Almost any time an executive joins a new company, there is a mandate to change things. CEOs or VPs are seldom told, “Keep us on the same path we’ve been traveling.” Sometimes you hear, “We want you to be a change agent.” Other times it is specific: “We cannot continue to lose share on the most important part of our portfolio!” Sometimes, it’s just implied, like when a person with a strong sales background takes over for somebody with an operations bent.
Why Organizations Hire External Executives
There is an interesting rationale to hiring you to a senior position. Companies will assume that the person on the outside is more capable of implementing needed change than people on the inside. They have an unblemished record. Maybe nobody inside is ready for a senior role. Maybe it is thought that the way things have been done is not a recipe for future success, and that it takes people who have succeeded with another strategy to move the organization ahead. Maybe it that internal people’s growth is not recognized, and they continue to be viewed in the same light as when they were hired.
The Reality of Being a New Executive
Here is the truth behind the change you are responsible for implementing…
If you are hired into a company as a new executive, you don’t know how ANYTHING gets done in the organization. You don’t know processes. You don’t know culture. You may have a strategy, but in a 2013 Katzenbach Center study, it was shown that 64% of global senior executives saw culture as more critical to the success of change management than strategy or operating model.
Maybe you’ll invest time to learn how things work. Maybe you’ll rely on the people who do know how to get things done, as you figure out what to direct them to do.
How, then, can you possibly make change happen quickly? Let me offer these six strategies:
Six Strategies to Make Change Happen Quickly
Work Your 90-Day Plan
Any executive taking on a new role should develop a 90-day plan. Build in your understanding of the company and environment, based on your research. Clarify your vision for success. Lay out what progress can you realistically make in that first quarter. What are the components of your action plan? What resources do you have to draw upon or acquire? What barriers are anticipated, and how can they be overcome? What quick wins can be accomplished, to demonstrate progress and to build relationships?
If you are being recruited for the position, share the plan with colleagues in your last round of interviews. It shows you have taken the job seriously, that you have projected yourself into the role that you seek and that you can show a path to accomplish things.
Companies focus on the first
90 days because, by Day 90, if there are red flags about you, many people expect they will show up. The honeymoon is over. There can be tangible evidence of your ability to deliver. You have enough exposure within the organization for a consensus about you to begin to form.
The first 90 days plan is the equivalent of a coach who scripts out the first ten plays or so in a football game. It doesn’t indicate whether or not you will win, but it does establish the game plan.
A critical component of the 90-day plan is establishing relationships with the people who will help make change happen. Some might be directly involved in implementing the change. Others just have to keep out of the way.
It is unrealistic to accomplish the change you seek to make in 90 days. A company would hire a consultant to do that, not an executive. Accompanying the details of the first 90 days might be extended goals for the significant change you seek.
Be Ready to Scuttle the Plan on Day One
You build the plan based on previous experience. But the laws of physics that worked for you in your past life might not hold in the new universe you face. Remember that your plan is a guess at what will work.
When you run into the reality of your new situation, you must be quick to adapt. Ask yourself two questions:
- Is the change you are considering necessary?
- Is the organization ready for change?
An environment may be more or less responsive to actions than you reckoned. Assumptions of available resources might prove inaccurate. Deadlines might have to change. Process might have to be rewired.
If you find that the change is necessary and the organization is not ready, you may have to administer shock treatment. This is generally not good for your tenure, but it might be required for the organization’s survival.
Expectations often change dramatically once you walk in the door. A colleague joined a hotel chain with a brief to introduce brand management throughout the organization. Once employed, he learned that authority from P&L to customer needs was wielded at the unit level. There was no easy short-term way to inject a centralized concept of branding.
Get Key People Onboard
Medical marketers pay careful attention to key opinion leaders (KOLs), usually physicians whose written or verbal recommendations carry influence with others in their profession. You will find key opinion leaders in your company, and not necessarily where you’d expect when you look at an org chart.
Key opinion leaders often are at the confluence of several groups of interaction. They are hubs of communication. Watch what happens in an audience when a KOL reacts to a leader’s comments. Does the room react to their nods of agreement, crossed arms, or rolled eyes? These people are worth cultivating.
Once they are identified, ask KOLs for their opinions and listen to what they have to say. Not only do you get useful feedback, but the KOLs begin to feel invested in your course of action. They feel heard.
They can become powerful ambassadors for your initiatives. It is far more effective to use these people to influence dissenters than, as the new person, to win dissenters over yourself.
Tap Into Legacy
If you can make a link from where the organization has been to where you are going, it is easier to bring people along.
Bruce Weindruch wrote in Start with the Future and Work Back: A Heritage Management Manifesto, “Once you know where you want to go, the value of harnessing your history becomes immeasurable.”
Lots of organizations create awards that reinforce desired performance. A few wise people name these awards after legendary executives in the company’s past. In this way, employees see how somebody long-revered epitomized a particular behavior that is currently valued.
People respond positively to a change that is framed as a reversion to core values held since the mythic beginning or in “glory days.”
Understand the Value of Your Ignorance
Being new allows you to ask naïve questions that can cast light on unnecessary paradigms. Why are things done the way they are? Why are these people involved in a process? Is the assessment of risk from an action accurate? Has the way you’ve succeeded in the past ever been tried here?
In the early days, you can get away with asking these questions because people understand you really want to learn how things work, not because you have a particular agenda.
Being new allows you to break norms. Maybe experiments can be tried that might not be approved otherwise. Maybe shortcuts in process can be explored. Apologies might be required when the rule-breaking becomes apparent.
As Rear Admiral Grace Hopper said, “It is easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.”
Being new allows you to seek opinions of employees and to aggregate them into arguments for a course of action. In this way, you do not provide your opinion, but instead you offer your summation of the organization’s experience.
Employees will cut you some slack on your ignorance of process if you compensate by demonstrating competence in other areas. Use your functional expertise. Use your management skills. Use humility.
Act Decisively When the Time Comes
Don’t spend too much time trying to gain universal acceptance or consensus. Not everybody will agree, and opportunities may disappear if you wait.
If full agreement is out of reach, settle for having nobody strenuously disagreeing.
When it’s time to act, communicate with conviction. Talk to the KOLs. Share how they shaped your thinking, even if your direction differs from their recommendation. Recruit them as ambassadors.
Membership in a leadership team means dissenters do not air disagreements outside the team. Debate ends. Execution begins.
Delegate responsibility in a way that gets things done. Reinforce priorities. Recognize that managing change also means managing people through a process of grief.
Final Perspective: What It Means to Be a Change Agent
A change agent is first and foremost a leader. You don’t make change happen by yourself. You shouldn’t expect everything to go perfectly, but you must recognize mistakes and learn from them.
You are not proving that you are the smartest person in the room. You are tapping into the organization’s expertise while maintaining an open perspective. You recognize that you cannot execute alone and you motivate even those who resist to push through.
