Lessons on recruiting your next leader

Recruiting strategies for hiring the next business leader effectively

I spoke to a couple groups of business owners recently on executive retention and development. Along the way, the discussion veered to the search process. Executive Springboard deals directly with what happens after the search, but I haven’t spent much time providing insights on the search itself. Having interviewed a couple dozen search firm principals and HR leaders, I can offer six best practices to put in place when you recruit.

1. Decide Whether to Build or Buy.
At the core of a search discussion is whether or not a search is even necessary.

OK, I have covered this topic before. Here’s a link to my blog called Ready for Prime Time? The Cliff Notes version is this: We often make the wrong analysis when deciding somebody is not ready for promotion to a senior spot. The internal candidate (the “build” option) may not be ready today. But it will take you months to conduct a search and select a candidate (the “buy” option). Then it will take 6-8 months before that external hire is fully up to speed. So, the correct question to ask this: “Will your internal candidate will be ready in a year, when hopefully an external hire is up-to-speed and making the contribution you expect?”

It’s a coin flip whether an external hire will work out or not. The risk is even higher if your new hire just assumed a more senior position with you than in their previous company. Mix learning a new culture with learning a new position, and it is easy to see why this is a daunting challenge.

Executives shared with me lots of reasons why they would buy their leadership, rather than build it. They might not have anybody in their organization who is close to the talent profile they seek. Maybe they can’t afford to move somebody off of their current responsibilities. At the top of the list was the need to make a significant change. If your team only knows one way of doing things and you’ve concluded that isn’t cutting it, then you have to look elsewhere for a course correction. Just recognize the risk inherent in the decision.
2. Leave it to the Experts.
Indeed and LinkedIn make it easy to conduct your own searches. And you can probably save a lot of money by not engaging a search firm. Larger organizations may have their own in-house recuiters. But are you good enough at it to hire a leader? Probably not. You just don’t have the opportunity to do it all that often.

Headhunters are more experienced at senior level recruitment than you are. They have a broader data base of candidates. They are especially adept at finding executives who are not actively looking for their next opportunity, those who might be satisfied in their current position with a competitor. They know how to entice these candidates to consider you, coming off as far more of an honest broker than you can pull off yourself.

Not only does the headhunter’s third-party status provide objectivity that candidates value, but it can improve your own role in the search. They can question your criteria, your speed of response or your reaction to the relative polish candidates have. They can get involved in negotiations on compensation, helping you avoid a zero-sum game that creates a cloud before your new Chosen One walks in the door.
3. Sweat the Position Specs.
The advertising titan David Ogilvy said, “Give me the freedom of a tight brief.” He wasn’t referring to ill-fitting underware. He was talking about how great execution relies on solid direction. It applies to executive search as much as it does in advertising.

Here are two sets of qualifications I pulled from VP of Marketing searches on LinkedIn:
- A. REQUIREMENTS:
  - Bachelor’s degree Business, or related field and ten plus years experience in marketing.
  - E.O.E. Minority/Female/Disabled Veteran
- B. QUALIFICATIONS
  - At least 8-10 years of demonstrated impact in marketing roles, with experience in real estate or a related industry preferred
  - First-hand experience establishing strategic direction and developing multi-channel communication programs which include advertising, intranet and website, social media, etc.
  - Strong eye for aesthetics and overall brand sensibility
  - Good listening skills, facilitator of conversations, and creative processes
  - Attention to detail to ensure accuracy and on-brand messaging, including print, digital, and visual materials
  - Outstanding influencing and interpersonal skills and a track record of working effectively and forming peer-level relationships with senior members of an organization
  - Flexibility and the ability to manage conflicting demands and multiple channels of communication, as well as a sense of humor and a positive ‘can-do’ attitude
  - Self-motivated, with an appetite for working entrepreneurially in an environment with little imposed structure,/li>
  - Sensitive to interpersonal relationships in a family-owned company
  - Initiative taking but able to generate buy-in for critical decisions
  - Non-bureaucratic thinker who will take on whatever role is required to accomplish a common goal
  - Academic credentials should include an undergraduate degree in a related field and evidence of intellectual curiosity as demonstrated by an advanced degree or other professional training
  - Proficient in MS Office, especially Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. Indesign a plus. Ability to learn new systems and processes quickly
  - BA/BS required, MBA a plus
A offers an open house. Just about anybody is welcome to apply. What does this tell you about the thinking that went into creating these specs? What does it say about the company that published this?

