The First 90 Days (15 page)
Authors: Michael Watkins
Tags: #Success in business, #Business & Economics, #Decision-Making & Problem Solving, #Management, #Leadership, #Executive ability, #Structural Adjustment, #Strategic planning
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dramatically accelerate your ability to extract actionable insights. Naturally, the questions you will ask will be tailored specifically for the groups you meet. If you are meeting with salespeople, for example, consider asking: What do our customers want that they are getting from our competitors and not getting from us?
New Leader Assimilation Processes
One example of a structured learning method is the New Leader Assimilation Process originally developed by GE. In this process, each time a manager enters a significant new role, he or she is assigned a transition facilitator. The facilitator meets first with the new leader to lay out the process. This is followed by a meeting with the leader’s new direct reports in which they are asked questions such as: What would you like to know about the new leader? What would you like him or her to know about you? about the business situation? The main findings are then fed back, without attribution, to the new leader. The process ends with a facilitated meeting between the new leader and the direct reports.
may increase the efficiency of your learning process depending on your level in the organization and the type of business situation you are in. Effective new leaders employ a combination of methods, tailoring their learning strategy to the demands of the situation.
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Table 2-1: Structured Methods for Learning
Method
Uses
Useful For
Organizational climate
Learning about culture and morale.
Useful for managers at all levels, if
and employee
Many organizations do such
analysis is available specifically for
satisfaction surveys
surveys regularly, and a database
your unit or group.
may already be available. If not,
Usefulness depends on how granular
consider setting up a regular survey
the collection and analysis is. This
of employee perceptions.
also assumes the survey instrument is
a good one and the data have been
collected carefully and analyzed
rigorously.
Structured sets of
Identifying shared and divergent
Most useful for managers leading
interviews with “slices” of
perceptions of opportunities and
groups of people from different
the organization or unit
problems. You can interview people
functional backgrounds.
at the same level in different
Can be useful at lower levels if the
departments (a horizontal slice) or
unit is experiencing significant
bore down through multiple levels (a
problems.
vertical slice). Whichever dimension
you choose, ask everybody the
same questions and look for
similarities and differences in
people’s responses.
Focus groups
Probing issues that preoccupy key
Most useful for managers of large
groups of employees, such as
groups of people who perform a
morale issues among frontline
similar function, such as sales
production or service workers.
managers or plant managers.
Gathering groups of people who
Can be useful for more senior
work together also lets you see how
managers as a way of getting some
they interact and who displays
quick insights into the perceptions of
leadership. Fostering discussion
key employee constituencies.
promotes deeper insight.
Analysis of critical past
Illuminating decision-making
Most useful for higher-level managers
decisions
patterns and sources of power and
of business units or project groups.
influence. Select an important
recent decision and look into how it
was made. Who exerted influence
at each stage? Talk with people
involved, probe their perceptions,
and note what is and is not said.
Process analysis
Examining interactions among
Most useful for managers of units or
departments or functions and
groups in which the work of multiple
assessing the efficiency of a
functional specialties must be
process. Select an important
integrated.
process, such as delivery of
Can be useful for lower-level
products to customers or
managers as a way of understanding
distributors, and assign a
how their groups fit into larger
crossfunctional group to chart the
processes.
process and identify bottlenecks
and problems.
Plant and market tours
Plant tours are opportunities to meet
Most useful for managers of business
production personnel informally and
units.
to listen to their concerns. Meetings
Method
Uses
Useful For
help you assess technical
capabilities. Market tours can
introduce you to customers, whose
comments can reveal problems and
opportunities.
Pilot projects
Gaining deep insight into technical
Useful for managers at all levels. The
capabilities, culture, and politics.
size of the pilot projects and their
Though these insights are not the
impact will of course increase as one
primary purpose of pilot projects,
rises through the organization.
you can learn a lot from how the
organization or group responds to
your pilot initiatives.
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Creating a Learning Plan
Your learning agenda defines
what
you want to learn. Your learning plan defines
how
you will go about learning it. It translates learning goals into specific sets of actions—identifying promising sources of insight and using systematic methods—that accelerate your learning. Your learning plan is a critical part of your overall 90-day plan. In fact, as we will discuss later, learning should be a primary focus of your plan for your first 30 days on the job.
The heart of your learning plan is a cyclical learning process in which you collect information, analyze and distill it, develop hypotheses, and test them, thus progressively deepening your understanding of your new organization.
Obviously, the specific insights you decide to pursue will vary from situation to situation. You can begin by looking critically at the learning plan template