2
Leverage the Fuzzy Front End
Jump-Start Relationships. Listen, Learn, and Plan Before Day One.
But even if you have already started your new role, read this chapter. If you have yet to tackle the things presented in this chapter, start doing them immediately. Read on to find out where you need to catch up.
Create Time, Take Action
Many leaders fall into the trap of thinking that leadership begins on Day One of a new job. Like it or not, a new leader's role begins as soon as that person is an acknowledged candidate for the job. Everything new leaders do and say and don't do and don't say will send powerful signals, starting well before they even walk in the door on Day One.
If you embrace this concept and do something about it, you increase your chances of success. This one idea can make or break a new leader's transition. New leaders who miss the opportunity to get a head start before the start often discover later that organizational or market momentum was working against them even before they showed up for their first full day at the office.
This bonus time between acceptance and start is the Fuzzy Front End. It often comes at the worst possible time, interfering with the last days of an old job, time earmarked for taking a vacation, catching up with personal errands postponed for too long, or just unwinding a little before the big day.
The good news is that, more often than not, the key elements of the Fuzzy Front End can be addressed in relatively short order. Even so, strive to stretch out the time between acceptance and your start date and get as much done as you can. This is the only opportunity you'll ever have to create extra time and valuable white space1 before jumping into your new role.
Choose the Right Day to Be Day One
One subtle way of creating time is to take control of the start date. If there's flexibility—which is not always the case—you might negotiate a start date that allows a longer Fuzzy Front End and therefore more time for helpful activities before Day One. Alternatively, you might separate your actual first day on the payroll from the officially announced first day. By having a private Day One that your boss knows about and a later public Day One, you can accomplish things while you are an employee but before you start getting pulled into the normal day-to-day routine, thereby stretching your Fuzzy Front End.
The Longer the Better
At first, Nathaniel did not buy the concept that he should start before his official Day One. He wanted to take some time off so that he could show up at his new job rested and relaxed. Further, he felt uncomfortable asking for meetings before he was officially on the job. Eventually he agreed to try several of our suggested actions before Day One.
Here is exactly what he wrote to us in an e-mail one week later:
I've already reached out to some future colleagues and some agency counterparts just to introduce myself. You're right—it is game changing. Everyone has reacted with warmth and candor, and it will make the first few weeks far more effective and enjoyable.
As laid out in Tool 2.1, the 100-Day Plan Worksheet, make your Fuzzy Front End even more powerful with these six steps:
- Determine your leadership approach given the context and culture you face.
- Identify key stakeholders.
- Craft your entry message using current best thinking.
- Jump-start key relationships and accelerate your learning.
- Manage your personal and office setup.
- Plan your Day One, early days, and first 100 days.
1. Determine Your Leadership Approach Given the Context and Culture You Face
Step one is to identify the need for change and the readiness for change. The context you're facing determines how fast you should move. (Need for change.) The current culture determines how fast and effectively you can move. (Readiness for change.) The key question is: How significantly and how fast does the organization need to change given its business environment, history, and recent performance?
Business Environment: You already assessed the business environment with your 5Cs analyses during due diligence. Be sure to look for trends within each C: customers, collaborators, capabilities, competitors, and conditions.
Organization History: Understanding how the organization got to its current state can give you invaluable insight into the drivers for change as well as the roots of individual team members' assumptions about the situation. Go back as far as you can to understand things such as the founder's intent, heroes along the way, and the stories and myths that people carry around with them. Has the culture continually evolved? Are employees protective of the culture?
Recent Business Performance: Dig below the obvious in looking at recent business performance. Understand the components of the overall numbers to get at what is working well and less well. We've seen a number of cases where favorable overall revenue growth was either misleading (reflecting one-off wins versus true share growth) or masked underlying problems in one or more core business units or irreversible rises in cost. Identify absolute and relative results, recent trends, positive and negative drivers, and whether they are temporary blips or enduring obstacles. Use Tool 2.2 to help with your context assessment.
Compare Role Expectations to Context Analysis
Now compare the expectations/objectives that have been explained to you (for your role and team) by those you met during interviews and due diligence against your analysis of the business environment, the organization's history, and the recent business performance to determine how well (or, poorly) positioned the organization is to achieve those objectives. Are those expectations out of whack with the current business environment, the way the company has historically operated, or recent business performance? This will give you a sense of how fast things need to change.