B is far more complete, but it leaves a candidate with several big questions:
- Does management experience factor into this role at all?
- Does this company understand the analytic side of marketing?
- What, really, is important to them?
I’d suggest keeping your priority list of requirements to about five items. You can leave the lower-bar requirements unstated and focus instead on what is important. You are unlikely to hire somebody for a VP of Marketing position who doesn’t have a Bachelor’s degree. Don’t bother saying it. But does the candidate need experience in your industry? Should they have a expertise in digital lead generation or in developing a global portfolio of brands? These make it easier for a candidate to read and comprehend your position description. They also make it easier for the headhunter and you to evaluate higher-level differences between candidates.
4. Work with Transparency.
You should demand transparency from your search firm partner. They should keep you up to date on critical metrics in the search. They should share a real-time list of candidates they are evaluating and what their status is.

As I touched on when considering the benefits of a third-party relationship in a search, you should demand that the headhunter be up-front with you on how you are managing your part of the search. If they think your job specs stink, they should not hold back in saying so. If they see you drifting off into considering things that were not the priorities, they should flag it. Search firms almost always have a recommended first choice. Hear them out on their rationale, especially if it is not aligned with your choice. Their POV is based on a different view of the candidate than your own.

Transparency also extends to what you share with your candidates. In the search process, both sides are selling. The headhunter helps to ensure that there is evidence to support what the candidate has said in their pitch to you. They might do the same thing for the candidate about the environment that they will face. But it is important for you to be as honest as possible with the candidate about the environment, the culture and the people they will face. Executives’ failures in new roles often results from disconnects between expectations and reality. Better for these to come up during the search process, even if it leads to a candidate rejecting you, then for them to find out once they join that important information was withheld from them.
5. Fully Utilize Assessments.
Personality assessments are increasingly common as part of the search process. Some are detailed and validated. Others may be little more than a horoscope. Conducting a thorough assessment will set you back a few thousand dollars.

A few search firms incorporate assessments into their base offering. This can add value for you, but those assessments are often proprietary or licensed at low or no fee. The question is whether you compare outcomes with more broadly used tools. Headhunters will seldom cut into their margin to conduct a Hogan, EQ-I or DiSC for free.

At least a dozen CHROs I’ve interviewed have told me that they use assessment tools in the selection process, primarily to understand strengths, watch-outs and cultural compatability. Then the results are put in a vault, to be used again in succession planning discussions. There is often a missed opportunity to use personality assessments as part of the assimilation process. This is Executive Springboard’s preferred way of working. Understanding strengths and development needs within a cultural context is an enormous help in effective onboarding.
6. Nail the Interview.
You normally think of this as the concern of the candidate, whether or not they do a great job when they get face-to-face with your organization’s decision-makers. A headhunter told me a horror story that he saw repeated among his clients during his time at KornFerry.

Interviewers focused on the fact they were seeing somebody when they looked at their calendar in the morning. In meetings prior to the interview, they studied the candidate’s resume, took a few notes and came up with some questions. During the interview itself, they spent the majority of the time talking about the company and their role, which they thought was appreciated by the candidate. They refrained from note-taking, in order not to tip of the candidate on what they thought was important. Immediately after the interview, they took a phone call, then went into an emergency meeting. That night at home, they tried to recall cogent parts of the conversation. They had an overall reaction to the candidate, but it already felt more like a gut feeling than something tied to specific things the candidate had said.

Interview “leakage” happens all the time. It leads to suboptimal selection or a consensus supporting the few people who were the best note-takers. A little discipline can go a long way towards nailing the interview from the company’s perspective. All interviewers can agree ahead of time on which of the job spec priorities they will address and how the will do it. Each interviewer can ask the same questions to each candidate. Everybody should take notes or use score sheets. A short conference call can be conducted at the end of the day for a top-line debrief on how candidates were viewed. The debrief should be placed on calendars at the same time as the interview.

Final Thoughts
Even if your upcoming search goes perfectly, things can go wrong when that great leader joins your organization. That is why Executive Springboard exists. But you can increase the chances that your next leader succeeds, by getting the search right. I hope this advice gathered from headhunters and CHROs around the country opens up avenues that you may not have considered.

Key watch-outs for Internal Promotions and leadership success

I firmly believe that internal promotions to leadership positions have far less risk than external hires. A newly promoted leader knows the culture and has succeeded in it well enough to deserve a step up. They know the market and the company’s assets and weaknesses. They have well established relationships to leverage. Even if they face a learning curve, it is minor versus a comparably competent executive coming in from outside the company.

