Cut out redundant meetings, shorten excessively long ones.

If you are inheriting a team, you will need to evaluate its members and perhaps, restructure it to better meet the demands of the situation. Your willingness to make tough early personnel calls and your capacity to select the right people for the right positions are among the most important drivers of success during your transition.

Finally you need to help everyone in your organization – direct reportees, bosses, peers – accelerate their own transitions. The quicker you can get your new direct reportees up to speed, the more you will help your own performance.