Lessons From CEOs On How To Start Well And Perform Quickly As The New CEO

“Walk past any airport bookstore and you’ll find countless books about what it means to be a leader or a CEO, or how to nail your first 90 days as a general executive,” says author Ty Wiggins. “What you won’t find is a book that specifically covers the challenge you face now: the CEO transition – a period that covers your first 6–12 months in the role, which is often the most challenging and crucial time for a company and its new leader.”

Fortunately, Wiggins’ new book, The New CEO, fills that educational gap by teaching you the 10 components that make for a successful CEO transition – whether you are a newly announced or newly appointed CEO.

These 10 components inform the chapters within the book. “While the ideas are presented linearly, the reality is that some clearly overlap, and others may resolve only to return again,” explains Wiggins.

The 10 components are:

Approaches…

Getting The Message Right
Act Discerningly
Manage Yourself
Burst Your Bubble
Navigate The Crash

Priorities…

Understand The Culture
Set Your Team
Engage the Board
Assess The State Of Play
Prepare To Win

Drawing on compelling storytelling and groundbreaking research of hundreds of CEOs around the world, the book offers an incisive guide on what to say and do as a new CEO, including how to define your priorities, build your team, fast-track critical changes, work with the board, and set (or reset) the organization's culture.

“My recommendation is to read the book from start to finish to get a feel for the learnings in their entirety, and then dip in and out to refresh on certain sections as challenges arise during your transition,” shares Wiggins.

For his book, Wiggins spoke candidly with top-level CEOs including PepsiCo’s Ramon Laguarta, Campbell’s Mark Clouse, UPS’s Carol Tomé, Verizon’s Hans Vestberg, Forever21’s Winnie Parks, and many more, as well as undertaking qualitative and quantitative research with around 200 new CEOs.

Pulling from these interviews, the book provides the details about what CEOs wish they had done differently and the advice they wish they had sooner – including how to:

Handle the weight of responsibility of the job–and the loneliness.
Define priorities and strike the right balance between patience and action.
Score early wins and identify common pain points.
Build a team by harnessing your gut and data.
Burst the CEO bubble and act with curiosity over being right.
Engage the board and investors early.
Get the message right: what you say, and how you say it, sets the whole tone.
Be honest about the culture—how you assess it, work to shift it, and ensure it does not derail your transition.

The teachings in Wiggins book are so essential because as he explains, “Throughout your CEO transition, you may find yourself feeling exposed and vulnerable, even weak as a leader. The state of change is so radical that many of your information networks and skills are temporarily blunted. It’s a bit like driving a new car in a new country—yes, you are an experienced driver, but everything feels different.”

“It’s also a time where you have an intense amount of attention and focus on your actions, your performance, and even how fast or slow you walk. So now, you’re not only driving the new car in a new country, with different rules and conditions, but you also have people in there with you, scrutinizing every move, and quietly thinking they could do a better job,” adds Wiggins.

In short, explains Wiggins, the result is that when you begin as CEO, you can quickly move from a position of strength, one where you have been performing at your best, to a position where you can feel out of your depth. This loss of “capability” can rock your confidence and self-esteem. It can be hard to find ways to steady yourself.

Finally, there can be situations when the outgoing CEO becomes a key issue to mitigate in your transition plan and consumes a considerable amount of your time, energy, and attention. Exactly how much time, energy, and attention depends on the reputation of the CEO you’re following and how connected they stay to your organization. Most often, a new CEO will follow either a predecessor hero or villain.

“As with so many of the challenges you will face early, part of the solution is to be careful with your communication; be very deliberate with what you say,” explains Wiggins.

Wiggins describes in the book that when following a hero, death by comparison is the risk here: they were so great; you will never stack up; if only they were still here. While you are unlikely to hear these words yourself, it is almost certain that people will be saying it to each other.

When everyone in the organization thinks the former CEO was near perfect, it leaves very little room for you to make improvements and you may find yourself fending off accusations—silent or otherwise.

The other challenge is that, over time, you may discover that all that glistened was not, in fact, gold, especially when it comes to the state of the business. This makes for a very awkward situation when you must shine a light on the predecessor as not as perfect as everyone thought. "If you find this to be the case, then tread carefully with how you disclose it. Use your newness to innocently ask questions that point in the direction you need the board and organization to look," recommends Wiggins.

Following a villain. “While this is often easier than following a hero CEO, it’s not without its challenges,” says Wiggins.

The trap here is that you get promoted as the incoming hero and it goes to your head. You find a willing audience to flog your predecessor and you discover that you can buy extra time on their bad behavior and any resulting poor performance.

It is helpful when it is evident that the villain’s decisions directly resulted in poor outcomes, making it abundantly clear that they “had to go.” However, what if you find that the decisions and actions were the right ones or were necessary? What if you agree with them and would have made them yourself?

"Discovering the villain is not as bad as people made out is a tough spot to find yourself in. Remember boards are groups of individuals who may make decisions based on bias, personal agenda, and personal preferences. It is common to realize that the board or executive team were, in fact, the problem and you’re now at risk of becoming the next CEO scapegoat," says Wiggins.

Sometimes, however, the former CEO who once sat at the same desk and in the same office you are now in will help you make a smooth transition. When this happens, you’ll have access to an outgoing CEO who is supportive, helpful, and happy to be moving on. They will work to ensure both you and the organization are set up for success. They will understand that you will see the world differently and that you will make changes. They will not only accept this but encourage it. “The good news is that this scenario does happen often,” says Wiggins.

Ty Wiggins

Today, Wiggins shares these insights with us:

Question: Of the 10 Components that make for a successful CEO transition, which one do many new CEOs find most challenging and why?

Wiggins: Overall, the biggest challenge is finding the balance between listening/learning and acting. How long do they take to learn and understand the organization before putting their stamp on it? The pressure to act is intense, externally and from themselves. They feel pressure to prove they are the right person and up to the challenge. Yet this is the most dangerous time as they have limited context.

Question: Which is most difficult for a new CEO to follow -- a former hero or former villain CEO -- and why?

Wiggins: A Hero. The pressure to match the hero CEO is significant, but worse is that people reject and are disrespectful of the changes you want to make. They may also more vigorously defend the established process and practices protecting the legacy of the hero CEO. As mentioned in the book, sometimes everything that glitters isn’t always gold, and the new CEO needs to highlight that the hero CEO was not as great as people thought. This can be tricky. It is a very difficult balancing act to talk about change while not saying anything is wrong.

Question: How is the increased prevalence of working from home making it more or less difficult for new CEOs to create the culture they want for their business?

Wiggins: In terms of their transition, the impact of working from home is that it can take a CEO longer to really understand the culture. Plus, it results in variations of the same culture which the CEO will need to consider as they plan the strategy. One of the things that can cause a strategy to fail is if it is at odds with the culture.

Question: What should a new CEO do when it is clear employees are making a concerted effort to undermine the new CEO’s best efforts?

Wiggins: Ideally, they should raise it directly with the individuals and quickly get to a point where they align or leave. This is the “won’t do” instead of “can’t do” and it is generally a very short conversation. If the employees are the senior leaders, then the CEO will likely need to remove them quickly and then work with the teams below to realign their behaviors.

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Ty Wiggins is the lead of Russell Reynolds Associates’ CEO & Transitions Practice globally, where he helps world-leading CEOs successfully onboard and transition into their role.

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

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