But there are lots of things that can go wrong for the newly promoted leader. Here are four “watch-outs” that can help avoid missteps in the new role.

1. You do the same work you did before the promotion.
There is a reason you got the promotion beyond that you were doing a good job, even if you’ve been promoted in place. There are plenty of people doing good work who would be disasters at the next step up. The organization determined that you are ready to handle greater responsibility, more senior relationships, broader scope and the stress that comes with it.

If your promotion makes you a member of the executive team now, your scope is not limited to your function. Inclusion on the executive team carries team responsibilities with it. You represent your function, but you are expected to have a voice in how the business is managed and how the organizational culture evolves.

Get clear what your boss sees as their expectations of your new role. A CEO might only have broad notions about how things will change, but they have some direction to give. It may be that your promotion represents a strategic emphasis on your function that was not there before. Perhaps you are expected to provide continuity after a retirement or create a spark that was missing from a terminated predecessor. If no strategy is articulated, conduct your own STaRS evaluation. Is the business in start-up, turn-around, realignment or sustaining mode? How does this inform how you will lead?

Your promotion is a vote of confidence in your ability to do a bigger job. But you and the organization are susceptible to blind spots , if you continue to run in the same groove as before. Question current practices, even if they are what got you promoted. What is holding the organization back? What outside practices are even better than the good things you are doing now? This openness to explore other ways of doing business can start off small and continue incrementally. After all, if a radical redesign were desired, the company would probably have hired from the outside.

Develop a vision for your role and share it with your peers and your team. This need not be done on Day One. Even somebody with your experience on the business will need to take stock and learn from new constituents, before announcing strategic direction.
2. You expect the supportive relationships you’ve had with other functional heads will not change.
This is one of the more difficult things to get used to. Other members of the executive team will be happy for you and may welcome you into the fold, but they have their own turf to protect, and they are more practiced at senior in-fighting than you are. This change in relationship may be most pronounced between you and a person who viewed you as a mentee/protégé. Now you are a peer, and sometimes a competitor or rival. It’s time to find a coach or mentor from outside the organization.

New leaders are often surprised to learn of the level of conflict and dysfunction in the executive team. Exec teams that operate under cabinet responsibility will very infrequently let the organization see anything besides consensus. But the team is comprised of strong-willed people with deeply held convictions and healthy egos. Sure, there is collaboration and generally a presumption of positive intent. But organizational leadership is a full-contact sport.

Be ready for conflict where it did not exist before. In fact, your boss will expect you to initiate some conflict, to take a contrary view and to push back on a colleague who is impeding your path to success. Handled well, this can have positive outcomes for everybody. Fight, respectfully, for what you believe in. Give your team air cover; you represent them, and their output is a reflection on you. I have seen leaders lose the respect of their peers by being too transparent on the faults of their own team.
3. You don’t recognize the fundamental change in dynamics between you and those on your team.
You used to be viewed as a captain on the team. You‘ve been admired, loved and considered “one of us.” You’ve socialized together with these colleagues for years. They all applauded your promotion. And then it struck them. You’re not the captain anymore. You are the boss.

The power equilibrium of your team has been disrupted. How they appear to leadership is now through your lens. You and have direct control over their livelihood. They are on their guard. They hope the move to leadership does not change who you are. Because you are home grown, they hope that any changes will be in a direction they can anticipate.

It is a mistake to believe or pretend that nothing has changed, at least in the workplace. Leadership can be lonely. You will distance yourself from long-established relationships to ensure necessary objectivity. If you don’t do this, it will happen to you, because people don’t treat a coach the same way they do a captain.

If you were selected over a colleague who had reason to believe they had a shot for that position, you need to address it straight on. Give this person the respect they deserve. Recruit them to be a major player in your plans. Consider how they can have ownership for a given scope of responsibility, a “consolation prize” of sorts. Keep your radar up for any indications that they cannot get on board with your agenda, either in initial conversations or subsequent weeks or months. You cannot afford for this person to become disruptive to your efforts. If this happens, talk to them about what you see and how you can support them achieving their goals inside or outside the organization.
4. Your behavior doesn’t reflect people paying closer attention to what you do and say.Middle managers like you and rooted for your promotion. You are one of the company’s success stories. You were once one of the guys. Now you have become a role model. Remember when you and colleagues gossiped about the executive team? Those same colleagues are gossiping about you.

