New Leader? Be Smart About Your “Transition to Impact”

February 24, 2015 |

I had my head down developing international business opportunities for Mitsubishi International Corporation. I was in London meeting with my Tokyo counterpart assessing a virtual reality gaming company. After a long day, we needed some dinner. Over drinks, he shared some unexpected news.

He was leaving Mitsubishi after 20 years to help diversify a smaller Japanese company. Part of the strategy was to enter America. He wanted me to lead the USA effort. I was a manager and he wanted an executive. I never led like this before. Excitement then a bit of fear set in. I went back the USA and noodled over things. We worked out the details. I took the job. I was 32 years old.

Here’s the blueprint I wish I had back then:

So, you’re a newly appointed leader. What now? Are you feeling the pressure to gallop through transition to impact quickly? You might want to slow down a tad:Research shows that the failure rate among newly hired or promoted executives has stood at 40 percent for the past 15 years. Apparently, conventional leadership wisdom peddled by scores of mentors and gurus is not sufficient to succeed in a C-level position.You might think this C-level stuff doesn’t apply to you. Think again:Successful corporations don’t wait for leaders to come along. They actively seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to career experiences designed to develop that potential. —John P. Kotter“The C-level person today needs to be more team-oriented, capable of multitasking continuously and leading without rank, and able to resist stress and make sure that his subordinates do not burn out. And [s]he needs to do all of this with a big smile in an open plan office. In other words, we’re looking at a whole new breed of top executive.”That’s you. You’re the “new breed” executive:A good bellwether of the state of HR will be the function’s ability to produce candidates from within its own ranks to take on senior roles at companies.  —Executive Recruiter

Don’t celebrate your advancing career too early. You symbolize change. Your promotion is intended to effectuate change but here’s the rub:Guiding change may be the ultimate test of a leader—no business survives over the long term if it can’t reinvent itself. But, human nature being what it is, fundamental change is often resisted mightily by the people it most affects: those in the trenches of the business. Thus, leading change is both absolutely essential and incredibly difficult.Let that “incredibly difficult” message sink in. You will be resisted. You ARE change. Best to ease up and get a sense for the nuance and dynamics of organizational change and transition.…[T]he change process goes through a series of phases that, in total, usually require a considerable length of time. Skipping steps creates only the illusion of speed and never produces a satisfying result.Self-awareness is key to your success in your new leadership role:[The]…requirements for all the C-level jobs have shifted toward business acumen and ‘softer’ leadership skills. Technical skills are merely a starting point, the bare minimum. To thrive as a C-level executive, an individual needs to be a good communicator, a collaborator, and a strategic thinker…

You also need a roadmap to follow. You need a process. McKinsey & Company’s approach to achieving a high-impact transition is a thoughtful point-of-reference for you:

Step One

Before taking action take stock. Focus your time on answering these four questions:

  1. How does my new business or function create value?
  2. What are the cultural dynamics of the organization I am joining?
  3. How strong is the team I am inheriting?
  4. What do I personally need to get smarter about in my new role?

Step Two

Once you know what you are dealing with use your perceptions to define action in four areas:

  1. Setting strategy with execution in mind
  2. Changing minds and encouraging desirable behavior
  3. Building your team as an all-star team
  4. Playing a unique leadership role

Plan your outcome, performance and process goals around these two steps. Use McKinsey’s visual below as a guide for working the  two-step process above:

McKinsey’s high-impact executive transition methodology.

Make sure to give yourself 3-6 months to reach full productivity and manage that expectation upfront. Your focus must be on tangible impacts and not arbitrary deadlines.

And, remember: “Knowing how, when, and who is as important as what. Sixty-eight percent of transition failures happen because of the information new executives use, the sequence they follow, and the manner in which they engage–or fail to engage–those around them.

My first foray into the executive ranks post-Mitsubishi didn’t fare so well. The stock I took was incomplete. I didn’t nail the value question with HQ in Japan. That impacted strategy and execution. I also failed to quickly build an all-star team. I made mistakes on key hires which set me back. And, then once the founder–who hired me–died, I failed to reassess the organization’s new cultural dynamics under the son who took over.

So, I’ll leave you with this: the path to success in leadership is riddled with failure. Leadership will always be about your capacity to recover from failure. Leading well is a habit you develop over time. The learning does not stop. Stay curious and keep pushing through your barriers.

Trust and honor these two steps and you’ll do well in your new role.

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