Introduction: The First 90 Days

The President of the United States gets 100 days to prove himself; you get 90. The actions you take during your first three months in a new job will largely determine whether you succeed or fail. Transitions are periods of opportunity, a chance to start afresh and to make needed changes in an organization. But they are also periods of acute vulnerability, because you lack established working relationships and a detailed understanding of your new role. If you fail to build momentum during your transition, you will face an uphill battle from that point forward.

The stakes are obviously high. Failure in a new assignment can spell the end of a promising career. But making a successful transition is about more than just avoiding failure. Some leaders do derail (and when they do, their problems can almost always be traced to vicious cycles that developed in the first few months on the job). But for every leader who fails outright , there are many others who survive but do not realize their full potential. As a result, they lose opportunities to advance in their careers, and they endanger the health of their organizations.

This book is therefore as much about transition acceleration as it is about failure prevention. It provides a blueprint for dramatically condensing the time it will take you to get on top of the job, regardless of your level in your organization. If you succeed in this, you will free up time to concentrate on fixing problems and exploiting opportunities in your new organization. After all, your goal should be to arrive as rapidly as possible at the breakeven point, where you are a net contributor of value to your new organization (see The Breakeven Point ). Every minute you save by being systematic about accelerating your transition is a minute you gain to build the business.

The Breakeven Point

The breakeven point is the point at which new leaders have contributed as much value to their new organizations as they have consumed from it. As shown in figure I-1, new leaders are net consumers of value early on; as they learn and begin to take action, they begin to create value. From the breakeven point onward, they are (one hopes) net contributors of value to their organizations. When 210 company CEOs and presidents were asked for their best estimates of the time it takes a typical midlevel manager in their organizations to reach the breakeven point, the average of their responses was 6.2 months. ^[1] The purpose of transition acceleration, then, is to help new leaders reach the breakeven point earlier. What would it be worth to an organization if all its leaders in transition could reach the breakeven point one month earlier?

Figure I-1: The Breakeven Point

 

Given the stakes, it is surprising how little good guidance is available to new leaders about how to transition more effectively and efficiently into new roles. There are plenty of books and articles on leadership, but few directly address transitions at all. ^[2] Also, excellent resources on managing organizational change exist, but most implicitly assume the change agent is already settled in the organization, with the necessary knowledge and relationships in place to plan, build support for, and carry out transformation initiatives.

The reality is that the process of leading change often occurs in tandem with a leader s transition into a new role. This book is therefore intended to fill a gap in the leadership literature. It offers a proven blueprint for addressing the linked challenges of personal transition and organizational transformation that confront leaders in their first few months in a new job.

Fundamental Propositions

From observing new leaders and experimenting with methods of accelerating transitions, I have developed strong beliefs about the challenges of transitions and what it takes to succeed in meeting them. These beliefs, summarized in five propositions, form the foundation of my approach to transition acceleration ”and to this book.

The first proposition is that the root causes of transition failure always lie in a pernicious interaction between the situation, with its opportunities and pitfalls, and the individual, with his or her strengths and vulnerabilities . Failure is never just about the flaws of the new leader. Indeed, the failed leaders whom I studied had all achieved significant successes in the past. Nor is it ever just about a no-win situation in which not even a superhuman leader could have carried the day. The business situations facing leaders who derail are no tougher than those in which others succeed brilliantly. Transition failures happen when new leaders either misunderstand the essential demands of the situation or lack the skill and flexibility to adapt to them.

