👃🏾 🕛 🤘🏻 Leader in a new place: survival instruction 🚠 🤦🏻 🕐

Not so long ago, I was invited to a CTO position in a cool grocery startup and I decided to restart my career. After several years of work in a large and stable company, I realized that it would not be easy, I will have a million small and big tasks, at first I will have to hard-wrap and build almost everything from scratch.

In this article I want to talk about how I was preparing to move to a new position and what I did the first time in a new company.

The instruction is written in a general style and is suitable for a manager of almost any level when changing jobs. Go!

Training

This item is one of the most important: have a clear plan of action. You should not think that planning is pointless until you get a job in a new company. Do not hope to decide what, when and how to do. The work load will be such that you will move under the pressure of circumstances, believing that this is your plan, forgetting what you really wanted to do.

Your goals in your new position and action plans must be set before you are appointed. Such a plan will help you successfully complete the initial period, after which you can begin to implement your big plans.

I managed to draw up this plan in about 3 weeks, while I was finishing work at my previous job. To do this, I had to read all my notes from books, bookmarks and selected management materials. I also read several books on the subject and came across a very useful book: Michael Watkins “The First 90 Days. Success strategies for new leaders of all levels ”, I recommend reading!

It is desirable to have a plan written on paper. This document should always be at hand, maintained up to date, and it should be constantly brought into line with your understanding of the situation, through systematic monitoring of execution and adjustment of the results. For example, I reviewed the plan every week, marked the completed points in green, added something, removed something.

Before you get to work, collect as much information as possible about your future employees - ask HR, your immediate supervisor, look at profiles on social networks. Try to meet with your future employees to understand who they are, how to build relationships with them, etc.

Be sure to coordinate your processing with your family - at first just a colossal amount of information and business will fall on you. It is important that there are people who support you, understand your employment and, possibly, take on some of your household responsibilities. My family gave me 3 months to settle things in a new place, I sent work from 8 to 20 and supported me in every possible way.

Get to know the team

So, your first working day. Your task is to get to know everyone.

At the first meeting, your task is to make a good impression on your future employees. Tell us about yourself, your experience and plans. It is appropriate to say that your goal is not to break and rebuild, but to develop and improve processes with the active participation and in the interests of the employees themselves.

It should be noted that in the near future you will get into the course of affairs and meet with each employee (options: with each group of employees, with department heads - depending on the size of the team). I met with each employee, there were 16 then: first with managers and key employees.

Put down pizza, juices and waters. This will help to know the team in an informal setting.

Discuss with your supervisor your responsibilities

Contact your supervisor (the CEO or the owner - in my case both).

Examples of questions:

What are your immediate goals as a new leader (for example: find 10 new employees, release a new product by March 1)
What is the goal of your department / company (for example: to double sales by the end of the year)
What reports should be provided: format (document, presentation, oral report at the meeting), how often (daily, weekly, monthly), what should be inside (numbers, graphs, etc.)

In a conversation with the leader, you need to clearly talk about expectations, so your task is to understand and discuss the expectations of management. What does the boss want you to do first, and what second? What will be considered success? How will your performance be evaluated? How long does it take? You can come to the conclusion that the leader’s expectations are unrealistic and you need to try to change them.

You should definitely talk about how you interact on an ongoing basis. What form of communication does he prefer? Personal conversation, written report, email? How often? On what issues you should definitely consult with him, and on which you are free to make independent decisions? How do your interaction styles differ? How can this affect your interaction?

Discuss the necessary resources. What do you need to succeed? What should your supervisor do? Resources are not limited to funding and staff. If you come to the company at the time of the reorganization, for example, you may need the manager personally to convince your subordinates of the need for change.

Gather information inside the team

Communicate more with the team, meet your colleagues. Find out how things are and where bottlenecks are at work. Make a list of questions and meet with each employee.

At the meeting itself, give the floor to the interlocutor, make notes for yourself during communication, so as not to forget anything. Examples of questions:

What do you like about your work?
What do you dislike about your work?
What result of your work over the past six months are you proud of?
What is stopping you from doing your job?
What problems do you see?
What needs to be changed in the work of the department in the very near future?
Any comments (what pleases, what infuriates, what mood, what you expect from work, etc.)

The main goal is to identify weaknesses in the department. I guarantee that you will make several discoveries.

The second most important goal is to identify the good that is now in the department. Understand what keeps employees in the field and what motivates them.

Do not criticize or break.

First carefully study how everything works. Only change what the early changes objectively ripened, and be sure to explain to the team why and why you are changing it.

Maintain and develop further what already gives good results. At first, refrain from changes for the sake of experimentation or in order to show what you are capable of, otherwise you will get the opposite effect. Do not break what works well, you will cause a big negative for the team - because they also took an active part in creating the existing system.

