Executive Onboarding Case Studies

Making cultural "gumbo"

(coming soon)

Getting a head start works every time

Keith hit the ground running. He chose his message and started connecting with key people even before Day One. He pulled his entire team together in his first month on the job to co-create a Burning Imperative and lay out initial milestones. He followed through on a regular, consistent basis to continue to drive his message, connecting personally with an ever-expanding group of individuals, and to ensure disciplined execution of the plans. By his second follow up meeting in month two, the team had already delivered some of the earliest wins and was feeling very good about itself. Contrast this with Bob, who got distracted by some other priorities and wasn’t able to spend time with his team early on. Indeed, Bob wasn’t able to hold his first staff meeting of any sort until his 108th day in the role. Until then, instead of working on new priorities, his team members spent large portions of their time pondering the all-important question, “where’s Bob?” At the end of 100 days, Keith and his team were already delivering meaningful successes together. Bob was still digging his own hole, by himself.

Don’t fail to deliver what they ask for – no matter what else you’re doing

Steve was hired as the head of business development for a venture backed technology company that had a developed a cutting edge digital rights management (DRM) software. Steve was excited about the opportunity because he knew that the technology was one of the best and the market was screaming for such a DRM product that was easy and reliable to use. Steve’s main priority was to enter into long-term agreements with the major entertainment studios. Steve made inroads with the studios quickly but he became frustrated by their notoriously slow movement. While keeping his eye on the studio business, he began to concentrate on other industries that required DRM technology and was able to secure a strong deal flow. A year later Steve was fired after a meeting with the venture capital company. While Steve was pleased with his inroads at the studios, he had not yet closed any deals with a major entertainment firm. While he felt the deal flow from other industries compensated, he didn’t understand that his “up” stakeholders thought he was concentrating 100% on studio business and felt that that business was far more valuable than the other industries that Steve had mined. He delivered, but he delivered off strategy. Deliver comes in all forms, but its only valuable if it is what was ordered. It’s easy. Know what’s expected. Validate what’s expected. Deliver what’s expected. Do that, and you’ve won. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Everything Communicates…and not always as intended

Robert had joined a high tech consulting company as the General Manager of Delivery and Operations. Robert was tasked with professionalizing the firm's project management approach, and he smartly figured out that his task would require a significant amount of interaction with his staff of talented but young project managers. He meticulously set up his office to be inviting and relaxing, knowing that the methodologies that he would be introducing would take awhile for his staff to understand and grow accustomed to. His office was set perfectly for the task, and the environment he envisioned was set almost immediately. Robert decided to put some personal touches in his office, and he thought it would be fun if he hung one of his very detailed model planes from the ceiling of his office. Several of his project managers had express an interest in aviation, and Robert was certain that this would foster an even more creative atmosphere. The problem was that Robert chose to hang a World War II fighter plane, a German plane. For Robert, that plane symbolized the beauty of efficient project management, but for others in the company it symbolized something quite different. Robert was genuinely shocked that some of his people had found the plane offensive. He immediately took it down and apologized, but the damage that it did to Robert was drastic, and an excellent start was derailed quickly. Everything communicates and not always what you may have intended. Be careful.

Fuzzy front end conversation can build your credibility

Bill was joining a company as SVP of Sales. The previous SVP of Sales had switched over to head up client relations with the firm’s largest customers. We were brought in to help Bill with his onboarding, but not until the Friday before he started. We talked to him between his son’s little league baseball games on Saturday and identified the previous head of sales as someone he should reach out to, if possible. He agreed, and he had what he thought was a nice, but not particularly important conversation with the former head of sales on Sunday. Then, on his first official day the following Monday, Bill talked to each of his direct reports one-on-one. Each and every one of them mentioned that they had talked to the previous head of sales who had told them that he thought Bill was a “good guy” who would be an asset. Wow! One carefully selected conversation gained Bill the luxury of walking in the door on Day One with instant credibility and support.

Leverage your agenda as a symbol of what’s important

Edgar was joining a company as CEO. He told us the most important thing he had to do was to change the mindset of the organization to become more customer focused. “What are you doing Day One?” “I’ve got this planned. I’m showing up, introducing myself to the team and launching five committees to tackle the five most important priorities.” “What happened to being more customer focused?” “What do you mean?” “How does your planned Day One demonstrate that your main goal is to become more customer focused?” “I guess it doesn’t.” “What does it say to your customers?” “Well, nothing, they won’t know about it.” “Exactly.” Edgar changed his plans. He did introduce himself to the team, but then explained, “I’m leaving now. Because, before I’m prepared to talk to any of you about anything, I want to get out and spend some time with our customers.” Edgar then proceeded to talk to customers…for the next ten days. On the third day, the chairman called him to express his concern. “What are you doing traipsing around the country? I hired you to run the business.” “I can’t do that until I’ve learned a little about our customers.” By the end of the first week, customers started calling the chairman to tell him how impressed they were with the new CEO. “He listens. We’re excited about him.” Finally, Edgar came back into the company with a comprehensive understanding of what the customers wanted and knowledge of where his company was falling short. He shared that knowledge with his new team. He met with his direct reports one-on-one to get their perspective on the customers and then used all that information to craft a Burning Imperative around a customer centric vision. He took the message forward by calling the top 50 managers together and telling then how the new company imperative was crafted with their input as well as the customers. He explained how the imperative drove the priorities. He said, “Based on our jointly developed imperative, I’m happy to announce the formation of five committees to work on our top five priorities.” Although the top five priorities were essentially the same as he’d originally planned, they contained powerful nuances that better fit the customer needs and his initiative had significantly more credibility because he involved the customers and his staff. His early actions sent a strong communication about the customer’s role in the company going forward.