Some will continue to pull for you, because they see their own future in your success. Others will wonder, “Why not me?” and become skeptics. Whether they remain fans or not, they are watching everything you do, listening to everything you say. The frown on your face when you leave a meeting? Noted. The animated discussion over lunch with a fellow executive off-site? A subject of conversation.

You have to get used to being in the public eye. And you have to exhibit social awareness, on top of self-awareness. Be careful what you promise; you will be judged on how you deliver on your commitments. Resist the temptation to think out loud; this comes off as an exhibition of indecisiveness. In publicly traded companies, you are now an insider. Speculation on or discussion of future moves that the public does not know about is verboten. These governors on behavior might appear to get in the way of authenticity, but it doesn’t take long to get into a groove and be yourself.

Onboarding leaders asking key corporate culture questions

Executive Springboard helps new leaders with their onboarding, so they can quickly make an impact and sustain that impact long-term. Helping an executive succeed can involve providing guidance on the functional issues they face. Equally important is helping them navigate the relationships and culture they encounter.

A few weeks ago, I asked for readers’ opinions on the most important questions that can be asked to understand a corporate culture. It took a little while to work through the flood of responses that I received, still longer to organize them in a coherent manner. I found eight themes emerging, with a fair amount of overlap among them.

1. General culture description
Ask a number of people in an organization to describe the corporate culture. Allow them to address this open-ended question however they see fit. Consider the patterns in the responses. What elements mentioned repeatedly? Is the description consistent? Is there a difference between the reality of the culture and how they would ideally see it?

Getting more granular, how is culture taught? Is it part of any corporate onboarding program? Is there corporate folklore that tell stories of the organization’s heroes and their achievements? How do their accomplishments match up with the company’s values?
2. Behavioral norms
Consider the behavior of the CEO and how it acts as a model for the organization. Does the CEO interact daily with people “down the line,” for example, with customer service reps or administrative assistants? Does the CEO know anything personal about these people, beyond their role in the company? How much is the CEO seen or heard? Do they stay in headquarters, or are they often seen in branches, plants or customers’ offices?

How much does the organization expect people to collaborate? Does the employee base frequently see leaders interacting, or do they just manage their own spheres of influence?

Is the organization one where everybody feels like they have skin in the game, or do leaders micro-manage employees? It was felt that bosses’ overreach at the expense of employee autonomy can diminish morale and kill creativity.

What happens when strong performance comes at the expense of corporate values?

How are exceptions to the rules tolerated? Are policies and procedures standardized and enforced? Would behavior that is unacceptable for the finance function be allowed among the sales team?

Are there any taboos… dress code, work hours, working from home, etc.? Are there expectations about behavior that extend beyond the workplace (e.g., social media use, personal habits?)
3. Performance
What is the performance review process? Is it formal or informal? Frequent, annual or irregular? Do you force a “grading curve,” or do you allow all to be strong performers with areas for growth (In Minnesota, we call this The Prairie Home Companion Curve, where everybody is above average!)

How do you react to major and minor mistakes? Are there disciplinary consequences? How does this impact employees’ willingness to give bad news and own up to their responsibility? Does the organization forgive and move on? Are there ways of gaining institutional learning from mistakes?

How does the company recognize, reward or celebrate success? What is measured and how are successes rewarded? Are the metrics long- or short-term? Is there a focus on revenue, profit, customer retention, cost savings or other factors? Is there consistency in what is measured, or might strong performance that was rewarded last year be ignored this year?

How often are the successes that are acknowledged individual rather than collective? In other words, does the culture allow people to be singled out for their achievements?
4. Power
Where does the power reside? Within the C-suite, are all people equal, or is there an inner circle? If power at the top is unevenly distributed, is this reflected more broadly throughout the organization? Is this a result of personality, tenure, competence or a strategic consideration?

Who owns the P&L? Does control of the P&L impact how influence works? Is this simple or matrixed?

How is power most often used by those with power towards those without? Is it enabling? Abusive?

How does the organization’s immune system manifest itself? In the face of somebody who might be challenging the status quo, what are the common forms of resistance?
5. Diversity and Inclusion
Does the organization reflect diversity, or is it a “good boy network?”

