After accepting a new leadership position, what do you do? Celebrate…then…start planning for the transition to your new job.
Extensive research shows that the first 90 days in a new job will largely determine whether you succeed or fail in your new role. Typically, leaders do a better job of planning for the first 90 days when they are starting with a new company; however, a leadership promotion within a company also requires planning for the first 90 days.
Moving into a new position is about managing change. One of the first steps is to assess the magnitude of change between your previous position and your new position. Some of the questions to consider as you assess the amount of change you will be dealing with in your new leadership position are:
Will you be in the same or different company?
If you are joining a new company, you will need to quickly learn about the company culture.
If you have been promoted within your company, you will need to learn about the culture in your new organization. Although the company culture will be the same, how that culture manifests in each organization is different.
Will you be in the same or different industry?
If you are moving to a new company in the same industry, you will have a good idea about how companies within your industry operate; however, you will still need to learn about the culture of your new company.
If you are moving to a new industry, start getting up to speed about the industry. This includes learning about industry trends and challenges, key industry players, and the industry culture and way of doing business.
Will you be in a new geographic area?
If you are moving to a new geographic area, you will need to manage your transition to the new area as well as your transition to your new job. Begin learning about the demographics of your new location and how the geographic culture may influence the way business is done.
Will you be moving to a new management level?
Each management level has different expectations about the leadership required to be successful. For example the expectations for managing managers is different from the expectations about managing individual contributors. As a manager at a new level of the organization you will need to learn about what you should continue to do, stop doing and starting doing to be an effective leader at your new level.
What will be the composition of your new organization?
Will you be managing approximately the same number of people or significantly more or fewer people?
Are the people in your organization in one location or multiple locations?
Consider these questions before starting your 90 day plan to gain a perspective of the amount of change you will be managing as you move from your previous job to your new one.
Let me know what other changes you considered as you began thinking about your transition to a new leadership position. Don’t forget to have your own Five O’Clock Club coach – a trusted advisor – to see you through this transition.
My next article will be about how you can “Quickly learn about the organization culture”.