In a postacquisition or merger integration, the task of assessing the need for change is determined by the strengths, momentum, and objectives of the combined businesses, as well as which specific changes need to be made during integration to achieve these objectives. The rationale for merging entities varies. Some are driven by cost benefits, calling for rapid functional integration and job eliminations. Others are driven by revenue growth potential from diversification, calling for minimal or zero integration, or by incremental investments to accelerate growth. Different situations will have different contexts and therefore call for very different approaches to integration and change.
Look at the Culture to Determine the Readiness for Change
Now that you have determined the organization's need for change, it is time to assess the organization's cultural readiness to accept, embrace, and adapt to change. Readiness to change requires a combination of self-awareness, will, and skill. Members of the organization must understand the need for change, have the desire to change, and have the ability to change.
Your first look at this will be derived from the cultural assessment you did during your due diligence (or should do now). When working with merging or newly reorganized teams, remember to assess the readiness for change for the combined or new organization, starting with the new leadership team.
Determine Your Leadership Approach
At this point you, you've assessed whether cultural change is needed and whether the team is ready. Now you are ready to choose how to best engage with the existing culture by assimilating, converging and evolving, or shocking the organization (ACES).
After the decision to take the job in the first place, this may be the most important decision you make in your first 100 days. It is difficult, if not impossible, to recover from a wrong cultural engagement choice. Your choice is dependent upon the environment you're walking into and the existing culture's readiness for change. Tool 2.3 will help you determine the most appropriate approach for your situation as illustrated in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1 Context and Culture
Assimilate when your analysis indicates that urgent change is not required to deliver the expected results and yet the readiness for change exists as reflected in a cohesive team in place. You can figure out the minor changes you need to make over time together with your team and your stakeholders. This is a wonderful but rare situation.
In most cases you'll want to converge and evolve.
Converge and Evolve slowly when your analysis indicates that urgent change is not required but slight adjustments will be needed over time to deliver the expected results yet the culture is not ready to change to support the required adjustments. First become part of the organization, and then slowly start to implement the changes that are required. Often a way to start this change is with a series of carefully thought through step changes, deployed over time.
Converge and Evolve quickly when your analysis indicates that significant changes are required immediately to deliver expected results and the culture is ready for change. You may be the catalyst that helps the organization wake up to the urgent need for change. Quickly is the word—too slow and failure will catch you.
Shock when significant changes must be made immediately to deliver the expected results and when the culture is not ready to change. In this scenario, you have a truly challenging situation. You must shock the system for it to survive. You must do it immediately. And the going will be tough. Know that this is extraordinarily risky and that you may end up as a dead hero, paving the way for your successor to complete a transformation you couldn't survive yourself.
When leading teams about to be merged or reorganized, converge and evolve is almost always the best approach. Pure assimilation will be too slow, and the benefits of synergies may never be realized. If you deploy a shock approach, you will miss the opportunity to clarify roles and enroll new players in the definition of future state. Remember—people will not pay attention to anything to do with strategy or execution until they know what their own role will be in the new organization.
It is critical to get this right. Think this through early, use your best preliminary assessment to decide your leadership approach, test your hypothesis during your Fuzzy Front End and then reassess your choice just before Day One.
2. Identify Key Stakeholders
Step two of the Fuzzy Front End is to identify your key stakeholders. These are the people who can have the most impact on your success in your new role. Many transitioning executives fail to think through this process or look in only one direction to find their key stakeholders. Others make the mistake of treating everyone the same and end up trying to please all of them.
Up stakeholders may include your boss, your indirect boss if there is a matrix organization, your boss's boss, the board of directors, your boss's assistant, or anyone else who resides further up in the organization.
Across stakeholders might include key allies, peers, partners, and even the person who wanted your job but didn't get it. The across stakeholders that executives often forget are key clients and customers (external and internal).
Down stakeholders usually include your direct reports and other critical support people who are essential to successful implementation of your team's goals. Your executive assistants should be high on this list, because they can often serve as additional sets of eyes and ears.
