The First 90 Days (51 page)
Authors: Michael Watkins
Tags: #Success in business, #Business & Economics, #Decision-Making & Problem Solving, #Management, #Leadership, #Executive ability, #Structural Adjustment, #Strategic planning
Jump-Starting the Team
You will know you have been successful in building your team when you reach the breakeven point—when the energy the team creates is greater than the energy you need to put into it. It will take a while before that happens; you have to charge the battery before you can start the engine.
ACCELERATION CHECKLIST
1. What are your criteria for assessing the performance of members of your team? How do the people you inherited stack up against these criteria?
2. What personnel changes do you need to make? Which changes are urgent and which can wait?
How will you create backups and options?
3. What process will you put in place to make the high-priority changes? What can you do to preserve the dignity of the people affected?
4. What help will you need with the restructuring process, and where are you going to find it?
5. Do you need to amend existing incentives and measures? Do people in your unit have incentives to cooperate and compete in productive ways?
6. How do you want your new team to operate? What roles do you want people to play? Do you need to shrink the core team or expand it?
7. How do you plan to manage decision making? Will you start off emphasizing a consult-and-decide or a build-consensus approach?
Chapter 8: Create Coalitions
Overview
After five years as a country manager at a medical devices company, Jack Daley was put in charge of global marketing for a key product-line in the orthopedics operating division. Operating divisions developed new products and
“sold” them internally to the various country-based sales and marketing groups.
Over the years, Jack had become accustomed to wielding authority to get things done. Country managers had P&L
responsibility and decided which products their sales reps would push. Often compared to feudal lords, country managers had considerable control over their own activities and enjoyed high status in the business communities of their respective countries. Predictably, country managers were prone to arrogance and renowned for dressing down those who presumed to know how to sell in local markets.
Suddenly Jack was on the other side of the table: To succeed, he had to persuade his former peers. After some disastrous early meetings in which he tried a hard sell, Jack adjusted his approach. He identified several countries that represented promising potential markets for his product and met with those country managers. He pointed out the benefits of his product and offered to offset the costs of educating sales reps about its features. Then he listened.
Several country managers signed on. The product soon won broad acceptance from the other countries—even those who had rejected Jack’s earlier approach.
Having found his regular directive approach a bad fit in his new job, Jack Daley saw the need to exert influence without authority. If your success depends on the support of people outside your direct line of command, it is imperative to
create coalitions
to get things done. Direct authority is never enough to win the day. Influence networks—informal bonds among colleagues—can help you marshal backing for your ideas and goals. But it is up to you to build coalitions that will help you achieve your agenda. To do so, you will need an influence strategy. This means figuring out whom you must influence, pinpointing who is likely to support and resist your key initiatives, and persuading “swing voters.” Plans for doing this, beginning with the assessment process, should be an integral part of your overall 90-day plan.
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Mapping the Influence Landscape
One common mistake of new leaders is to devote too much of their transition time to the vertical dimension of influence— upward to bosses and downward to direct reports—and not enough to the horizontal dimension, namely, peers and external constituencies. This error is understandable: You naturally gravitate toward the people to whom you report and who report to you. After all, they are the primary channels through whom you will have an impact and leverage yourself.
