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Jim Citrin Leader, Spencer Stuart CEO Practice
To use this site, you can download a complete 100-day transition plan template or navigate through sections on five key stakeholders.
• Dawn Airey, CEO, Getty Images • José (Joe) E. Almeida, Chairman and CEO, Baxter International • Joseph M. Hogan, CEO, Align Technology • Margaret M. Keane, CEO, Synchrony Financial • Marc B. Lautenbach, CEO, Pitney Bowes • William C. Weldon, former CEO, Johnson & Johnson
Because so much is riding on a strong start, we developed this resource for new CEOs to help you think through your transition plan, pulling together some of the best insights and ideas we’ve heard from experienced CEOs as well as our own observations from working with new CEOs. You'll find an 8-point plan, some useful reminders, links to resources and perspectives, and advice from CEOs and board chairmen, including:
No matter how prepared and experienced they were when they started, CEOs compare their earliest days in their role to drinking from a fire hose. The pace and demands of those first days can feel overwhelming, even for those who have served in the role before.
Solving the Disappearing Women Problem
The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture
Six Lessons CEOs Can Learn from HR-Forward Companies
Five Rules Every New CEO Should Follow
The New CEO's Guide to Transformation
The Culture-Performance Link: Five Takeaways for CEOs and Boards
Surviving the Sophomore Slump
Avoiding the Top 10 Traps for New CEOs
The Countdown
Dan Ciampa, David L. Dotlich, Transitions at the Top: What Organizations Must Do to Make Sure New Leaders Succeed
DOWNLOAD THE CHECKLIST
Jim Citrin, Managing Your Energy Level
Joe Hogan, Assessing Your Transition
Marc Lautenbach, My One Piece of Advice
Margaret Keane, What Would You Have Done Differently?
Dawn Airey, What You Have Learned as a CEO
José (Joe) Almeida, Biggest Surprise as a New CEO
William C. Weldon, Advice for the CEO Transition
Nigel Travis, Getting Smart About the Company
While you don’t want to come into the job with entirely pre-determined views and a complete strategy, you will need an “elevator speech” covering your views on where the company is going to play, how it is going to compete and the metrics that will you will use to determine success. The success of the business is not on your shoulders alone. Build a strong team and rely on them to help define and achieve strategic and operational objectives. Tap experts when you need them and consider identifying a mentor – typically a current or former CEO independent of the company – who you can turn to for advice and ideas. Finally, don’t underestimate the physical demands of the job. The early days, especially, will be grueling, so getting in your best physical shape will be vital.
Check in on your development progress with key stakeholders at mid-year and year-end.
Keep a journal of your ideas, reactions and emotions during the first 100 days. The things and feelings you notice can be a huge source of insight – you may never get as close to being an outsider later on.
Consider assigning a “program manager” to help coordinate your schedule internally and externally.
Seek introductions to coaches, experts and other CEOs who may serve as resources.
Get in physical shape; your stamina is about to be tested.
Prepare your family and/or personal support base for the intense ride ahead.
Determine and schedule internal group meetings.
Determine and schedule individual management meetings, e.g., top-20 executives and the most important and insightful clients and customers.
Ask for a briefing book, including strategic plans and other materials for homework.
Develop a formal transition plan.
Meet your admin before you start.
Review feedback from the hiring process to identify personal developmental needs, including the assessment if conducted and findings from 360-interviews and reference checking.
Everything starts with strategy. As the new CEO, your new team, customers, suppliers and employees across the organization will be forming their first impressions of you and are looking for your take on the business. Therefore, part of your preparation will be to articulate your key themes in a clear, constructive, punchy way that instills confidence in people that they have a strong leader at the helm. Your overarching vision — your views on where the business sits in the competitive landscape, the metrics for measuring success, and your vision for taking the company forward — will serve as the basis for all of your conversations in the early days and many of the decisions you will have to make about people, processes and culture.
Why Effective Executive Development Begins with Assessment
Defining the Functional Capabilities You Need
How to Think About Assessing Leaders
Key Questions to Consider
YICNW Content: Communications Key to Implementing Agenda
Why Smart Leaders Fail
Do We Need a CXO?
Building High-Performing C-Suite Teams
Leading with Culture: Linking People, Strategy & Culture Content
Accelerating C-Suite Transitions
Three Ways Assessments Can Go Wrong (and How You Can Get Them Right)
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Dawn Airey, Establishing Alignment with Your Team
Joe Hogan, Learning About Your New Team
Marc Lautenbach, Alignment is an "Everyday Thing"
Margaret Keane, Engaging the Team
Dayton Ogden, Learning About Your New Team
José (Joe) Almeida, Collaborating on a Strategic Agenda
William C. Weldon, Making Decisions About the Team
Questions At a Glance
Consider top leadership session to share vision, strategy, etc.
