Say you’re an experienced executive joining a new company. When you start, you inherit a team of people.
The first thing you must realize is that over time, “the team” will silently transform into “your team.” Warts and all, you’re going to fully own that team at some point in time. In the beginning, you might boast about the stars you’ve inherited and gripe about the clowns. But at some point they’re not your predecessor’s clowns any more. They’re your clowns. You own them.
The second thing you must realize is how quickly that will occur. Typically, I’d say it takes about 90 days before the organization — e.g., your boss, your peers — perceives “the team” as “your team.”
That’s not a long time, so you need to use it well.
A key part of any new executive’s job is not just to assess the business situation, but also to assess his or her team. You may have inherited some great people and some weak ones. You might have great people who are in the wrong roles. You may have some great people who are beaten down and need to be uplifted. You may even have some people who really need to go pursue that career in real estate that they’ve always wanted.
Whether you’ve inherited The Bad News Bears, The A Team (fool), or something in between, you don’t have a lot of time before that team becomes your team.
So, what should you do about it?
- Invest a lot of your early time in understanding your team. Their strengths and their weaknesses. What their internal customers think of them. What you think of their work. What coworkers think. Understand their backgrounds, interview them, and go review their LinkedIn profiles or CVs.
- Remember that it’s not black and white. It’s not as simple as “good person” vs. “bad person.” Oftentimes, it’s about the role — is that person a great product manager who’s over his head in a director role? Is that person a great customer success person, but she’s currently struggling with a direct sales job?
- Remember that it’s about the climate. Maybe the team is a bunch of great people who are just feeling down. Or maybe they’re good people, on fire and already performing at 98% of their potential. The climate can turn stars into dogs, and vice versa, so you need to figure out who’s sailing into a headwind and who’s benefiting from a tailwind.
- Remember that it’s about direction. If the team executed a bad strategy really well and failed, that’s quite different from executing a great strategy poorly. To what extent was the team aimed well or aimed poorly in terms of direction?
- Remember that it’s about personal wants and needs. Where do your team members want to be in a few years? Do they see a way to get there from here at your company? Are they happy with short-term constraints or are they struggling to get out of meetings in time to hit childcare before those draconian fines kick in?
Once you’ve gathered that data, then sit down with your manager, deliver the assessment and make a proposal. Because after about 90 days it’s not the team any more. It’s your team. So you better focus on having the right people sitting the right chairs on day 91.
As a former HA employee, one of the challenges that I see for a new executive is to get beyond the team that they see to the team in a daily basis to the team that they don’t see who don’t work in the same office. I worked out of the St. Louis office before it was closed down then from home. With many of the service professionals in the field, we don’t feel included. This is especially true when the “team” is do directly tied to a physical office.
I agree with your point Steve. In some cases, while I know opinions differ strongly on this issue, you also need to decide “location strategy” which can potentially trump people/team strategy.
Dave — so well said, and I fondly recall many teams we worked on together! One idea for your readers — I inherited a pretty big team at my current company and only met 2 of them in the interview cycle. So I did my own online survey to the broad team even before I started — asked them about their key issues, career aspirations, and the best question “what would you want to know if you were me?”. People really liked being asked plus I got a jumpstart on getting to know them! Cheers, Tracy
Pingback: Leadership and the 90 day rule: forming your team
Pingback: Whose Company Is It Anyway? Differences between Founders and Hired CEOs - OPEXEngine