What’s Inside:
Job Transition
Note from the Coach
Link's Links
Worth Reading: “The First 90 Days”

Job Transition: Why the First Few Months Are Critical

Congratulations! After great effort and focused energy, you've finally landed a fabulous new position—one that is sure to advance your career and meet your work and personal goals in a way your old position never could.

But don't stop there. Getting hired is just the first step.

You'll need to spend as much effort and energy—and maybe more—preparing for and making the transition. And this is where it really counts, for the first three to six months in any new position is a period of extreme vulnerability.

“It's the highest-risk period, and the higher up you are, the riskier it is,” says Jeff Gunderson, CEO of Executive Connections, an executive search and placement firm.

During this transitional period, everyone in the company—your new boss, direct reports, other employees—and even suppliers and customers are all forming initial impressions that will shape their expectations and actions. This dynamic is exacerbated when people in your new role or company expect you to bring about change within the organization.

This transitional period might even be riskier today than seven or eight years ago. The failure rate of senior leaders hired from outside is now 40%. One in three new CEO's fail within the first three years. And these transitions in leadership involve significant cost implications. In fact, the direct cost of failure is estimated to be 10 times the executive's base salary! Shrunken budgets have meant less training, reduced staff support, increased workloads and, perhaps most of all, increased expectations for newly hired managers and executives. Should you end up leaving after a short stint, doing so can leave a black mark on your resume, raising questions for future employers about your judgment and ability to assess opportunities before making a career commitment.

“Leaders, regardless of their level, are most vulnerable in their first few months in a new position because they lack detailed knowledge of the challenges they will face and what it will take to succeed in meeting them,” writes Michael Watkins, author of The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.

So what can you do to assure that your transition is smooth and productive? Here are a few suggestions:

• Ask your new company if it will commit to transition support by hiring a coach to work with you. Be bold in your request; you may even choose to make it a point of negotiation. If possible, look to your search firm for coaching support. Gunderson says his company feels so strongly about the need for transition support that it includes six months of it in all its search placements.
  
  
• Use the period before you actually start at your new position to learn as much as you can about the company, its vision, its strategies and the industry.
  
  
• Examine the challenges and opportunities of the company, and identify the barriers to success.
  
  
• Talk to people at the new company. What is the culture, and what are the processes? What kind of a team will you have to work with, and on whom will you be able to depend?
  
  
• Assess your own strengths and weaknesses, and identify personal vulnerabilities that could come into play in your new position.

You have just as much to prove in your new position, whether promoted, transferred internally, or hired from outside. The approach you take and the support of an objective and professional coach to guide you may be even more critical than all of your previous preparation. “Failure to create momentum during the first few months virtually guarantees an uphill battle for the rest of your tenure in the job,” Watkins writes. “Building credibility and securing some early wins lay a firm foundation for longer-term success.”

Visit our website to learn more about the steps you can take to ensure a successful transition from manager to leader, whether within the same organization or in a new one.

Author's content used under license, ©2008 Claire Communications

Successfully making the transition to a new position and assimilating in a new environment affects every stakeholder from HR, the CEO and your boss to department members and the well-being of your own family. If you fail to make a positive first impression, you're going to have a very difficult time changing people's opinions about you and undoing the damage to your career. Imagine for a moment, the price if you do not achieve many of your goals or reach your potential. If you would like to ensure that your next opportunity or that of an employee is a seamless adjustment that protects everyone's best interest, contact Tim at Link Resource Group.

Note from the Coach

Starting in a new position, whether it's with a new company or you've been promoted with your present company, is an exciting time—and it can also be a very slippery slope. The first 3 to 6 months are a critical time where the risks are far greater than you may realize—if you're not prepared. Link Resource Group coaches individuals embarking on a new path, empowering clients to work from their strengths and eliminate weaknesses from the start. Coaching removes the obstacles keeping you from the success you expect and tends to generate a substantial positive ripple effect that permeates throughout the organization.

Link Resource Group's strengths-based coaching and consulting assures a seamless transition and healthy assimilation every time someone is promoted into a managerial position or a new hire comes on board.

Warm Regards,

Tim Link, MA, MCC

Link’s Links

Watkins cautions in this article, in the Harvard Management Update, “Perceptions are as important as realities.” Indeed. Actually, I'd say that one's perception IS one's reality. Watkins talks about making a good first impression when you start with a new company. However, the same issues come to bear with an internal promotion or transfer—the new people you will be working with will form their new first impression of you based on what you do, primarily in the first 90 days. It's best to be aware of The Five Mistakes Newly Promoted Leaders Make.

Worth Reading

The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
by Michael Watkins

In these days of the public's microscopic scrutiny of corporate C-level executives, it's a wonder anyone would aspire to the CEO position. Amazingly enough, many eager managers are still climbing—and Harvard Business School professor and author (Right from the Start [1999]) Watkins helps prepare them for career moves, accelerating their transitions. This is, essentially, practical advice about undertaking new opportunities and understanding new vulnerabilities, quickly and without much upheaval. Different steps—sometimes simultaneously, sometimes sequential—define success in the first three months, from promoting yourself (i.e., taking charge fast) to keeping your balance. Anecdotes enliven the checklists and sample learning plans; in fact, one specific case—Douglas Ivester of Coca Cola—underscores the absolute necessity to adapt and change rapidly in new positions. Much content is human resources related, based on self-discipline, team building, and the availability of trusted advice and counsel. Would that every newly elected president of the U.S. heeded this practice.

Barbara Jacobs, Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.