Define the operating mechanism/process – the meetings, documents and report formats to conduct the day-to-day business.
Refine individual goals and development plans.
Synthesize learning and provide feedback to the board and team.
Conduct a formal new leader assimilation session.
Meet with direct reports and broader leadership team. Ask a lot of questions.
Invest time determining the “jobs to be done” based on the business imperatives, including how those priorities should shape the responsibilities and priorities of the individual leadership roles.
Use early management team meetings to validate performance assumptions and build relationships. Set the tone for the weeks that follow by communicating your management philosophy, background, operating principles and expectations.
Review the most-recent HR plan including succession planning and overall organization plan.
Create an agenda for active listening with direct reports and others. Ask a lot of questions.
Review a complete set of individual performance reviews, executive coach assessments, etc., for direct reports and reviews that speak to top team effectiveness.
Nigel Travis, Finding Alignment with the Team
Carefully assess the top HR leader to see if you will receive objective, valuable advice and counsel.
Many new CEOs find it valuable to conduct formal executive assessments to gain feedback on the strengths and weaknesses, developmental needs and motivations of individuals on their teams. Great leaders tailor their management styles to the recipient rather than approaching the team from a one-size-fits-all perspective.
Your first hire says volumes about your quality standards and rigor of process. Unless the company is in utter crisis, avoid making critical personnel moves immediately. Avoid reaching out immediately to someone from your past without a formal process.
It is not uncommon for a new leader to encounter roles on his or her inherited team that have been defined or built around the people in them, rather than the priorities of the business. Evaluate team members’ ability to advance the strategy you have developed, and remember that, almost universally, CEOs say they waited too long to make a leadership change they knew needed to be made.
Take advantage of this unique moment in time when you first start to signal the ways the culture may change under your leadership by explicitly expressing a set of values that you hold yourself and team to.
Get the team to focus on a limited number of themes and priorities — three or four — so they can be easily remembered by the organization. Expect pushback on your agenda; rather than resisting the feedback, coalesce the input in a positive way to maximize buy-in.
New CEOs sometimes assume that the best way to get their team motivated around transformation or the long-term strategic plan is to hold a big meeting with the top 20 people and present their plan. They’re prescriptive before they elicit the good ideas from other people. Instead, it is so inspirational to the team to have the new boss say, “Okay, we’re going to do our best to transform this company or grow this company or make this company more profitable. I want your best thinking about what we should be doing and how we should be holding each other accountable.”
A “new leader assimilation” session with your team can greatly accelerate your onboarding. This session is most effective at the 60-90 day point.
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2016 CEO Summit: Las Vegas
Another lesson some CEOs learn the hard way is the need to organize properly for agile decision making. One CEO we work with has solved this challenge by defining a six-person senior management team responsible for making the company’s biggest decisions and a larger leadership group that participates in the discussion of issues, providing ideas and sharing information.
Use your earliest days to begin building the foundation for a strong, high-performing team. This includes evaluating the strength of individual members and the dynamics among team members, and understanding any skill gaps and potential process and structural needs.
The Rise of the Learning Culture
The Role of Culture in Search and Succession
The Evolution of Leadership in Information Risk and Cybersecurity
Communications Key to Implementing Agenda
Crafting Your Strategic Agenda
YICNW Content
Remain visible; leverage technology platforms for ongoing communication and listening.
To evolve culture, adapt measures of success, new expectations and new operating processes to reflect the ideal culture; empower leaders. Lead by example.
Establish a comprehensive organization communications plan; consider holding an all-employee meeting to share observations.
Create mechanism for gathering input from broader organization.
Develop hypotheses about organizational structure and roles and responsibilities.
Review employee satisfaction/engagement survey results and examine turnover data and rationale.
Communicate your personality, management philosophy, background, operating principles and expectations.
Identify “how things work around here.” Go on the hunt for the knowledge networks, key influencers, decision-making protocols and the unwritten and unspoken conventions that are the nervous system of any organization.
Review most recent employee engagement, culture survey or other analyses providing insight into the broader organization.
Identify who to talk to for your listening tour; ask for names of key organization and cultural influencers.
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And make sure your understanding of the context is shared by the board. Adjust your initiatives and the pace of change to the context, which can vary significantly between a turnaround situation and growth agenda, for example.
