Navigating Change: Success Strategies for New Leaders

The third cohort of “Cracking the C-Suite,” March 8-9, generated lots of insightful questions! Ethan Evans and I couldn’t get to all the class leaders’ questions, so I will share some of them over the next several weeks.

“How do you best change strategy and culture without demoralizing an inherited organization?”

I have seen this happen recently with several leaders I have worked with on their 90-day plan. When executives come into new organizations, they want to make their mark fast. I usually caution leaders to take their time, especially if the very reason they were hired was to overhaul things. The inherited managers know that’s why they were hired, so bulldozing their way most likely will backfire.

Change ALWAYS comes with resistance, so using the best of design thinking is helpful here. The most important tenet to keep in mind at the beginning of your tenure and the start of change efforts is EMPATHY.

Understanding where people are coming from is a key first step. Interviewing as many managers as possible (and their skips) should take up much of your time in the first couple of months of a new role. This isn’t something you assign to someone else or throw on SurveyMonkey. YOU doing the interviews on this “listening tour” means:

• You learn what’s on people’s minds and collect valuable data;
• You show that you care about your constituencies; and
• You begin to build relationships that will serve you well throughout your tenure.

Interviews can be 1-1s and/or small groups (four or less). Consider asking these questions to get the lay of the land:

• What’s working well regarding strategy?
• What could work better?
• What about culture? How are people engaged around here?
• What could work better?
• What about ops? What works well?
• What could work better?

Before ChatGPT, the data coming from these interviews would be unwieldy. Not anymore. You can record the interviews and ask ChatGPT to thematize the data for you. You now know what resistances you face, and you can account for those when forming the basis of any change effort. Further, getting 3-4 managers you interviewed to be on the “change effort” committee will also go a long way. INVOLVE the people who will be affected by change in the change effort!