A Day in the Life of a Senior Leader

Chapter 14. Here’s the Rub: We Don’t Believe You

Welcome, new senior leader. We’re glad that you are here. Your arrival fills a critical vacancy on our team, and we can’t wait to see what you can do at this company. We’re going to say that we’re not in a hurry and you should take your time, but we’re in a hurry.

Before you arrive during the interview process, we’re going to tell you what we think needs to be fixed. You should listen to us, but the issue is that we probably don’t know what is broken. Either we’re too busy to notice or we’re too close to the source material. We wrote the current script, so we’re required to believe it is good. It’s not. It’s a disaster, and it’s breaking, and we need you to investigate and then tell us what’s wrong.

Here’s the rub. We’re not going to believe you when you tell us. If that all feels like a trap, it’s not—it’s just senior leadership.

Note

Hi, author here. Yes, different vibe in this chapter, but it’s important to capture two perspectives. That of your new employer and your perspective. The difference between the two is both important and alarming, so I take very specific actions in the early months after being hired. Everything I include in the checklist in this chapter is a tactic I’ve used at wildly different companies for the past 20 years. That might say more about me than the teams and companies, but the tactics also work.

Recurring 1:1s with Inner Circle

No surprise here. I’ve been preaching the importance of 1:1s for years. ...