Former stakeholders: If you're getting promoted from within or making a lateral move, make sure to take into account your up, across, and down stakeholders from your former position.
Internal board: Your internal board is made up of the people you are going to treat differently because of their influence or impact regardless of their explicit roles in the hierarchy. You're going to treat them like board members, never surprising them in meetings and making sure that they get the chance to give you informal, off-the-record advice. Set the stage early and position yourself as an executive who is eager for and welcomes feedback from your internal board.
Some key stakeholders will be apparent, yet others are often hidden from view, so do not be afraid to ask your human resources contact, boss, predecessor, buddy, or mentor when you are building your list. Throughout, have a bias to keep more people on the list rather than less—at least to start. Ignoring a key stakeholder can have a devastating impact on a new leader and might kill any chance of a successful transition.
Similarly, have a bias to treat people with more respect rather than less. If you are unsure where stakeholders fit on your list, it's always better to upgrade a stakeholder. You are not going to get in much trouble treating an across like an up or a down like an across. The opposite is not true.
Inevitably some of these stakeholders will support what you're trying to do, some will resist it, and some will sit on the sidelines and watch for a while. Call them contributors, detractors, and watchers, respectively.
Contributors: These are the people who share your vision and have been working for change. Often they are new to the company or role, so they see that there's more to gain by going forward with the new leaders than by holding on to the past.
Detractors: These are the people who are comfortable with the status quo, fear looking incompetent, perceive a threat to their values/power, fear negative consequences for their key allies, and have been in the position for a long time, so they have more to lose in giving up the current state than they have to gain in supporting a risky change.
Watchers: These are the people who are on the fence, generally the silent majority.
Note that people with high levels of current power have a bias to resist change because they have more to lose than to gain as illustrated in Figure 2.2 below. It's not always the case, but it is true in enough situations for you to be particularly thoughtful in developing relationships with these people.
Figure 2.2 Power and Change
The overall prescription is to move every influencer one step in the right direction. Don't try to turn detractors into contributors in one fell swoop. In general, start by increasing the commitment level of your contributors. Then move the convincible watchers into contributors. And get the detractors out of the way.
In any case, you will want to answer the following questions about your audience:
- With whom are you communicating? Be as specific as you can, and include everyone and all groups that can have an impact, including your target, their primary influencers, and other influencers. Answer each one of the following questions with your entire target audience in mind:
- What are they currently thinking and doing? What's most important to them?
- What do they need to stop doing, keep doing, or change how they are doing?
- What do they need to know to move them from their current state to the desired state?
3. Craft Your Entry Message Using Your Current Best Thinking
Step three of the Fuzzy Front End is to craft your entry message. Before you start talking to any of your stakeholders, you'll want to clarify your initial message.
Everything you do communicates, especially in the Fuzzy Front End and the first interactions with people after you start. Everything you do and say and don't do and don't say sends powerful signals to everybody in the organization observing you and everyone in the organization who is in communication with those who observe you.
This works in both directions. Be keenly aware that everything you experience is, or should be, communicating something to you as well. Hard data, relationships, inferences, your intuition, existing communication material, and what you might see between the lines all provide clues as to how you should begin to craft your message. Not only are you communicating with your new environment and colleagues, but you are also absorbing what they are communicating.
Make no mistake about it; your communication starts in the Fuzzy Front End (if not before) whether you realize it or not. If you're not sure about your entry message at this point, stop and think it through. You don't have to stick with it. Most likely you won't because it will evolve to become more precise as you learn. But you must have a point of view going in if you're going to lead. Your message is the keystone of your communication. Your entry message is the starting point. It should be enough to satisfy your key stakeholders' curiosity while optimizing your opportunities for learning.
Crafting and deploying your message has to do with the words you use (and don't) and the actions you take (and don't). Be conscious of your choices and craft an intentional entry message before you start talking to stakeholders. You are going to get positioned in people's minds either by what others tell them about you or by what you say and do. You're always better off taking control of as much of that as you can. This requires an entry message about the change—which you will evolve as you learn.
Put a stake in the ground with your current best thinking to craft your entry message. Use that to help with your directed learning and evolve as you learn.
