The First 90 Days (6 page)

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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

[5]

for organizations
. Each year over half a million managers enter new positions in
Fortune
500 companies alone.

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.

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Accelerating Organizations

The final proposition deserves some extra emphasis and explanation. As you read what follows, think about the implications not just for you but also for your organization.

[6]

Each year slightly fewer than a quarter of the managers in a typical
Fortune
500 company change jobs. This means that managers spend an average of four years in a given position. Highpotential leaders in the midsenior ranks have a shorter average time in position: Their “eras” typically last two and a half to three years. Their careers consist of a series of such eras, punctuated by transition periods of a few months during which their actions set the tone for what follows and strongly influence their overall performance.

Companies need to move their best people through positions of increasing responsibility to develop them. If they do not do so, they risk losing their best talent to competitors. But the constant churn comes at a cost. Each new manager takes time to reach the breakeven point. And the pace of business is such that there is little time available to get acclimated and little latitude for poor early decisions.

For each individual who transitions, there also are many others—direct reports, bosses, and peers—whose performance is negatively affected. In a survey of company presidents and CEOs, I asked for their best estimate of the number of people whose performance was significantly compromised by the arrival of a new midlevel manager. The

[7]

average of the responses was 12.4 people. In effect, all the people in the “impact network” of the transitioning manager are in transition too.

A further challenge is transitioning talented people into the organization from the outside. Even healthy organizations need to do this to introduce new ideas and preserve vitality. However, the failure rate for new leaders who enter organizations from the outside is high. Studies have found that more than 40 to 50 percent of senior outside hires fail

[8]

to achieve desired results. Estimates of the direct and indirect costs to a company of a failed executive-level hire

[9]

range as high as $2.7 million.

When surveyed, senior HR practitioners assess the challenge of coming in from the outside as “much harder” than

[10]

being promoted from within.

They attribute the high failure rate of outside hires to several barriers to making a successful transition, notably the following:

Executives from outside the company are not as familiar with the organizational structure and the existence of informal networks of information and communication.

Outside hires are not familiar with the corporate culture and therefore have greater difficulty assimilating.

New people are unknown to the organization and therefore do not have the same credibility as someone who is promoted from within.

A long tradition of hiring from within makes it difficult for organizations to adjust to senior-level managers who are viewed as outsiders.

When a new leader fails, it is a severe, perhaps career-ending, blow to the individual. But every leadership failure—whether an outright derailment or a less dramatic underperformance— is costly for the organization as well.

Success in accelerating the transitions of all managers—at every level and whether they are being promoted from within or hired from outside—could represent a tremendous gain in performance for the organization.

It is surprising, therefore, that few companies pay much attention to accelerating leadership transitions. When I lead transition acceleration programs, I ask the new leaders in the room to write down the number of transitions they have made so far in their careers and the number they anticipate making before they retire. In a group of thirty, the responses to both questions typically total more than 150 transitions! Then I ask how many participants have received training or coaching from their organization in how to make transitions, and the answer is essentially none.

All these talented people had to develop their own models for how to make transitions. This is hard-won knowledge,

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and the failure to share it represents a big loss for the organization. This valuable cache of experience is seldom converted into organizational learning. Also, people develop their own idiosyncratic approaches to taking charge, approaches that may or may not continue to serve them well as they rise in an organization or switch to a new one.

A shared framework for transition acceleration is therefore an organizational asset. In addition to reducing the costs of disruption, a common approach to managing leadership transitions can help you to identify and retain the best leadership talent. We don’t identify star swimmers by throwing children into the pool unprepared; we teach them to swim, coach them, and then let performance speak for itself. Transition acceleration also is a skill that can be taught.

Leaders should not succeed just because they happen to have mentors who are good swim coaches or because they get placed into situations that happen to play to their strengths. Neither should promising people fail because they lack these advantages. If you truly want a managerial meritocracy, then you should level the playing field during transitions.