Once you said yes to a new leadership position and thoroughly celebrated, the hard work begins.
It’s time to start planning for the transition to your new job. After all, research shows the first 90 days in a new job will largely determine whether you succeed or fail in your new role.
Moving into a new position is all about managing change. One of the first steps is to assess the magnitude of change between your previous position and your new position. These are some questions to ask yourself before you get started.
Will you be in the same company or a different company?
Either way you will need to quickly learn about the culture you are going into, whether it’s the entire company’s culture or a department’s culture.
Will you be in the same industry or a different industry?
If you are moving to a new industry, start getting up to speed by learning about industry trends and challenges, key players, and the culture.
Will you be in a new geographic area?
If so, begin learning about the demographics of your new location and how the geographic culture may influence business.
Will you be moving to a new management level?
Each leadership level has different expectations. For example, expectations for managing managers is different than the ones for managing individual contributors. You will need to learn about what you should continue to do, stop doing, and start doing to be an effective leader at your new level.
What will be the composition of your new organization?
Will you be managing the same number of people or significantly more or fewer people?
These questions will help you gain perspective on what areas you need to focus on as you begin to plan for your transition.
