Decide: speed over precision
- Make faster decisions.
- Make fewer decisions.
- Look back and learn.
- Look inward (physically and mentally ready to make decisions?)
- Look forward. gain distance from the decision at hand, apply a future
- Lens to the current decision.
- Look around. ensure the diversity and robustness of your info to screen
- Out bias.
Engage for impact: orchestrate shareholders to drive results
- Define your intent.
- Align your aspirations with current transactions.
- Deploy perspective getting to understand stakeholders.
- Build routines to enlist stakeholders behind your intent.
Relentless reliability: deliver consistently
- Operate with personal consistency.
- Take a mindset of radical accountability.
- Proactively shape expectations.
- Revisit expectations as conditions change.
- Build a business management system to drive repeatable results.
Adapt boldly: ride the discomfort of the unknown
- Train your adaptive muscles.
- Pick a new skill or hobby and completely immerse yourself in the unknown.
- Let go of the past. Ask the team which habits, practices, assumptions hold us back today or in the future. Pick the most impactful, and let it go.
- Build your antenna for the future.
- Assemble an “inspirational cabinet” a network of people
- In different fields that expose you to new and unexpected info, see from new angles.
- Schedule “foresight” time at least twice a month to consider the big picture.
- Conduct full immersion into customer experience.
- Get curious and ask questions.
The Inaugural Address
- Deliver within first six months of new role)
- Also, a good formula for your annual state of the organization)
- Your assessment of today
- Current health of the organization
- What you’ve learned (show respect for past administration and their decisions)
- Frame gaps and opportunities
- Use vivid details and examples to demonstrate your connection to the people and the organization!
- Your vision for tomorrow
- Average = task list
- Great = paint a picture of the arrival point
- Make the destination crystal clear, specific, compelling.
- A tantalizing glimpse at a future that is both aspirational and concrete at the same time.
- Your values for the organization
- What is essential to achieve that vision?
- Your broader view
- What do you see in the world you’re playing in that will affect the industry, the company, and your own decision making?
- Your call to action
- Ask for everyone’s best ideas.
- Without shooting each other.
- You’re either in or out.
- Your leadership style.
- Tell them how you communicate, spend your time, involve yourself.
1:1 with each BOD, Committee heads, direct reports
- (These six questions are a good starting point for initial 1:1s)
- What excites you the most about your role serving this organization?
- Look for motivation: relevance, status, stimulation, compensation.
- Most want to add value, but understanding the WHY can help engage them more deeply.
- How did you get connected to this board?
- may lend insight into independent view, or allegiance to someone else.
- Who on the BOD do you talk with most often?
- Seems innocent but is a giant tell: who’s influencing who?
- Helps you understand the behind-the-scenes coalitions so you can manage them and bring back the channel conversations.
- Where have you focused your time and efforts in the past?
- Help understand their competencies.
- Will shed light on how (and how well) the BOD functioned prior to your arrival.
- Where and how would you like to engage in the future?
- An opportunity to proactively engage this person on issues where they feel they can add value.
- It’ll ease their doubts about how to participate.
- Gives you a clear picture how much time and attention you’ll get.
- What does success look like for the company, and for me as CEO, in 1 year? in 3 years?
This is the start of many conversations about expectations and strategy.
