Supermarket giant A&P was in dire need of a major financial and operational overhaul. Its problems had been mounting for a while. It was clear to Sam Martin when he took over as CEO in July of 2010 that he was going to have to apply the frameworks and leadership skills he had developed over [...]
Why Preparing in Advance is Priceless: How Ajay Banga Prepared for his New Leadership Role
February 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Ajay Banga did a particularly good job at Master Card at embracing and leveraging his Fuzzy Front End (the time between the acceptance of the job and start date as CEO). Many leaders fall into the trap of believing that leadership begins on day one of a new job, but Banga’s actions are an excellent [...]
Griffin Out of Time – When a Shock Fails
February 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Time Inc's CEO, Jack Griffin, just became one of the 40% of executives who fail in their first 18 months of onboarding, getting fired 6 months into the job ostensibly for poor leadership skills. "Although Jack is an extremely accomplished executive, I concluded that his leadership style and approach did not mesh with Time Inc. [...]
New Weekly Column on Forbes: The New Leader’s Playbook
February 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Image via Wikipedia Forbes has invited me to do a weekly column on accelerating leadership transitions. Since we're all new leaders all the time, this should be applicable to all of you all the time. So click through here and then on the "follow" button on the lower right to follow the column. Each [...]
International Executive Transitions
February 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The nice thing about switching countries is that no one (including you) expects you to know anything. You are completely, certifiably, consciously incompetent. Don’t laugh. It’s a privileged state that you want to keep as long as possible. When I worked in Japan I never sat down in a meeting until someone told me where [...]