Can you demonstrate times when you have engaged in opportunities to promote diversity and inclusion of people or thought leadership? Does the employee base resemble the customer base? What challenges, if any, does the company face in making employees feel included? As Professor Michael Gaffley of Nova Southeastern University recently told me, “Diversity is about counting numbers. Inclusion is about making numbers count.”

How does the company encourage mixing of different people, perspectives and experience? How does leadership learn from younger employees about new trends in the marketplace? How does the institutional knowledge of long-tenured employees be memorialized when they retire?

How do you walk the tightrope of encouraging different ways of thinking while benefiting from behavior that conforms to a set of agreed-upon values?
6. Decision-making and communication
How are decisions made? How much will senior leadership delegate? What are signoff levels? Does a plan cascade down or is it built bottom-up? How inclusive is the process for capex, product development and annual budget-setting?

Under what situations will the company invest time and money to develop evidence-based decisions?

When decisions are made, how are the communicated?

Does the company run on PowerPoint? Xcel? Email? Conversation? Does technology allow remote employees to be vital parts of decision-making?

If a manager represents their team in a proposal that is rejected, how do they report the decision to their team? What responsibility to they have to reflect the consensus of the deciding group?

How often do employees hear from senior executives? What media are used? What message is given? Would the majority of employees be able to state strategic priorities?
7. Conflict resolution
What and where are the common areas of conflict? Are these based on unmatched objectives between stakeholders? Incentives that are not aligned? Disagreement on expected outcomes? Politics?

How do issues get resolved? Is consensus sought? Are they made by decree or through an arbiter? How often does resolution result in a “win-win” situation? In one side backing down, in face of evidence it had not considered before? In one side backing down for reasons that were not data-driven? What is an example of a conflict faced within a department? Of a conflict between two functions or business units? How were these resolved?

How much of the CEO’s job is deciding between two opposing viewpoints that cannot be resolved by themselves?
8. Vision and Mission
What does the company want to be known for in 3-5 years? What terms define that vision? Are they financial? In customer terms? Employee-focused? Shareholders? Other stakeholder groups?

Where did the vision come from? Who developed it and through what process?

Why does the company exist? What is its mission? What motivates people to come to work in the morning? How well does it relate to the whole business? Are there large parts of the company that seem to be out of scope, and how are they managed?

How well is the vision and mission internalized by employees? Can they tell you what the vision and mission of the company are? Do they find them compelling and achievable? Are they committed to accomplish them?

My initial intention was to provide a tight set of questions to get at the essence of a company’s culture. That’s what we try to do in a short conversation with corporate leadership prior to a mentoring engagement. But I was impressed with the passion and insights provided by dozens of responses. You had a lot to say about what’s important to capture in corporate culture. This become a sprawling exercise that fleshed out a very squishy topic. Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

Common reorganizations mistakes leaders make during organizational change

An executive’s skills come to the fore in a reorganization. While they make take on new responsibilities themselves, they face critical needs for leadership from those they serve. Boston Consulting Group surveyed 1600 executives from 35 countries, reflecting on reorganizations their companies enacted. Only forty-eight percent deemed their companies successful in their reorganization efforts. Here is a link to their findings and recommendations:

BCG SURVEY RESULTS

I have worked in corporations that had write-offs for reorganizations almost every year. Investors looked at my company as if it were Bullwinkle trying again to pull a rabbit out of his hat: “This time for sure!” They were not buying it. Instead of the bump in stock price often associated with the announcement of a reorganization, the downward spiral would accelerate.

As I researched the determinants of success or failure in reorganizations, it was clear that the focus has been on the front end rather than what happens when the reality of the chance sets in. Maybe this is appropriate, and my research is far less extensive than BCG’s, but I want to suggest 5 mistakes the companies and leaders routinely make in execution that can lead to failed reorganizations.

1. The focus is on the “what” rather than the “how.”
OK, this is a not a specific feature of execution, but an overall statement of where attention is placed. Over 90% of the literature on reorganizations will be on conceptualizing the change. And a main takeaway is that it doesn’t start with an org chart. Craig Espelien recently wrote me about “a process that defines and aligns: current state, desired future state and how the work will flow. Once this is done, then an org structure will emerge.” Craig’s right. Structure should follow strategy.