As you start your new role, recall that you can't get people to do anything different unless they believe that there is a reason for them to do it (platform for change), they can picture themselves in a better place (vision), and they know what their part is (call to action). Your communication points flow from your message, the platform for change, the vision, and the call to action.
- Platform for change (Why): The things that will make your audience realize they need to do something different from what they have been doing. (Note people react better to an external platform for change outside their control than to being told that something they are doing is not good enough.)
- Vision (What): Picture of a brighter future—that your audience can picture themselves in. Not your vision. Theirs.
- Call to action (How): Actions the audience can take to get there so they can be part of the solution.
Once you have thought these foundational points through, distill them down to one driving message and your main communication points. Don't ever forget that your audience is always asking, “What does this mean for me?” Use the “Message” section in Tool 2.1 to capture this information.
When John stepped into the role to create a division to capitalize on new growth opportunities, his entry message was clear, concise, and compelling:
- Our competition has jumped ahead of us in technology solutions. If we stand still, we will continue to lose share, profits, and our ability to invest (Platform for Change).
- We have been given the cash to acquire leading technology businesses in our space, which will embed our content in our customers' systems and leapfrog us past the competition (Vision).
- Our goal is to identify the right businesses to acquire and to define a new way of integrating them so that we can preserve their strengths and differentiate us from the competition—permanently (Call to Action).
As a result of this compelling message, John was able to attract top talent from inside the company and convince attractive businesses to sell to his firm and join his team. The team achieved more than 20 percent growth and favorably changed the competitive playing field for the parent company.
4. Jump-Start Key Relationships and Accelerate Your Learning Before Day One
Step four of the Fuzzy Front End is to jump-start key relationships and accelerate your learning. These two items work hand in hand. You achieve this by conducting prestart meetings and phone calls now, before you start. The impact you can make by reaching out to critical stakeholders before you start is incalculable. Yet some executives are surprisingly reluctant to set up those meetings. They often expect to encounter resistance, but rarely do.
First, using your list of key stakeholders, determine which ones you should speak with before Day One. The most important stakeholders are the ones who are going to be most critical to your surviving and thriving in the new role.
These might include:
- Your new boss
- The most influential board members
- Critical peers—especially ones who were candidates for your new job
- Critical customers and clients
- Critical direct reports—especially ones who were candidates for your new job or who are considered flight risks
To make the process easier, here are some suggestions for starting a conversation:
- “Hi Jack, I'm Jill. I'll be starting in two weeks as president. Stuart has told me that you're an absolutely critical part of the team. I didn't want to show up without getting a chance to meet you in advance.”
- “Bob, since you're such a valued customer of my new company, I can't imagine starting work without getting to know you first. I'll meet you anytime, anywhere in the world that's most convenient for you, over the next month. I'd really like to have your perspective on what's going on before I start.”
- “Andrew, since you weren't on the board's search committee, we haven't met. But I'd like to spend some time with you before I start.”
Leverage the Fuzzy Front End to Get Real Answers and Perspective
Another reason to start communicating with key stakeholders early is that the answers you get to questions before you actually start will be different from the answers you get after you start. You are a different person before you start. You are not yet an employee or boss. You are just someone looking to make a connection and learn. The answers you get during the Fuzzy Front End almost always prove exceedingly valuable after Day One.
What You See as Possible Just Might Define You
You should have meetings with the most important key stakeholders up, across, and down as well as phone calls with other stakeholders, if at all possible. This is so important that you should expand your concept of possible. Some executives have flown halfway around the world for hour-long meetings and met key stakeholders on ski lifts, cruise ships, Little League baseball fields, and the hinterlands just to get those meetings done before Day One. Get creative.
There are times when Fuzzy Front End meetings may not be possible or a potential stakeholder may be unwilling. Even so, just asking for the premeeting makes a favorable impact.
Prestart Conversations Have a Cascading Impact
Bill was joining a company as head of sales. Jairu, the previous, beloved head of sales had switched over to head up client relations with the firm's largest customer. Bill had what he thought was a nice but not particularly important conversation with Jairu on the Sunday before he started.
