How to Navigate a Leadership Transition

Leadership shifts are difficult for both companies and the leaders who needto straight browse them. But Michael Watkins states they’re likewise a time of unbelievable chance — particularly for those leaders who comprehend how to manage this vital duration.

Watkins is a teacher of management and organizational modification at IMD Business School. He shares a structure for picking a shift method that finest matches the circumstance you’re dealingwith — whether you’re structure a brand-new operation from scratch or attempting to turn-around a company in crisis. Watkins likewise describes why it’s so crucial to efficiently examine your brand-new management context and not to rely just on shift techniques that have worked for you in the past.

Key episode subjects consistof: method, tactical preparation, management shifts.

HBR On Strategy curates the finest case researchstudies and discussions with the world’s top company and management specialists, to aid you unlock brand-new methods of doing company. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the initial HBR IdeaCast episode: Picking the Right Transition Strategy (2008)
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review posts, case researchstudies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org.

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy, case researchstudies and discussions with the world’s top service and management specialists, hand-selected to aid you unlock brand-new methods of doing company.

Leadership shifts are tough for both companies and the leaders who are in shift. But Michael Watkins states they’re likewise a time of unbelievable chance—especially for brand-new leaders who comprehend how to browse that vital duration.

Watkins is a teacher of management and organizational modification at IMD Business School. In this episode, he shares a structure for picking a shift technique that finest matches the scenario you’re dealingwith—whether you’re attempting to turn-around a service in crisis, or structure a brand-new operation from scratch. Watkins likewise describes why it’s so crucial to successfully examine your brand-new management context and not simply rely on shift methods that have worked for you in the past. 

If you’re taking on a brand-new management function, this episode is for you. It initially aired on HBR IdeaCast in December2008 Here it is.

ROBERTA FUSARO: Hello, I’m Roberta Fusaro, Associate Editor at Harvard Business Review. I’m here today with Michael Watkins of Genesis Advisers, a management advancement consulting business. Michael, your Harvard Business Review shortarticle, “Picking the Right Transition Strategy,” begins with a basic property– a leader in shift who utilizes techniques that have worked for him in the past might infact be making a huge error. Can you start by informing our listeners why falling back reflexively on the attempted and the real can be hazardous? And what do you see as a muchbetter method?

MICHAEL WATKINS: Sure, Roberta. I believe you have to action back a little bit, though, veryfirst, and simply acknowledge that shift durations are actually important times. They’re times of both terrific chance for brand-new leaders, however likewise times when they have a particular vulnerability. It’s simply like going to high school. The things you do in those veryfirst vital coupleof days, weeks, months can actually impact everybody’s understanding of who you are. And so, start with the book, the veryfirst 90 days that I composed, I was truly attempting to focus a lot of attention on, how do you aid individuals browse that essential early duration and get up to speed more efficiently?

More justrecently, though, it’s endedupbeing ever more obvious to me that the method you shift truly depends a lot on the scenario into which you’re transitioning. And my issue, and certainly my observation is that individuals establish specific approaches to transitioning early in their professions that might work well for them up to a particular point, however they might then come to a shift– it might be to a brand-new level, it might be to a brand-new business, it might be worldwide– where those really verysame methods turn out not to be all that efficient. And so much of the work I’ve been doing recently, as showed in the post, is truly about, how do you efficiently match the shift method to the specific kind of scenario you’re dealingwith.

ROBERTA FUSARO: You’ve established a helpful structure for assisting leaders shift efficiently in this method. Can you summary it for us?

MICHAEL WATKINS: Sure. So one observation I had relatively early was that the company scenario into which the leader is going matters a lot. As a easy example, you can envision there’s a huge distinction inbetween going into a crisis scenario, a turn-around scenario where whatever is a catastrophe in development, cash is being lost, sirens are going off, as opposed to a scenario where issues are start to establish however possibly sanctuary’t completely endedupbeing apparent to everyone . The vital mass of assistance for doing things isn’t always there .

And so, I constructed off that observation that those 2 circumstances, for example, are extremely various, to construct a morecomprehensive structure for thinking about the kinds of organization scenarios into which leaders shift. And this led to what’s understood as the STARS structure– start-up, turn-around, spedup development, adjustment, sustaining success. Startup’s undoubtedly taking something from scratch, structure it, taking it off the ground. Turna