The nature of beginnings: role beginnings bring a heady mix of excitement, anticipation and nervousness too. There is a feeling of being the ‘special one’, singled out from others to take on an important role. However, there is also a feeling of trepidation – am I really good enough? Will I succeed or fail?
Leaders, however experienced, are emotional beings just like everybody else. In my experience, everybody who is facing their first 100 days oscillates between these feelings of ‘special one/superiority’ and ‘worried one/inferiority’. Regulating your emotions during the beginning stage of your first 100 days is an important key to your success. At the beginning of an important role appointment, some executives feel overwhelmed by a feeling of panic and fear of failure. Others are over-confident and completely underestimate the challenges ahead. Try to stay centred from the beginning. If you can stay grounded, and feel calm and confident, you are giving yourself a chance to make the best possible start in the role.
It might seem like an odd thing, especially to junior people who think their leaders always know what to do, but I have noticed that, very often, senior executives also simply don’t know how to get started properly in a new role. After all, there is so much to do and sometimes it can be very difficult to know how to take that first step and begin. The temptation is to simply dive in and tackle the first problem that presents itself, and then the next and the next. Even before you begin, your diary may start filling up with meetings and it is too easy to just get busy being busy.
This approach of jumping on the treadmill is often how people think they should start, but it is not the best way. It is too short-termist, too reactive. It is certainly not the most thoughtful or strategic way to tackle a new role appointment. Before you know it, your diary is in charge of you and you have missed the opportunity to reset, refresh or reframe strategic priorities on where you really ought to be investing your time and energy.
In the forthcoming chapters of this Beginning section, I outline an approach and key steps for what you can do to prepare before you officially start in the role, and what you should do on arrival.
First100™ client case study
At 36 years old, and a relatively young member of his company’s European leadership team, Ashley was surprised but pleased to get the call from the group CEO and learn of his unexpectedly fast promotion into a global leadership role as Global Head of Sales for Premium Services. He would be responsible for sales and marketing of the premium services business banking division, initially focusing the client strategy across Europe and Asia.
The existing role holder, Fiona, had unexpectedly resigned to join the competition. Due to the confidential nature of the role, and her defection to the competition, Fiona had been accompanied out of the building by security – so a seamless handover was certainly out of the question. Ashley did not know what team issues he would inherit from his predecessor but he remembered hearing that Fiona used an old-fashioned style of management, was very hierarchical and tended to create divisions in her team by relying on a few favourites in her inner circle to get things done.
The Asian market would be extremely important but none of the Asian stakeholders internally or externally are familiar with Ashley. Relationship management in Asia is crucial and this meant Ashley was already on the back foot in terms of getting things done via reputational goodwill alone.
The company was facing significant shareholder pressure to deliver high-growth returns quickly, and Ashley’s revenue and growth potential represented up to 10 per cent of global company revenues. The team he would inherit are a mixed group in terms of capability, and he already knew from conversations with the CEO that his first job would be to fire a team member who had recently been found lacking on fulfilling the ethical standards expected in his role.
The team were upset by the sudden departure of Fiona and were unsure as to what kind of working style they could expect from their new boss. After all, he was younger than most of them. Some members of the team resented the company’s recent policy on fast-tracking younger talent who may be bright but who, in their view, lacked the necessary years of experience.
Putting the required firing aside, it was not immediately obvious to Ashley what to do with the team or how to start to tackle the whole role. This was not a well-established position; it was created only four years ago in response mainly to the Asia opportunity and there was no written job description. His boss was the Group CEO – with many pressing priorities of his own – and simply expected Ashley to get on with it and define his own role and leadership goals. This was one of those ‘sink or swim’ high-intensity roles – high profile, high reward, but high risk from a career perspective too.
Ashley’s current role responsibilities and existing issues tied him in until the calendar year end, and until he appointed a successor. So that meant the next eight weeks would be about how to close out his current job and find a successor, with surely no time to even think about the new job.
Ashley was ambitious and he knew that if he did well in this new role, it would bode well for fast-track promotion to the group executive committee.
Suddenly the pressure of the promotion felt enormous. At 4 am on Monday morning, with two weeks to go until start date, Ashley tossed and turned, unable to sleep. ‘It’s great I got the job, but now what?!’