The second proposition is that there are systematic methods that leaders can employ to both lessen the likelihood of failure and reach the breakeven point faster . Early in my efforts to develop a framework for accelerating transitions at all levels, an experienced manager told me, You can t do that. When I asked why, he said, Because every transition is unique. This is true, of course. It is also misleading. Sure, every transition is unique if you look at its details. But viewed from a higher vantage point, we can discern types of transitions that share common features, including common traps. Consider, for example, making a transition from functional vice president to general manager. Every leader who makes this leap encounters similar challenges, such as the need to let go of reliance on functional expertise. (The transition from frontline supervisor to manager of managers represents a similar challenge at a lower level. ^[3] ) The specific business situations that confront transitioning leaders also vary. But specific types of transition situations, such as start-ups and turnarounds, share certain features and imperatives. Further, there are fundamental principles ”for example, securing early wins ”that underpin success in transitions at all levels, whether one is a new supervisor or a new CEO. The key, then, is to match your strategy to the situation . This is a core theme to which we will return throughout the book.

The third proposition is that the overriding goal in a transition is to build momentum by creating virtuous cycles that build credibility and by avoiding getting caught in vicious cycles that damage credibility . Leadership is about leverage. The new leader is, after all, just one person. To be successful, she will have to mobilize the energy of many others in her organization. Her vision, her expertise, her drive can serve as a seed crystal in the new organization, one that will grow exponentially into new and more productive patterns of behavior. Too often, however, the new leader behaves more like a virus: Her early actions alienate potential supporters, undermine her credibility, and stimulate defensive reactions . As a vicious cycle takes hold, the organization s immune system gets activated and the new leader is attacked by clumps of killer cells , encapsulated, and finally expelled.

The fourth proposition is that transitions are a crucible for leadership development and should be managed accordingly . Precisely because they strengthen diagnostic skills, demand growth and adaptation, and test personal stamina, transitions are an indispensable development experience for every company s high potential leaders. A survey conducted as part of McKinsey s War for Talent study asked a sample of 200 senior executives to identify their five most important developmental experiences. ^[4] The top overall responses all involved significant transitions into new roles:

• New position with large scope

• Turning around a business

• Starting a new business

• Large, high-profile special project

• Working outside home country

This proposition emphatically does not mean ”as it does at too many companies ”throwing good people into the deep end to see if they sink or swim. Like swimming, transitioning is a teachable skill. Transition acceleration skills should be taught to people who are in transition, so that talented people do not drown unnecessarily.

My fifth and final proposition is that adoption of a standard framework for accelerating transitions can yield big returns for organizations . Each year over half a million managers enter new positions in Fortune 500 companies alone. ^[5] Given the frequency with which people take on new jobs, and the impact of each transition on others in the organization, it helps a lot if everyone ” bosses, direct reports , and peers ”speaks the same transition language. Why shouldn t every person who is getting to know a new boss employ a shared set of guidelines (such as those provided in chapter 5 of this book) to build that critical relationship? Also, adopting standard approaches to learning about a new organization, securing early wins, and building coalitions translates into speedier organizational adjustments to the unavoidable stream of personnel shifts and environmental changes.

Adopting a rational framework for transition acceleration translates into real bottom-line impact.

^[1] Analysis of data from survey of participants in Harvard Business School s 2003 YPO President s Seminar and 2003 WPO/CEO Seminar.

^[2] Excellent exceptions to this general rule are John J. Gabarro, The Dynamics of Taking Charge (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1987) and Linda A. Hill, Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership, 2d ed. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003).

^[3] For an excellent exploration of the challenges of moving from technical contributor to first-time manager, see Hill, Becoming a Manager .

^[4] Helen Handfield-Jones, How Executives Grow, McKinsey Quarterly 1 (2000): 121.

^[5] This is an extrapolation of the results of a management transition survey of senior HR executives at Fortune 500 companies that I conducted in 1999. The survey was sent to the heads of human resources at a random sample of 100 Fortune 500 companies. We received 40 responses. One question concerned the percentage of managers at all levels who took new jobs in 1998. The mean of the responses to this question was 22.3 percent. Extrapolated to the Fortune 500 as a whole, this suggests that almost 700,000 managers take new jobs each year. The half-million figure is therefore a conservative estimate intended purely to illustrate the magnitude of the impact of leadership transitions.