The next day, Bill's Day One, six of his eight direct reports said that Jairu had called them the evening before. They each told Bill that Jairu had told them that he thought Bill was a “good guy” who would be an asset. Jairu could have made the transition difficult. Instead, Bill had turned him into a supporter—even before Day One.
Accelerate Your Learning
Now that you have your prestart conversations set, it is important to have an approach for those conversations. Make no mistake; these conversations are most successful when you are talking as little as possible and listening as attentively as possible. They are about building relationships and learning.
In a wonderful Technology, Education, Design (TED) Talk, researcher/storyteller Brené Brown explained that making a connection with someone else requires us to let him or her really see us, leaving ourselves vulnerable to harm.2 These early prestart conversations are your first best chance to let your guard down, be vulnerable, and make connections with your most important stakeholders by asking for their help in terms of their read on the situation, priorities, and “how things are done around here.”
Because this is about relationships first, your first question will probably be something along the lines of “Tell me about yourself.” You want to connect with your key stakeholders individually. You want to understand their personal wants and needs as well as their business issues. This may also be a good time to take your crafted message out for a test drive; but keep in mind this is not about you, so keep your message short and on point. Because you are here to build relationships and learn, it is not the time to tell your life story or to offer opinions on how things should be done.
Structuring the conversations is useful. Come into these conversations with an open mind, and actively listen to what your key stakeholders have to say. Doing so in a planned and thoughtful way is fundamental to maximizing the value of these conversations. Break the conversations into learning, expectations, and implementation. Tool 2.5 will help.
Strengths and Perceptions
Start this part by probing people's read on the general situation. Focus on two key areas: strengths and perceptions. Ask people what strengths and capabilities are required for success versus their perceptions of what is in place now. Notice the differences. This is not a search for the one truth. This is an exercise in understanding the different stakeholders' perceptions so you can better lead and communicate with them once you take charge.
When you receive answers to your questions, ask for examples that might reinforce the answers. We all communicate with stories. Beginning in the Fuzzy Front End, drop any reference to your former organization, and switch to we conversations about your new organization immediately. If you manage these conversations well, you should have several we stories to choose from going forward.
Storytelling is one of the most powerful communication tools. As Peter Guber describes in his article on “The Four Truths of the Storyteller,”3 the most impactful stories embody:
- Truth to the teller: sharing and conveying the deepest values with openness and candor
- Truth to the audience: tapping into what's important and delivering on what is emotionally fulfilling for them
- Truth to the mission: driving toward a purpose that is meaningful and rewarding for the teller and for the audience
- Truth in the moment: fitting into the appropriate context for each audience, each time
Take note that the core element is truth.
Keep in mind that the story itself is not enough. You must live the story. Your followers won't really believe what you show or say; they will believe only what you actually do. This is why storytelling is necessary but not sufficient by itself. This is why it's so important to live your message. You must model the attitudes and behaviors you want others to follow so those others can share your understanding and your dreams, feelings, and commitment. This starts with your initial contacts—even before you start.
Expectations
The objectives of the conversations with your stakeholders will be different up, across, and down. Therefore, your questions will also be different for each group. Your up stakeholders' expectations around priorities and resources are direction for you. Your across stakeholders' expectations are input to build mutual understanding. Your down stakeholders' expectations are data to help you learn about their current reality and their needs.
This is also an excellent time to figure out if there are any untouchables. Untouchables are those things that may seem odd or do not have a natural fit with the larger goals of an organization or division, but might be pet projects or protected people that you should not touch. Most organizations have them; and they can be the third rail for executives who don't recognize them as untouchables. Identify them early and let them be—at least at first.
Implementation
At this part of the conversation, you're looking to understand (1) control points (what things are measured, tracked, and reported and how), (2) how decisions are made, and (3) the best way to communicate with people.
Different organizations use different metrics and processes for controlling what is really going on. You'll need to understand what things are measured, tracked, and reported and how—and what is not being formally tracked but informally watched in the shadows.
Understanding how decisions are made is about understanding who makes what decisions with whose input. There are five ways that you and another person can make decisions:
- Level 1: I decide on my own.
- Level 2: I decide with input from you.
- Level 3: You and I decide together.
- Level 4: You decide with my input.
