Chapter 1: Drill Deep: Negotiating the Intelligence for Informed Decisions

OVERVIEW

It is a truism that information is a prized asset in today's complex, often matrixed organizations. Few leaders would launch any new project without careful preparation, yet they frequently take on visible, high-profile assignments optimistic that they can make them work once on the job. By contrast, in overwhelming numbers , the women we talked to who successfully navigated difficult and visible new assignments counted good preliminary intelligence among their most valuable tools. Drilling deep not only enabled them to determine whether the role was a good fit for them, it also helped them negotiate the conditions of their success before they set foot in their new offices.

Moreover, these leaders went after a particular kind of intelligence. By and large they took for granted their command of market trends or the competitive landscape, the technological edge a new product would enjoy, or the distribution channels the company needed to develop. That expertise they counted as part and parcel of any leadership position. As the head of procurement for a Fortune 500 manufacturing company put it: "The hardest part in a leadership role is not the work. That's easy if you are halfway smart. It's the ability to read the political tea leaves ."

Good intelligence allows the new leader to put those tea leaves to work. Seldom did the successful women in our sample approach new roles confident that they were a perfect fit for the job. Rather, they assumed that the role itself was negotiable and probed for what would tip the odds of success in their favor. Sometimes they tested the breadth of support behind the initiatives they would be charged with spearheading. Other times they used their intelligence gathering to get past the rhetoric and identify future obstacles.

The successful leaders moved quickly to get a handle on the problem they were charged with solving and the expectations circling round its resolution. A high-tech executive offered a promotion to straighten out the company's back-office operations used her networks and one-on-one interviews to discover how deep the troubles went.

The order process had broken down. Receivables were in awful shape. Salespeople were having a fit because no one could figure out their commissions. Financial controls weren't working. It was a disaster.

Armed with that intelligence, she could approach the CEO and accept the assignment ”subject to one condition. She would need time to do the job he wanted done. "When things are in that much of a mess in finance, it's usually because processes have gone amok. There aren't quick fixes."

Most of all, the women who seamlessly managed the transition to new roles focused on unspoken codes of behavior and the personal dynamics at work in key relationships. Many new leaders are promoted from within or recruited from outside because something needs to be fixed. Not everyone in the organization, however, will be ready to accept the need for new leadership. No matter how elegant a proposed plan for, say, turning around a faltering division, gaining competitive advantage, or revamping outworn systems, it will find its way to the circular file if it rubs against the organizational grain or fails to garner critical support.

Early intelligence can flag how deep the resistance to change goes and where potential alliances might be formed . When, for example, a human resource executive contemplated joining a rapidly growing construction firm, she had no doubts about her ability to transform an organization that was essentially still run as a mom-and-pop operation. Even though the culture no longer correlated with where the company was on the growth cycle, many of the old guard liked things the way they were. The key to her success lay in determining whether she would have the space to make the changes necessary. Discussions with the president about his vision for the future provided that key. Growth on the scale that he anticipated demanded major restructuring.

It is clear that good intelligence puts a leader in a better position when negotiating the parameters of a new role. Yet women do not always operate with good intelligence. With limited access to the process that led to their appointment, they might not even know why they were chosen for the job. Without that information, they may make assumptions about the fit that influence not only their decision about accepting but also their perspective on what it would take to thrive in the new role.

Good informants are hard to come by when you're being recruited from outside, but tenure does not always provide easy access to information nor guarantee its reliability. Women frequently find themselves excluded from key decision-making networks within their own firms. ^{[ 1]} Simultaneously insider and outsider, their perspective on any new assignment is inevitably colored by past experiences and past relationships. While a true outsider may be positioned for greater objectivity, she faces the formidable task of developing reliable sources of information. Whatever the circumstances, the more you know about a new role before taking it on, the greater are your chances of success.

^{[ 1]} Sheila Wellington, Marcia Brumit Krofp, and Paulette Gerovich, "What's Holding Women Back?"