Even if you're an experienced leader who worked wonders in your previous position, the possibility of failure in new position is real. Particularly if your transition involves a change of geographical area, scope, company size or sector. You know that the first six months in a new role are crucial, and that the cost of a false start is enormous. Yet, despite a demanding selection process, many seasoned executives with a wealth of professional experience stumble during this important period, making avoidable mistakes that compromise their potential impact. And all too often, they recognise the root cause of this integration failure too late to rectify the situation. Was it a simple recruitment error?
There are a number of problems that can derail the integration process for newly recruited senior managers or executives, despite their having an ideal candidate profile. In this article, I complete a previous article by looking at the most common mistakes that my clients have told me about when they start their jobs. And I give some ideas on how to avoid them.
Contents
Lack of strategic alignment when taking up a new position
One of the most common mistakes you make during your induction process is not aligning yourself quickly enough with the company's strategic vision. If you're a newly-hired Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), you're going to be tempted to quickly implement a new marketing campaign, before you fully understand the company's long-term growth strategy. You'll jump straight into easier operational tasks without fully understanding your wider strategic objectives. This time lag can lead to initiatives that don't really support the company's objectives, and you start your first few months wasting time and not allocating your resources optimally.
By rapidly engaging in in-depth discussions with your peers on the Board and other senior managers on the vision, objectives and future of your business. competitive landscape of the company, it will be easier to strategically align your actions to make a significant impact. And regular reviews over the first few months will ensure that your efforts continue to be aligned.
Neglecting the need for rapid results
It is essential to understand the company's long-term strategy without neglecting the need to achieve quick results. Quick wins help to reinforce your credibility and momentum as a manager of managers or senior executives.
What are the risks for you if you're a new sales manager focusing solely on a long-term market expansion strategy, and deprioritising smaller, more immediate opportunities to increase sales? By getting some quick results early on, you can demonstrate your effectiveness and get more support for your bigger initiatives.
Quick win or quick change?
But remember that 'quick win' does not mean rapid change. When you take up your new job, you will of course be expected to implement constructive change. But all change generates resistance, and no team likes change when it's implemented too quickly. So take it easy, and take the time to see what needs to be implemented quickly and in the medium term.
The subtle art of handling both short and long timeframes!
Making excessive promises when starting a new job and then not keeping them
Another tricky point about balancing the short term and the long term is that if you feel too much pressure to make an immediate impact, you may find yourself promising more than you can deliver. Promising or saying 'yes' to everything will flatter your ego and the positive image you want to project, and satisfy your need for recognition in this new company. But this approach can backfire if you don't live up to the expectations of the company and its teams, with whom you will make a bad impression. This will damage your credibility and erode the trust of your colleagues and stakeholders.
Example: if you're a Finance Director, you might be tempted to commit to reducing costs by a certain percentage in the first 6 months of your arrival, to create a significant impact. Only to find that the promised savings are actually impossible to achieve, and these demands excessive, due to unforeseen economic constraints.
During your integration process, it's best to set yourself realistic goals and communicate transparently about the challenges you may encounter along the way. Waiting before making promises, and in the end doing more than you said you would, will help you build trust, while demonstrating your skills over time.
Confusing zone of action with zone of concern
During professional coaching sessions, I also observe that my experienced clients have difficulty, in the first few months of taking up a new post, differentiating between the problems they need to solve and the problems they need to deal with. They confuse two things:
- On the one hand, what they can really influence, their power of action over part of their company, the framework and rules of the game that they set with their new team, their communication and the way in which they want everyone to communicate within their teams.
- Secondly, what concerns them and what they will have to live with. These are problems over which they have no real power of action or influence.
A reactive mindset
Despite your successful track record, this confusion can lead to a reactive mindset, diverting your attention from where you'll be most effective. For example, instead of worrying about a possible economic downturn, a Sales Director might focus on the positive impact of improving operational efficiency and exploring new revenue streams.
Since your power to act or influence macroeconomic conditions or regulatory changes is limited, you might as well prioritise what you can act on proactively. To avoid this trap, check regularly what you are spending your time and energy on. Going beyond your job description, this reflective approach to your main tasks will help you focus your efforts on what you can change, not on what you want to change.
