Making your mark in 100 days
pharmafile | March 12, 2007 | Feature | Business Services | management, recruitment
Congratulatons, you've got the job – you're a senior executive – maybe even the chief executive officer. It's the opportunity you've always dreamed about. Now for the bad news: you have about 100 days to succeed or fail. Does that sound harsh?
Absolutely. Especially since it may have little to do with your actual skills or competencies. Rarely does someone make it through the extensive screening process of a senior executive position and not have the ability to do the job. More often when there are problems, it's simply a matter of a cultural integration. Much like an organ transplant rejection, the person simply doesn't fit with the organisation and opinions and resentments are formed early but, of course, it pays to remember this is a two-way street.
Many companies, especially blue-chip ones, have recognised the challenges of their complex environments, complete with office politics, spoken and unspoken corporate cultures, and intense time pressures.
Welcome on board
To help executives be effective from day one, many are offering 'on-boarding' programmes, as well as executive or leadership coaching or mentoring to help ease the transition. On-boarding is a formal and structured programme to accelerate a senior executive's acclimatisation into the company.
The key thing to remember is that your new job, whether it is an internal promotion or an external appointment, is not merely an extension of the one you have just left it will be something very different.
There is very little chance you've made it this far without some impressive capabilities to rely upon, both personally and professionally. Yet, we all have limitations and you can't hope to successfully meet the new challenges without taking into account your own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, if you know that you sometimes lack communication skills, you might compensate for this by letting your direct reports know that you intend to clarify major decisions in written form and expect the same from them.
Getting to know you
An essential element of a good on-boarding programme is an advisor who can give you an honest perspective on yourself as well as facilitating your introduction to the company, and this facilitator will be able to set up individual meetings with the key stakeholders within the company. These meetings may include opportunities to get to know one another personally, but will also allow you to communicate your expectations and management style, but most importantly, you can use these meetings to gauge the effectiveness of your team and other key stakeholders.
Another purpose of such meetings is to help you get an unvarnished assessment of your own management style within the context of your new company; for example, ultimately, you may decide that some of your habits from previous roles no longer work in this new environment, and that you are the one who must change.
That said, who wants to be in the position of telling any senior executive that he needs to improve his style and change? One option is to use a strong HR person within the company as a facilitator. Naturally, there is some overlap because the HR person is also an employee, but the right person can often take on that role. And sometimes a good search firm consultant that has a strong relationship with both the new executive and the hiring company and can fill that position.
However, if an appropriate internal person or search firm advisor is not to be found, it may make the most sense to hire an executive coaching firm specialising in on-boarding. According to Dr Sarah Morris of The Parallax Partnership, a London-based coaching firm: "An experienced executive coach working at this level understands that making an early, positive impact is a vital part of an executive's integration into his or her new position.
"A coach who works independently of your organisation will help to give clear feedback on the impact of your style, while providing a supportive and non-judgemental environment in which to reflect and explore the most effective way of approaching the new role."
Ideally, your new company will offer you an on-boarding programme as part of the package. If not, ask your search firm consultant to negotiate for one on your behalf. And if you hve just embarked on your first 100 days without a formal on-boarding plan, consider creating one for yourself by either hiring an executive coaching firm or assigning someone within the company as a facilitator – after all, both you and the company have a lot to lose if you fail to make a success of your first 100 days.
A learning lunch
Additionally, there is another valuable, if under-utilised, tool that can help newly placed executives learn more about the organisation that has hired them – have lunch with your search consultant before the first day on the job. While the candidate and recruitment professional will have shared a great deal of information during the search process, there may be further details and insights that the search consultant will now be free to disclose, once the candidate has signed the employment contract and become a business partner of the hiring corporation.
How do you define success?
At the most simplistic level, success for any new executive can be defined as first, accurately diagnosing what the company needs, and secondly, doing it.
Of course, what the company needs can mean so many different things and will require substantially different reactions from you. For example, a new chief executive officer that finds his organisation is essentially in good shape can tackle greater challenges that bring technology to the core of the business. However, if even the basic systems like e-mail are faulty, he has a far different task.
