“Oh, that’s a job for Katie when she gets here…”
We’ve all been there: the meeting where tasks are assigned to new starters before they’ve even arrived. The much-anticipated new member of the leadership team is due to start in a couple of weeks, everyone is relieved that the gap has finally been filled, and there is going to be someone who can take on all the responsibility that is rightfully theirs.
It is almost as though they already have a seat at the table. The problem is that, before they have even walked through the door, they are building a backlog. They have a to-do list, a collection of unresolved frustrations and responsibility for decisions that pre-date them. Expectations are also being set about how they will approach those issues and how quickly they will deliver meaningful change.
It’s hardly setting them up for success, is it?
For leaders in particular, getting this right is critical, because leadership change is cultural change.
No matter how rigorous your recruitment process has been or how carefully you have assessed their fit, a new senior leader will arrive with different behaviours, expectations, experiences and ways of working. That is a good thing. You need diversity of thought to drive innovation, challenge ways of working the business has outgrown and bring new energy into the team.
Otherwise, why hire them?
But a new leadership presence affects the whole system, and the very differences you recruited them for can also trigger resistance.
Everyone is looking for clues
Changes at the top are highly scrutinised. Everyone is looking for clues and, in the short term at least, the significance of those clues is amplified.
People are trying to work out what the new leader’s arrival means for them. How will they operate? What will they change? Whose opinion will they trust? Will they make existing frustrations better or worse?
Our human need for certainty means we make snap judgements and assumptions. Where information is missing, we fill in the gaps, often without even realising we are doing it. If those assumptions lead people to believe that the new appointment will affect them negatively, the organisation can begin to reject the new arrival.
Michael Watkins describes this in The First 90 Days: when a new leader behaves in ways that appear inconsistent with the existing culture, they risk triggering an attack from the organisational immune system.
In my experience, people tend to respond in different ways. Some will sit on the fence and adopt a pragmatic, wait-and-see position. Others will champion the change and try to get on board quickly. Others will become activists and energetically stand against it.
Those who resist will often try to recruit other people to their side. Partly because they want to build support for their position, but also because being the lone dissenting voice carries its own risk. Before long, an understandable period of uncertainty can become a downward spiral that is difficult to reverse.
We see this happen over and over again.
We also see The First 90 Days treated as a panacea: give the new leader a process, a book or an onboarding plan and expect them to navigate the transition successfully. The responsibility is placed squarely in the hands of the new starter while the organisation itself carries on exactly as before.
That is where things go wrong. Successful onboarding is not something the new leader does alone. It is a transition in which the whole system needs to participate.
Back to that pre-arrival to-do list
When the business repeatedly says, “They can sort that when they arrive,” the new leader enters the organisation already behind.
They are expected to make decisions before they understand:
• How things really get done.
• Which issues are contentious and why.
• What has already been tried.
• Where the informal influence sits.
• Which behaviours the business rewards in practice, rather than on paper.
They are then left with two fairly unappealing options. They can pause, ask questions and risk disappointing everyone who expected immediate action. Or they can charge in without enough context and risk triggering the very immune response we have just described.
The urgency of a fast-growing business makes this particularly tempting and particularly dangerous.
As common as it is, it doesn’t have to be inevitable. You can create the conditions for accelerated impact. It might not be the immediate impact you imagined when you were assigning all those tasks, but it will be more sustainable and save a whole world of potential pain.
Prepare the person, the role and the system
At Third House, we use our Intentional Leadership Blueprint to stop businesses treating onboarding as a one-person problem.
The first lens is Person, Role and System.
Person: Help the new leader understand their own style, strengths and transition needs. Give them proper time with their boss, the team and key stakeholders and the space to learn, reflect and adapt. They may have been hired because of what made them successful elsewhere, but they still need to work out what leadership requires from them here. I literally cannot overstate this last point, it’s the thing that unsticks many a brilliant hire.
Role: Clarify their outcomes, priorities, authority and decision rights. Be honest about what they are there to change, but do not make them responsible for every unresolved issue in the business. There is a significant difference between giving someone direction and handing them a rake of problems.
System: Prepare the organisation too. Explain the real behavioural norms and how things actually get done. Surface the contentious issues, create informal time with the team and make thoughtful introductions to key stakeholders. Don’t just prepare the new leader to join the team; prepare the team to receive them.
The second lens is Connect, Empower and Ignite.
Connect them properly to the people, relationships and context they need to understand the business.
Empower them with clarity, authority and realistic priorities, so they know what is expected and have the agency to deliver it.
Ignite their strengths by creating the conditions in which they can contribute, develop and ultimately add value beyond your original expectations.
Start before day one
The first 90 days of a leadership appointment begin long before day one.
A strong hiring process does not stop when the contract is signed. It requires careful, granular planning about how the new leader will enter the business, what they need to understand and how the wider organisation will be prepared for their arrival.
After all, when we make a new leadership hire, we expect the business to change for the better. But for that to happen, we first need to prepare the business to change.
Thinking about your next leadership hire?
If you are bringing someone new into your leadership team, or reshaping the team around the next stage of growth, Third House can help you prepare the person, clarify the role and ready the system so they can land well and have an impact sooner.
Drop us a line at rebecca@wearethirdhouse.com.
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