People expect that even at an early stage that you will be able to talk with confidence about the four or five key issues affecting the future of the company. Even as you’re learning and listening, you still need to instill confidence in people about your leadership. You need to be able to talk about them in a clear, constructive, punchy way, integrating what you hear during the listening tour.
Conduct town halls, listening tours, multi-level roundtables and customer forums to listen and share your insights. Remember, colleagues are interested in who you are more than what you have done.
Many new leaders struggle because they could not make headway against an intransigent culture, pushing too hard in the wrong ways. Collect insights about organizational culture from the board, management team, employees, customers and industry analysts; consider having a culture diagnostic completed, especially if transformation is needed. Identify how “things work around here” and cultural norms. You also may want to talk to a couple of people who recently left the company to understand their frustrations.
Pace yourself and your change agenda; continually assess the tolerance of the organization and adapt. With a deep-seated culture, it may be necessary to make structural and people changes to evolve it, but do so with the bought-in support of the key power center and establish a concerted program to address the cultural legacies of the organization.
And don’t pick the wrong battles. Diagnosing the power structure of an organization is important, and it differs from culture.
Use technology to help develop holistic insights on the organization. Resist the urge to let the voices of a few dominate. And, remember, effective communication involves more than promulgating a message, it is a continuous give and take in which ideas are explored, assimilated and adapted.
looking for cues as they seek to learn about you. What you do and how you do it is just as impactful as what you say, and sometimes even more so.
Joe Hogan, Communicating from Day One
Dawn Airey, Learning the Organization's Culture
Marc Lautenbach, Truly Understanding Your Organization's Culture
Margaret Keane, Enhancing Your Culture
Dayton Ogden, The Need for a Listening Tour
José (Joe) Almeida, Getting a Handle on the Organization's Culture
William C. Weldon, Getting to Know the Organization's Culture
Nigel Travis, Grasping the Organization's Culture
Change is usually difficult for organizations. People will want to know who you are and whether you are “good” or “bad” for them. Use the early period to assess the company strategy, values and culture and how they may need to change; recognize this requires a systematic approach.
The Five Most Common New Director Questions
Building the CEO-Board Relationship
Changing Places: What Functional Leaders Can Learn from One Another
Performance in the Spotlight: Assessment and Board Effectiveness
What Do Boards Need to Know About Corporate Culture?
How Next-Generation Board Directors Are Having an Impact
In a New Era for Boards, Culture is Key
Succession Planning for the Board: Taking a More Strategic Approach
Inheriting a Board: A Guide for CEOs
Margaret Keane, Getting off on the Right Foot with the Board
Dayton Ogden, Building Board Relationships
Dawn Airey, Building a Relationship with the Board
Joe Hogan, Working with your Board
Marc Lautenbach, The Need for Transparency with the Board
José (Joe) Almeida, Getting Off to a Strong Start with the Board
William C. Weldon, What Does the Board Want from a New CEO?
Nigel Travis, Populating the Board
Encourage the board to think about its long-term board succession plan.
Consider whether and when a board effectiveness assessment could be valuable.
Schedule a formal board session to share your first-100-days observations and updates on your game plan.
Establish an effective communications protocol. Tailor your communication and management style to the needs of the board.
Share thoughts on leadership team challenges with the board chair/lead director and any emerging themes from your reviews to date that you may want to test.
Schedule one-on-one conversations with board members to understand the stated and unstated motivations of the board, and their perspectives on challenges and opportunities for the company.
If you are a first-time CEO, ensure you are knowledgeable about fundamentals of board governance.
Ask if a board effectiveness assessment has been conducted recently and if you can review all or key parts of it.
Debrief with succession advisers to gain insights about director perspectives, board dynamics and expectations that emerged during the selection process.
delighted to help in a more substantive way. It’s a huge opportunity that’s frequently missed. Set up one-on-one meetings with directors as part of your transition plan, and continue the discipline of meeting or speaking with directors before important board meetings – when topics such as acquisitions, new products and services, or large capital investments are going to be discussed. Understand the stated and unstated motivations of your board. It’s not just about building shareholder value, directors also are concerned about their reputations and schedules. Create forums for key management team members to interact with the board. This increases their ability to help assess and support strategy and perform the board’s most important function: ensuring optimal succession.