A company that has few of the right senior people in place has little chance of succeeding without decisive action. Yet, what is that decisive action? The history of new executives is rife with stories about leaders who arbitrarily fire subordinates and then replace them with 'my people'. Not only might this be unfair to your existing staff, but the shockwaves can stall momentum throughout the entire company. In addition, your new outsiders are likely to be just as isolated as you.
Conversely, if you wait too long to replace ineffective staff, the negative impact is significant. After waiting a year or more to remove someone you know is not performing as they should, you may expend another four months in replacing them and then more time still bringing the new person up to speed. If you take 18 months to two years to put an effective team in place, your stakeholders might well start looking quite hard at you.
The 100-day plan
It's best to approach the first 100 days with a plan. At Christian & Timbers, we recommend that executives coming into a new role assess the company and consider when to listen and when to act. Ultimately, the goal is to make an early win in your 100 days and set yourself up for years of success at the helm.
As you go through your meetings with key stakeholders, the priority is to gather information by engaging and then listening. This will help you to understand what each person does, what their skills are and what views they hold. The temptation as a new leader is to simply dictate your expectations, but by asking the right questions and then listening, you will quickly be able to decide what the company needs. It's a good idea, however, to keep the meeting groups small in order to build rapport and trust with those who will be working closest to you.
Naturally, don't forget the people above you. For example, in addition to subordinates, a new chief executive officer has to understand the dynamics of the board members, spend time observing them and seeing how they work individually and together. This process must be completed before thinking about re-organising the top team or bringing in new people. If possible, engage your immediate superior as an ally as soon as you can, and allow him or her to help you to navigate the company waters.
The credible early win
Getting the right balance between analysis and action is crucial. Some executives make changes for the sake of being seen to do something, rather than thinking things through properly. Unless the situation calls for urgent action, use your first few weeks to listen and observe.
But, what if there are problems when you take up your new role, and issues that can't wait for weeks to be tackled? While moving too fast is a common mistake for some new leaders, so is going too slowly. You will need to use all your expertise to analyse the situation, make decisions, and demonstrate an instinctive ability to solve the problem. Be inclusive; identify the key issues and feed them back to your immediate team to make sure they are part of the solution.
Undoubtedly, you know from experience that an early win can go a long way towards helping establish your credibility and authority. The word credibility is key because that win should address a true need within your company. You can be sure your decision will be analysed carefully by employees throughout the company, so take care that it sends the right message.
In a senior role, you are ultimately measured by your ability to resolve issues, set strategy, grow the business and achieve objectives. Although, 100 days barely gives you time to scratch the surface, this crucial period will help to establish a base for the longer term when you will be scrutinised and judged by what you can really deliver.
A good on-boarding programme or structured approach to the job transition can go a long way towards helping your first 100 days and beyond go much more smoothly.
Daniel Barr and Christopher Coe are partners of the Life Sciences Practice at global search firm Christian & Timbers.
Christopher Coe can be contacted on 020 79010452 or at ccoe@ctnet.com
Kindler's first 100 days
The reverberations of Jeffery Kindler's first days as chief executive at Pfizer are still being felt across the company.
He stepped into the top job at the world's largest pharma company last July, and less than three weeks later, unveiled a series of wide-ranging changes, proclaiming the need for the company to be "more agile and entrepreneurial".
Promising to "transform virtually every aspect of how we do business", his first step was to slim down senior managers into a new, streamlined executive leadership team.
There were also major changes in research and development, where activities were reorganised around 11 therapeutic areas, each with three co-leaders.
Pfizer's new head joined the organisation as chief counsel in 2002 and analysts have intepreted Kindler's selection over longer-serving senior executives as a vote for sweeping change at the world's largest pharma company.
Even before Kindler's appointment, Pfizer was in the midst of its biggest ever re-organisation and cost-cutting review and in 2005 reported savings of $800 million.
In October, as he was nearing the end of his first 100 days in the job, Kindler said: "We recognise that the world around us is changing dramatically and that we need to accelerate the scope and speed of change to transform Pfizer."
He added that the message from the company's key constituencies was that Pfizer must be realistic about its operating environment, embrace necessary changes and turn them to its advantage.
This January, still less than five months since his appointment, Kindler presided over plans to cull 20% of its European field force and close a number of research sites.
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