The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan

I just finished an excellent book, The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan (John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-78977-1) by George Bradt, Jayme A. Check, both of PrimeGenesis and Jorge Pedraza formerly with PrimeGenesis and now with Unison Site Management.  As the title implies this is about starting a new job with an action plan in place.  The reason an action plan is important is that it helps you to quickly establish yourself as a leader by taking you through the critical steps of communication and engaging the culture followed by implementing your people decisions ultimately leading to early wins.  They also point out that your action plan actually starts before you start your new job.  The driving imperative behind all of this comes from a study they cite that 40% of all new leaders fail within the first 18 months.  That is a pretty sobering statistic and one that should encourage you to do all that you can to improve your chances of succeeding.

I recommend this book to anyone starting a new job at a new company or with your current employer.  As good as this book it is a shame that they may be missing a large potential audience where this could be of tremendous help.

I suspect that more new leadership opportunities are presented to people within their current company than at new companies.  Everything in this book is presented in terms of starting a new job at a new company which might lead you to believe that what they present only applies in that type of situation.  However, I believe that these techniques are just as important if not more so when you take on a new leadership position with your current company.  To be fair, the authors do not say that their techniques only apply if you are going to a new company.  However, they do not make any special effort to show how it would also apply when staying at your current company.

The "honeymoon" period may be shorter when getting promoted within your current company than if you are starting fresh at a new company.  The reason for this is that it will likely be assumed that you are already familiar with the key stakeholders and the culture.  Very frequently this is true but if you are taking a position in another division, subsidiary or in a different country this may not be true but that won't necessarily stop that assumption from being formed.

The other factor that comes into play is that when you are promoted you also take along a certain amount of baggage with you.  Take for example a new person coming into a new company as CIO, everyone views and thinks of him or her as the CIO.  That's all anyone knows of them.  However, if you are promoted from Director of Applications to the CIO role people will still think of you in terms of your old role until you establish yourself as the CIO.  This is especially true if you temporarily fill both roles until a replacement is found or if you have difficulty letting go of your old role.

The techniques in the book can help you address both of these situations.  I just wish the authors had emphasized this point.

I won't go into a detailed review of this book as Kent Blumberg has already done this and he has done a far better review than I ever could.  Take a look at his review in these postings:

• Getting a great start as a new leader
• Getting a great start - engaging the culture and controlling the Day One agenda
• Getting a great start - burning imperative and setting milestones
• Getting a great start - early wins and people decisions
• Getting a great start - adjusting to change and communications

If you're about to start a new leadership role I suggest that you read this well before you start.  Remember you need to start implementing your plan before you officially start your new job.

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Scaling the Heights
• CIO Competencies
• Or the posts in the "Career Management" category