- Level 5: You decide on your own.
In general, you want to push decisions to Levels 2 and 4 (either you or your key stakeholder makes decisions with input from the other). Input is helpful whether it is veto rights, consultation, or information.
Shared decisions have a nasty tendency not to be made by anyone. Avoid putting yourself in that scenario.
How to Manage the Process with Stakeholders
- Up: You ask how major decisions are made.
- Across: You negotiate how major decisions are made.
- Down: You inform how major decisions are made.
It is not good enough to think you know how this process should play out or to assume that your stakeholders are on the same page with you on this. Make the effort to define the major decisions clearly and know how they will be made. Whether you make a decision that your boss thought was his or your direct report is making a decision that you felt was yours, it usually leads to uncomfortable circumstances at best and exploding land mines at worst. Make sure all the key players, especially your boss, view decision rights the same way.
That's the easy part. The trickier part is understanding where the real decision power resides. The three key sources of power are deciders (Who makes the decisions? Who sets the rules?), influencers, and implementers (Who controls the resources required to implement decisions?). It is important to consider how they interact and how they impact the organization when you are establishing your decision-making process.
Communication Preferences
Use these Fuzzy Front End prestart meetings to begin to understand stakeholders' communication preferences. Pay particular attention to mode, manner, frequency, and disagreements.
- Mode refers to the type of communication: e-mail, text, voice mail, in person, and so on.
- Manner is the style of communication: more formal and disciplined or less.
- Frequency is how often people prefer to be communicated with: daily updates, weekly, only when the project is completed, and so on.
You won't know others' preferences unless you ask. Do so.
Disagreements
Different people prefer being disagreed with in different ways, ranging from:
- Never disagree with me.
- Challenge me one-on-one, but only in private.
- Challenge me in team meetings, but never let anyone outside “the family” know what you're thinking.
- Challenge me in any meetings, but gently.
- Gloves off, all the time, because public challenges communicate the culture we want.
Ask about this, but don't believe the initial answers you get. Initially, start at the top of the list, and wait to see how your key stakeholders, and especially your boss, respond to disagreements and challenges from others before you start disagreeing with them or challenging them.
5. Manage Your Personal and Office Setup
Step five of the Fuzzy Front End is to manage your personal and office setup well before Day One. No matter how much you try, you cannot give the new job your best efforts until you get comfortable about your family's setup. Taking the time to figure out housing, schools, transportation, and the like is not a luxury. It is a business imperative. The more drastic the move, the more issues you'll need to solve.
Similarly, make sure someone is getting your office set up before Day One. This doesn't have to be done perfectly because you can evolve as you go, though do make sure your office sends the right message about your approach: formal versus informal, functional versus welcoming.
There is no better time to get these resolved than during the Fuzzy Front End. If you wait, these things will distract you at a time when everyone is making those first and lasting impressions of your performance. Leverage the checklists at the end of this chapter to help get these done well before Day One.
Finally, make sure your human resources partner is accommodating your needs by helping you assimilate culturally and accelerate your plan, so you can ensure an impactful Day One. Tools 2.6 and 2.7 will help.
6. Plan Your Day One, Early Days, and First 100 Days
Step six of the Fuzzy Front End is to plan your Day One, early days, and first 100 days. There is a lot to learn in the Fuzzy Front End. The tools presented in this chapter will guide you along the way, but they are not designed to be all-inclusive. Instead, think of this process as a starting point for your entry into your new role. If you follow the process to this point, you will have completed a reasonably in-depth dive into your new organization's people, plans, practices, and purpose.
The knowledge gathered from your due diligence and your own self-study coupled with what you learn in your prestart conversations should enable you to begin to put things in context and help you figure out what you want to do on that first day, during that first week, and during those first 100 days. With this knowledge base, you can use Tool 2.1 at the end of this chapter to begin the outline of your 100-Day Plan. One of the most important choices you must make is how to engage the culture. So reconfirm that choice at the end of your Fuzzy Front End, just before you head into Day One.