Underestimating the company's culture and values
Another common mistake is to underestimate the importance of the corporate culture.Especially if you've been with your previous company for a long time. What I find with my clients is that many senior managers, eager to prove their worth, focus too much on visible, tangible, communicable results. They neglect the subtleties of the company's culture, values, deeply held convictions and social and professional standards - often subjects that are not sufficiently addressed during the recruitment process, which focuses on technical aspects. They then embark on actions which, although well-intentioned, may conflict with the company's established norms and create friction between team members or with other departments.
The risks of demotivation
For example, I remember a newly appointed Operations Director in a company known for its collaborative culture. She already had all the necessary skills, so we worked together on the risk she would run by using her more hierarchical management style than was usual within the company. If she hadn't changed her management habits, this would have led to a certain amount of confusion among her teams, and probably a drop in motivation among the best talents in her team in the medium term.
To avoid this pitfall, she took the time to observe, listen and understand the company culture at the start of her induction process, to gather clear information about the unwritten rules that govern this new professional environment. How do people really interact? What are the power and influence games? What does the implicit organisational chart look like? What are the real career opportunities for the best profiles?
Finding it difficult to establish key relationships as soon as you start your new role
Even in the best of circumstances, your first few months as a senior manager or executive are usually very intense, as you have to meet "everyone": your peers, your direct teams, your main customers and partners, your board of directors, investors, etc. It's easy to underestimate the time and energy needed to cultivate solid relationships. It's easy to underestimate the time and energy needed to cultivate solid relationships. You quickly end up concentrating on a few people, whom others begin to perceive as privileged. This may relieve some of the pressure on your schedule, but it also makes you think too narrowly about your new ecosystem, with the result that you and your teams are less likely to work together within the company.
It's essential to forge links at all levels, to take a proactive approach to building relationships, to reach out to your peers in all their roles, to understand their needs and challenges, and to find common ground for working together. This will be particularly useful when you need support to get things done.
Taking too long to delegate
After an often long and arduous recruitment process, you're in a hurry to prove your worth, to get your hands dirty in the first few weeks. You may fall into the trap of being in control, thinking that doing so will enable you to prove your technical skills. For example, as Chief Product Officer (CPO), if you insist on approving every detail of your first product launch within the first few months of taking up your post, you risk delaying deadlines and frustrating your teams. There's no need to try and make yourself indispensable... on tasks that don't fall within your level of responsibility.
To avoid this management error, you need to make a double bet: that of your own competence, which will be recognised in due course, and that of the competence of your teams, by trusting their expertise and the good practices already in place. This will help you to focus on your strategic roadmap, rather than getting bogged down in the day-to-day details that will take you a long time to work through.
Not adapting to the dynamics of your new business sector as soon as you take up your new role
If you've worked in a different sector before, it may take you some time to adapt your frame of reference and strategies to the dynamics of your new company's sector, which has a different competitive landscape and customers with different types of behaviour. This is the case, for example, if your career path takes you from a technology environment to retail. Advocating a digital transformation without understanding the complexities of supply chain management specific to retail would put you in big trouble because this mismatch would lead to ineffective strategies and wasted resources. You were the ideal candidate from a pool of candidates, with all the required skills, and quickly the positive impact you wanted to have gives you a bad image.
Stop learning
Finally, one of the mistakes to avoid is thinking that your level of seniority gives you a free pass to stop developing your technical and interpersonal skills. Answering "this is how we did it in my old company" is unlikely to attract much support in your new company. This state of mind can only lead to a comfortable form of stagnation and ultimately limit your professional opportunities. Not remaining open to new ideas, not being alert to new developments in your field of activity, not trying out new approaches in real-life situations, will mean missing out on important information that will help you maintain your competitive edge.
In conclusion
After the recruitment process, the first six months in a new role are a decisive period. Integrating into a new environment is not just a question of talent, skill or professional experience. Even the most experienced managers can fail if they don't have a plan to help them. Frustrating to come so close to a recruitment error with an ideal candidate after a long selection process!
Whatever the profile initially sought, at this level of seniority, companies are faced with major disruption to their activities, a drop in the efficiency of their teams, who suffer from a decline in motivation, and even the loss of customers.
Recruitment mistakes happen, even with the best profiles. But by avoiding the most common mistakes when taking on a new role, aligning yourself with the company's strategic vision, understanding its culture, setting realistic objectives and building key relationships, you can avoid many pitfalls and establish yourself as effective and influential leaders.
Executive coaching can be useful to guide you through your integration and put all the chances on your side.