To improve relations, you need to show your openness, dedication and willingness to dialogue - then employees will reciprocate.

Do not rush to act, as you are used to at your previous place of work

Many managers are trying to recreate the conditions of their previous work in a new place. And this is a big mistake! The companies, the people in them, the market conditions and much more are very different. In one company with the same introductory, you will succeed, in another - failure.

It is necessary to abandon the past and focus on requirements that meet the new situation. It is difficult to do, but necessary. Too often, promising leaders go on increasing, but do not cope with the responsibility imposed on them, because they are unable to move to a new level of thinking, completely change their vision of the situation. It is a mistake to assume that you will succeed in a new position if you continue to do the same as before, but only to a larger extent.

The most destructive situation is when a new leader comes to the organization with a “ready answer”. He has already decided for himself how to solve problems, because he “grew up” in an organization where “everything was done as it should” and cannot understand: what was good for one organizational culture may not at all take root in another.

It is also about approaches and methods of communication that are simply familiar to the leader. Also about hiring his former colleagues - not because they are better than current assistants, but because he is also just humanly used to them. Needless to say, the replacement of key employees in a new place with “your own people” causes a particular displeasure of the team?

Even if you decide to bring old colleagues into a new company, evaluate whether they will fit into the new team. “You should not do this right away: first look at the company and its corporate culture. There are situations when it’s really better to focus on developing an existing team. ”

Win the first victories, help the team

You need to win at an early stage. It can be anything:

solve the problems of your subordinate, which no one could solve (buy a second monitor, write instructions, solve the problem with a trip to the conference, etc.)
reduce the number of meetings if at the moment there are too many or are ineffective;
Suggest workflow optimization that really helps your new employees.

Build relationships with your manager

In order for the relationship with your leader to develop successfully, you need to discuss intermediate statuses and successes achieved. This is important for him to understand that you are an independent and responsible person, you don’t need to climb and impose the rules “how to do the work”.

If there is a serious difference in work styles between you and your manager, it is best to discuss this directly. Otherwise, there is a risk that he interprets this difference as incompetence. Talk about how you best combine your work styles. Thanks to this conversation, it will be easier for each of you to achieve your goals.

One proven strategy is to discuss goals and outcomes, rather than how you intend to achieve them. You can simply say that, most likely, there will be some difference in your approaches to certain issues and decisions, but you commit yourself to achieve the results that you agreed on.

Many new leaders play according to the rules proposed to them, taking the situation for granted, and as a result lose.

Also, do not expect your manager to contact you or offer the necessary support. It is best to accept from the very beginning as a fact that establishing a relationship falls on your shoulders.

Find out expectations from the very beginning, do it all over again and again. Ask your supervisor for feedback on your work. Do not deceive the expectations of your leadership. You will have big trouble if he expects that you will quickly fix everything, and you know that the business is experiencing serious structural problems. It would be a wise decision to immediately announce bad news and underestimate unrealistic expectations. Do not allow yourself to rush to extinguish a fire immediately or put forward tasks when you are not ready for it yet.

Aim for first results in areas that matter to your leader. What are his interests, goals, how do your actions fit into the big picture? As soon as you find out, aim for the first results in these areas.

Earn good praise from those whose opinion your leader respects. His opinion about you will be formed partly due to personal communication, partly under the influence of what he hears about you from those whom he trusts. He may have a certain relationship with some of your subordinates. However, in no case do you need to curry favor with them, you just have to do your job at the first-class level!

Work, work hard, do your best

There are no comments, and so everything is clear.

Read, write, store

Your boss will be interested in how things are going, and you yourself too. Working in a managerial position will put your memory to severe trials, even if you are sure that it did not fail you before.

Verbal agreement is often not enough. Even if you talked with someone and agreed exactly, and both remember exactly what they agreed on, send meeting minutes anyway. Be consistent with this technique especially when talking to superiors. We talked, realized - MM.

Sooner or later they will require reporting from you - think about which numbers serve as indicators of your work, with the help of which indicators you can see problems in the department. Start collecting these numbers, even if no one requires you to.

Spare a few hours on automation to save yourself days.

For you, these numbers will also be very useful for understanding how efficiently you work, whether you are doing the right things, how correctly you are doing it, etc. A few graphs and numbers from my diary for the first month of my work. Here I will not cite the conclusions that I have drawn on the graphs, they are only for me.

1. Net hours worked for each day in the first month of work. To get just working time, you need to add ~ 2 hours to each digit. Friday of each week additionally sums up weekends.

2. Distribution of time by work activities.

I hope my experience and thoughts are useful to someone.

Dream, change work and the world around you!

Leader in a new place: survival instruction