The Fuzzy Front End approach detailed here will be effective in almost any scenario, no matter the role, function, or industry. Follow it and you'll be well on your way to better results faster. Some situations are unique enough to warrant slight enhancements or additional steps. Four circumstances where you might want to manage your Fuzzy Front End differently are:
- Getting promoted from within
- Leading a merger/acquisition
- Leading a reorganization
- Making an international move
There's more on each of these at www.onboardingtools.com.
Manage Getting Promoted from within Differently
Although the basics of this chapter apply to getting promoted from within or making a lateral transfer, there are some important differences:
You can't control the context—so prepare in advance; be ready to adjust as required. Understand the context (planned, unplanned, or interim). Secure the resources and support you need. Go with the flow, regain control of the situation, or jump into the dirty work as appropriate.
It's hard to make a clean break—so take control of your own message and transition. Manage the announcement cascade. Secure your base, ensuring your old area's ongoing success and recognizing the people who helped you along the way. Then use part of the time before you start to assess your predecessor's legacy, what you'll keep and change.
There is no honeymoon—so, set direction and generate momentum quickly after the start. Evolve the stated and de facto strategies. Improve operations and strengthen your organization.
Manage the Fuzzy Front End of a Merger/Acquisition Differently
The Fuzzy Front End concepts apply to all leadership transitions, with four points of emphasis for mergers and acquisitions, including the need to:
- Develop an integration plan that delivers the deal objectives—whether it is deep functional integration or investment in innovation. Be flexible; there is no one approach to integration that will be appropriate in all situations. Keep the end in mind.
- Choose which culture to merge into which (avoiding the generally doomed approach of trying to co-create a brand-new culture from scratch). At the same time, be proactive about specific elements of the acquired culture you wish to carry into your culture—integrations are unique moments to inject your culture with new ideas, new approaches, and new energy.
- Perform an initial role sort before Day One to answer everyone's first question, “What does this mean for me?” See Tool 2.8.
- Enroll the leadership teams in the change process, pulling them together to align on their goals, roles, responsibilities, reporting lines, decision rights, and governance, while co-creating a consistent message around the rationale for the merger and details about the change process. Doing this is a critical step toward unifying your new combined leadership team. See Tool 2.9.
Manage the Fuzzy Front End of a Reorganization/Restart Differently
This Fuzzy Front End approach also applies to reorganizations and restarts with a couple points of emphasis: There's an increased need to emphasize the platform for change—generally an external market driver to motivate people to take action in support of the change. Second, there's a need for clarity around what parts of the culture are to stay and which will change. Figure it out and communicate it quickly to head off confusion and backtracking. Tool 2.10 will help you think through your announcement cascade.
Manage the Fuzzy Front End of an International Move Differently
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 leverage while you can. But, while doing so, you'll want to be making genuine efforts to adapt to the new culture.
- Get a head start and get help—with the move. Do not take a shortcut in the personal setup time, especially if you're moving your family. This is high-stress stuff.
- Get a head start—with the job. By definition, your learning curve is going to be steeper. So pay attention to your learning plan.
- Manage your message carefully, paying attention to both linguistic and cultural translations.
- Build the team while respecting individuals and their cultural heritage. Trying to impose your country's ways of behaving and relating, attitudes, values, and working environment on a different country's team members is almost certainly doomed to failure.
- Don't forget your colleagues back in your home country. You may need their assistance in leveraging help from headquarters to execute successfully in your new assignment.
Leverage the Fuzzy Front End: Summary and Implications
During the Fuzzy Front End, you should:
- Determine your leadership approach given the context and culture you face.
- Identify key stakeholders up, down, and across.
- Craft your entry message using current best thinking.
- Jump-start key relationships and accelerate your learning.
- Manage your personal and office setup.
- Plan your Day One, early days, and first 100 days.
Although this approach is generally applicable, there are some important differences in certain situations, such as getting promoted from within; managing a merger, acquisition, or reorganization; or making an international move.
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2A.1 100-Day Worksheet Sample: New Company
2A.2 100-Day Worksheet Sample: Promoted from Within
2A.3 100-Day Worksheet Sample: Merging Teams
2A.4 100-Day Worksheet Sample: First-Time Leader
2A.5 100-Day Worksheet Sample: International
2A.6 100-Day Worksheet for the Next 100 days
2A.7 Stakeholder Map