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.

---

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.

Comments

How To Build A High Performing Sales Team

Based on Stephanie Friedman 's 20 years of sales experience, her new book, Built to Grow: A Handbook For High-Performance Sales Teams , is the perfect step-by-step, go-to-market field guide for startup founders. Friedman offers readers a structured and repeatable methodology for building a high-performing sales function from a company’s earliest days. The book is divided into three phases of startup growth— Experiment, Build, and Scale. Within each of the three phases, Friedman covers: Sales Playbook Hiring Revenue Management Customer Success Compensations Culture Internal Collaboration Some of my favorite takeaway tips from the book include: No matter how experienced your salespeople are, any high-performing sales organization should follow one simple but important rule: No call without an agenda. This helps reinforce the necessary discipline around call preparation and ensures your customers have the best possible experience when talking to your...

High-Performing Teams Are Made Of This

According to Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese, authors of the book, The Collaboration Imperative , high-performing teams have the following characteristics: People have solid and deep trust in each other and in the team's purpose--they feel free to express feelings and ideas. Everybody is working toward the same goals. Team members are clear on how to work together and how to accomplish tasks. Everyone understands both team and individual performance goals and knows what is expected. Team members actively diffuse tension and friction in a relaxed and informal atmosphere. The team engages in extensive discussion, and everyone gets a chance to contribute--even the introverts. Disagreement is viewed as a good thing and conflicts are managed. Criticism is constructive and is oriented toward problem solving and removing obstacles. The team makes decisions when there is natural agreement--in the cases where agreement is elusive, a decision is made by the team lead or executiv...

Decide

Many years ago, I worked with a person who could not make decisions. Neither big nor small decisions. That indecisiveness paralyzed our business in many ways. Unfortunately, the book, Decide: Work Smarter, Reduce Your Stress, and Lead by Example , had not been published. Had it, I would have shared it with my co-worker. Decide , published this past February, teaches readers how to make better decisions based on the real results they want to experience. The author, Steve McClatchy, explains how to use the two forms of human motivation -- Gain, or Prevent Pain , to make more effective decisions. For example, he demonstrates how inserting a Gain task in the middle of a Prevent Pain day can give you the energy you need to move forward and make the Prevent Pain tasks take less time through motivation. Deeper into the book, you'll be reminded about not only the problems with procrastination, but also about the benefits of procrastination, and, if you are ...

Coherence: The Secret Science Of Brilliant Leadership

Coherence: The Secret Science of Brilliant Leadership is the new book by author Dr. Alan Watkins . Trained as a medical doctor, Watkins is now an honorary senior lecturer in neuroscience and psychological medicine at Imperial College, London and an affiliate professor of leadership at the European School of Management, London. According to Watkins, coherence is the biological state achieved when elite performers experience maximum efficiency and super effectiveness, where body and mind are one . Coherence provides one of the most unique approaches to showing leaders how to be younger, smarter, healthier and happier -- which gives them the power to make decisions under pressure and achieve sustainable success. Prepare to spend quality time reading Coherence . It's not light reading. Kind of feels like a medical text book in parts. But, it's worth your commitment to it. I particularly found useful Watkin's discussion on culture , where he w...

5 Compelling Benefits Of Having An Ethical Culture

In Andrew Leigh's book, Ethical Leadership , he provides these compelling and important benefits of having an ethical culture in your business/organization: Customers prefer dealing with companies who put ethics at the center of their culture. Most employees would prefer to earn less working for an ethical company than being paid more and working for an unethical company. More than one in three people at work say they've left a job because they've disagreed with the company's ethical standards ( Trevino, L and Nelson, K - 2011 ) If you adopt an early warning system against misconduct it reduces the risk of you facing expensive litigation. An ethical culture helps you make your company a strong affirming place to work in. "The foundations of an ethical culture include values, attitudes, meaning, behaviors, purpose, and management practices," explains Leigh.

More Leadership Quotes From John C. Maxwell

The real gems in John C. Maxwell's book, Everyone Communicates Few Connect , book are the abundant leadership and communication quotes, such as these: To add value to others, one must first value others. People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude. All good communicators get to the point before their listeners start asking, "What's the point?" The first time you say something, it's heard. The second time, it's recognized, and the third time it's learned. In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand. People pay attention when something that is said connects with something they greatly desire. Maxwell also says that: Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could . The book covers five principles and five practices to help readers so they can connect one-on-one, in a group, or...

Six-pillar Roadmap For How To Move From Merely Surviving To Truly Mattering

In the new book, The Mattering Effect: Creating A Life Of Meaning And Worth , podcaster and author John R. Miles reframes today’s most common struggles and empowers individuals and institutions alike to break bad habits and reclaim a sense of worth and belonging. “Organizations have spent the last decade chasing 'engagement' and 'psychological safety,' yet global productivity is stalling and 60% of employees report they do not feel valued in the places where they spend their days,” shares Miles. He calls this “The Great Erasure”—a condition where high-achievers become highly visible to the organization while becoming invisible to themselves. In addition, Miles argues that many of today’s most common struggles—burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and disengagement—are not personal failures or mindset problems. They are the result of unmattering: the gradual erosion of felt significance within modern systems that reward performance while overlooking presence. Fortu...

Make It Easy For Your Employees To Volunteer

Start planning now for this year's National Volunteer Week, April 15-21 . That's the week when nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S. will celebrate and honor their volunteers. If you are not already volunteering, what a great time to start. Make a commitment to yourself to start volunteering before that week starts! And, if you are a workplace leader who supports a volunteer program at your business, you already know that by encouraging employees to give back to your community you are: building teamwork motivating employees attracting new hires In fact, job seekers much prefer companies that have a strong volunteer program. And, a growing number of businesses are rewarding employees who volunteer by giving them extra vacation time and other incentives. Fortunately, throughout the U.S. there are hundreds of volunteer opportunities where employees can contribute individually, or where leaders can organize teams of employees to volunteer together on a routin...

3 Things To Avoid When You Give Your Next Speech

If you don't want to get your speech off to a bad start, the communications experts at Speechworks suggest you: Don't apologize (particularly about your anxiety or lack of preparation. Apologies put your audience on the defensive. Don't start by telling a joke (which may not be all that funny, or is irrelevant, or that may even be offensive to someone in your audience). Don't beat around the bush (including, don't list off a lot of people you want to thank. Don't waste your audience's valuable time) Instead: If you need to deal with your anxiety, practice like crazy . Rehearse particularly your first line over and over. Start your presentation by laying out for your audience a key issue that they are facing in their business . If you must thank someone, do it at the end, or thank your introducer briefly, pause, and then start right into the meat of your message .

How To Make One Bold Move A Day

Shanna A. Hocking ’s new book, One Bold Move A Day , is all about meaningful actions women can take to fulfill their leadership and career potential. Specially, Hocking reveals the transformative mindsets needed to make one Bold Move a day. Those are: Gratitude Mindset And Mindset Happiness Mindset Progress Mindset “Each of these four mindsets individually plays a special role in the process of continuously showing up for yourself and others,” explains Hocking. “Each mindset contributes in a different way to your success, but they all complement each other and together they will become the foundation to your Bold Move Mindset.” Hocking explains in her book that a Bold Move is one that challenges you to grow . “Sometimes it’s about capitalizing on an opportunity, and sometimes it’s about creating that opportunity for yourself,” explains Hocking. Keep in mind, too, that a Bold Move for you might not be the same as someone else’s. ...

Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Search This Blog