Many new CEOs assume the status quo for the relationship with the board. But as a new CEO, don’t miss the opportunity to re-set with the board on processes, communication and composition for the board. Early on, ask directors what they think what worked well and what they’d like to see changed. One CEO continued the practice of providing a 200-plus page deck before board meetings for two years before learning that the board would prefer a much more focused 30-page deck. Strive to consciously refresh the board experience for the directors so that it is more fun and more stimulating to serve on the board than before. Similarly, use the early days in the role to begin driving an approach to board succession based on the direction of the business. A nuance that some new CEOs miss is that the board is not just your boss. Great boards help you succeed, but they won’t if you don’t ask them. They’ll read their board book, go to the meeting, try to be constructive in the meeting and go home. But if you ask a director to help think through a thorny issue or introduce you to somebody or get involved with the tech or marketing team, directors are typically
Create forums for key management team members to interact with the board. This increases their ability to help assess and support strategy and perform the board’s most important function: ensuring optimal succession.
Understand the stated and unstated motivations of your board. It’s not just about building shareholder value, directors also are concerned about their reputations and schedules.
Set up one-on-one meetings with directors as part of your transition plan, and continue the discipline of meeting or speaking with directors before important board meetings – when topics such as acquisitions, new products and services, or large capital investments are going to be discussed.
delighted to help in a more substantive way. It’s a huge opportunity that’s frequently missed.
A nuance that some new CEOs miss is that the board is not just your boss. Great boards help you succeed, but they won’t if you don’t ask them. They’ll read their board book, go to the meeting, try to be constructive in the meeting and go home. But if you ask a director to help think through a thorny issue or introduce you to somebody or get involved with the tech or marketing team, directors are typically
Many new CEOs assume the status quo for the relationship with the board. But as a new CEO, don’t miss the opportunity to re-set with the board on processes, communication and composition for the board. Early on, ask directors what they think what worked well and what they’d like to see changed. One CEO continued the practice of providing a 200-plus page deck before board meetings for two years before learning that the board would prefer a much more focused 30-page deck. Strive to consciously refresh the board experience for the directors so that it is more fun and more stimulating to serve on the board than before. Similarly, use the early days in the role to begin driving an approach to board succession based on the direction of the business.
Your relationship with the board is one of the most important for your success, but many new CEOs get off to a slow start with the board. You likely have presented to your company’s board and spent time with directors before becoming CEO, but working with the board on strategy, compensation and benefits, audit, compliance, risk – the fiduciary responsibilities that a public company board has – is very different.
Investors and the Board
Marc Lautenbach, Choosing the Right Approach with Stakeholders
Margaret Keane, Identifying Critical Stakeholders
Jim Citrin, Cultivating Stakeholders
Dawn Airey, Communicating with External Stakeholders
Joe Hogan, Learning from Your Customers
José (Joe) Almeida, Communicating with Key Stakeholders
Nigel Travis, Meet Quickly with External Stakeholders
Understand key community relations dynamics and relationships.
Incorporate feedback from clients, shareholders and others into strategic plan.
Understand what other key stakeholder commitments may require your attention or time.
Ensure that there is a plan for strategically meeting with the critical customers, top shareholders and other critical external stakeholders.
Understand key government regulations, agencies and other stakeholders that may impact the business.
Research analyst industry and company coverage and investor expectations.
Ask for a list of the top 10-50 customers and top 10 shareholders, as well as the main issues for each.
There also may be critical community stakeholders or issues that you should become familiar with – an ongoing tax deal, labor issues, complex real estate transactions, regulatory issues, public relations challenges – or relationships that may place demands on your time. For example, is there an expectation that you will succeed the former CEO on the board of directors of a major nonprofit organization?
Introductory calls to major shareholders, analysts and customers are important relationship-building activities, even if the content itself remains fairly superficial. Share relevant feedback from these conversations systematically. A briefing book highlighting the top institutional investors — including their contact information, their holdings and key issues — is an essential tool to prepare you for earnings calls and one-off calls from shareholders. Consider reaching out proactively to the largest shareholders, who want to feel like an insider and feel confident that the company is going to be fine under your leadership.
The initial transition period is an important time to introduce yourself to key customers, large institutional investors and other key external stakeholders. Get on the right footing with stakeholders by understanding their issues and concerns and communicating in ways that help them feel confident in you and your abilities to lead effectively.
Dawn Airey, Stop, Listen and Learn
Dawn Airey, The CEO's Primary Job
José (Joe) Almeida, One Piece of Advice for New CEOs
José (Joe) Almeida, Assessing Your Own Transiton
José (Joe) Almeida, Quickly Assess Your Team
José (Joe) Almeida, Critical Steps in Gaining Alignment
William C. Weldon, Ensuring Success as a CEO
New Text
Defining Your Functional Capabilities
The First 100 Days Template
The Five Elements of Context that Most Inspire Senior Leadership Success
Leading with Culture
Board effectiveness assessment overview / New POV article
Here’s a selection of resources to help you during your transition and beyond.