There’s another part to reorganizations that gets little attention. These involve big changes, but the usual components of change management are not always applied. It is like using an award-winning architect and then hiring a discount contractor. Planning is important. Thinking through consequences and getting the plumbing right is vital. I’ll take good execution over great strategy any day.
2. The urge for secrecy means that the people who know how things get done are not consulted.
Why do we keep this secret? Because some people might get hurt by the outcomes, so we revert to behavior we learned in high school about breaking up with a sweetheart. Give out hints that something is amiss, send out a text saying, “It’s over!” and become invisible when they are around. In this way, leadership feels the least amount of discomfort.

Yes, some people inevitably lose their jobs in reorgs. News flash: the people who are told, “It’s over!” are often the lucky ones. They may feel hurt for a little while. But, usually, they receive a severance package. They find employment in a company that doesn’t have the problems that led to your reorganization. They get to choose what they do next, instead of being told what box they will fill.

How much does this hurt? Ask Steve Pearce. In late June of 2018 he was traded by the Toronto Blue Jays for a minor league player, after seeing limited action this year. That may have been a blow to his ego, but how bad is it to be traded to the Red Sox, where he hit 3 home runs in his team’s final two World Series wins, getting a championship ring in the process?

Back to why openness trumps secrecy… What is the harm in telling people that, because of a need for greater efficiency or to prepare for future growth, you need to look at structure and processes? Share with stakeholders the rationale for a reorganization and solicit input on the details of that desired future state and how to get there. More people will feel like they were part of the process, or at least that they were heard. You will get a better plan, greater alignment and a higher likelihood of a successfully executed integration.
3. The social aspect is overlooked.
This may be the single most underrated factor in determining success or failure of a reorganization. While efficiency is not the main goal of every reorganization, the net result is that some people will lose their jobs and other people will be moved into unfamiliar roles.

Consider that those who remain suffer from PTSD. They feel the loss of friends who are no longer with them on a daily basis. And they may feel a lack of competence in their new roles, and that takes a toll on their self-esteem. One of the key contributors to employee engagement is feeling that you work with your best friend. In reorganizations, these relationships can be sundered. The survivors will not be happy. Some will let you know it. Others will be more passive-aggressive.

It’s OK to acknowledge their hurt and to point out the sacrifices everybody has to make to eventually get to a better place. And it helps to give people some time to find their footing. Nobody in Cubeland is celebrating the day after the reorganization takes place. A big part of the healing, though, comes from people turning their attention to their new work and to the new social connections they need to make for that work to get done. Much of this will happen organically, but it helps to kick-start these new connections through facilitated sessions on any new processes, roles and responsibilities.

A leader’s responsibilities might change as a result of a reorganization. You may have new direct reports and new teams that are uncertain about their relationship with you. It’s important for you to connect with them. Tell them about yourself, what’s important to you and how they fit into the picture. Be authentic; people are on high alert for BS.
4. Endings are not considered
In a poorly planned reorganization, those who remain inherit the work of those who left. Unless consideration was given to the nature of the work post-reorganization, the survivors end up with more work on their plates and no increase in compensation. That’s how you get the numbers to work. However, the change in the employment value equation turns those valuable people you want to keep into flight risks.

Why this oversight? Because nobody gave thought to what work needs to stop in order to create capacity for the fewer people who will be employed. Most companies are notoriously bad at endings, to declare what is no longer a priority or somebody’s responsibility. If you can let go of things that are not mission critical, you can find a lot of coins in the couch.

Columbia University’s Willie Pieterson and others have defined strategy as the art of sacrifice. Considering what not to do, even ceding business to competitors to focus on where you excel, can be a powerful precursor to any reorganizational design. There are few things more liberating for an organization.
5. Once the announcement is made, the communication is finished
Do people see evidence that the organization’s leadership supports the change? Is it enough to tell people the objectives of the organization at the time it’s announced, or do you need to reinforce the rationale?

People want to know why things are happening, what will happen and when. They need to know how they are impacted individually. They should be reassured of what will not change, like the corporate mission and values. And success will come when they are inspired to get behind the change.

If there ever were a time to manage by walking around, it’s when your people are trying to figure out their new reality. Corporate communications are important; personal communications equally so. There is no such thing as overcommunications at this critical stage.

Remember that communications are two-way. Stop talking long enough to listen. How do employees view the reorganization being executed? If problems surface, they can be addressed by providing additional attention, training or resources. Mid-course corrections are common, and the solutions are usually found in the people on the front line.

To close, as a leader in an organization, you make be closely involved in the development of a reorganization plan. For that reorganization to have a chance of succeeding, you have to be just as involved and even more visible in the hard work of implementation.

Lessons on recruiting your next leader

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