The first three months at a new job is a delicate time because you are in the “first impression zone” where, whether you like it or not, the judgment factor is impossibly high.
I was a new VP. Treading carefully in meetings. Listening carefully. Not making bold moves. This is my standard operating procedure and I normally follow it for three months minimum until someone says, “When are you getting started?”
I’ve learned to ignore my instant negative knee-jerk reaction to this observation. It’s clear they want to see change; otherwise, why’d they hire me? I understand they want to see that change sooner than later, but I know two things. First, I’ve been doing nothing but getting started with 90 days of intense observation. Second, I’ve learned the perceptions built in the “first impression zone” are instant and hard to change.
There are other odd statements made by my new team in these early days:
Don’t mention your prior company.
No one says it like that. They say, “We’re a unique culture” and other phrases designed to support the notion that this group of humans is blazing a truly original trail. Another one:
No one has ever done this before.
They do actually say that, and they are partially correct. They are proud of what they’ve built and I’m proud to be there, but the idea that this amazing group of humans is going to invent it all as they go is a dangerous and inefficient strategy. There is hard work ahead, and while this group of talented humans has built a product that has everyone’s attention, they are not going to invent how to produce it or how to lead.
Still, why the allergy to preexisting wisdom? I can explain, because I’ve been there.
As I wrote back in the introduction to Act I, my first management role started with Tony at Netscape walking into my cubicle on a random Wednesday to ask me if I wanted to be a manager.
“Sure,” I said.
Thus began a multiyear circus of failure.
Remember, management isn’t a promotion, it’s a career restart. And just like when joining a compelling new start-up, we begin with the following affirmation: “I need to look like I know what I’m doing even though I’ve never done it before.”
There’s wisdom there. Part of leadership is learning to demonstrate enough charisma and enthusiasm to convince the team that against impossible odds, we will succeed. This behavior is supported by the unspoken fact that your team initially assumes, “The leader has a plan and even if I don’t understand it now, I have faith they know what they are doing.”
My failures were vast. There were morale issues because no one understood the product strategy I produced. They went undetected. Vapid and unhelpful performance reviews were produced. By me. Weeks of lost productivity occurred because I leaked to the team news of a forthcoming reorganization that wasn’t done for another three months. Infighting occurred because I was a conduit for gossip. This chapter, like all the chapters in this book, documents a chunk of the circus of failures and the lessons I’ve learned in the years since I became a manager.
Hindsight has taught me to cherish these hard lessons and surface them as I encounter similar situations. So now I’m at the new gig and they’re saying, “You sure talk about your prior company a lot.”
I sure do. It’s why you hired me.
…is what I don’t say.
The unintentional allergy a rapidly growing start-up has to preexisting wisdom is part ignorance and part pride. These start-ups are successful because they believe at their core that the impossible can exist. It’s my favorite part of the culture and it’s why I don’t say, “Back at Apple, we did it this way.” I just act without asking.
Their enthusiasm for this business they brought into existence has spilled over into all aspects of the organization. Everything must be looked at through this innovative lens. Sure, I’m a firm believer that we must continuously evolve ourselves and our business, but the act of innovation is an expensive one. We stop. We stare at the problem set. We debate. We debate endlessly. We yell. We whiteboard. And then finally we come to a clever, thoughtful, and defensible decision on how to proceed, and we charge forward enthusiastically because we just brought this unique decision, this perceived invention, into the world.
Every aspect of a rapidly growing, innovative company does not need to be processed through this innovation engine. In fact, you are going to lose valuable energy, momentum, and productivity doing so. There are a handful of company-critical decisions that need this level of attention, and for the rest we can rely on prior art.
I just act. I don’t ask. I don’t build consensus. I just go.
When I arrived at my most recent gig as the VP of Engineering, one of the first obvious areas of investment was the career path for engineers. We had an unfinished draft that was being used as a rubric for promotion decisions, and there was significant pressure to get a final draft.
I’d faced exactly the same issue at my prior gig. There, I gathered a group of engineers and managers together and we innovated. The committee spent seven months drafting, editing, vetting, and redrafting an excellent career path. It was ready for use a year after we began.
This year of investment was front of mind for me when the request arrived at the new gig. I asked myself, “Do I want to spend a year, thousands of engineering hours, on once again inventing a career path?”
If I were to ask the team, innovation bias would cause them to declare, “Of course, we’re here to change the world!” So I didn’t ask. I took a draft of a prior career path, I carefully weaved in what I’d discovered during my 90 days of exploring the company’s culture, I shared it with one other leader, and then I declared, “This is our career path.”
It was a B. It wasn’t a work of art, but it was usable, instructive, and a good starting point. More importantly, it saved our company thousands of hours. These were hours we instead spent building products and features and fixing bugs. Yes, we collectively could have made the career path artifact an A, but we got a majority of the value from the B and then we iterated.
There is an obvious significant risk in this small thing, and that’s why I placed it in Act III of the book. Your team’s first impression of your leadership style should not be, “My new executive is not going to ask my opinion. They like going rogue.” I would much prefer, “My new executive moves rather quickly and with intense and defensible purpose.”
The first 90 days is a dangerous time. First impressions are hard to change. Your first few months set the tone. Simple acts as a leader will resonate loudly throughout the team and the organization.
As an executive, you’re in the unique position of being the human in charge of the entire organization. You have a boss. They’re the CEO, but they’re busy being the interface to the rest of the world and their expectations of you are something like, “Productively run your business. Competently answer questions when I ask them. If you need help, ask.”
My default operating model is sharing a vision for where we’re going. This means describing our ambitious future and all the strategic steps we’ll need to take to get there. I’ll want your opinion because I know ideas get better with eyeballs, but sometimes, rarely, we’re just going to go. See, I’ve been here before and by acting without asking, I’m giving us a strategic advantage, I’m saving us time and money, and I’m being a leader.
See, managers tell you where you are. Leaders, all leaders, tell you where you’re going.