The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build Your Team, and Get Immediate Results, Second Edition

Chapter 3. Map and Avoid the Most Common Land Mines

In some parts of our world, land mines are everywhere. Their prevalence can be attributed to the facts that they are easy to create, are seldom detected, and can cause significant damage and surprise when eventually triggered. In August 2005, BusinessWeek magazine reported that there is great hope in using bees to detect these land mines by conditioning the bees to associate the explosive chemicals of land mines with food, thereby providing a safe way to indicate where land mines may be buried. Who would have thought that simple bees would lend hope to defeating such a horrible explosive weapon?

The first 100 days of an executive's transition are also rife with land mines; and just like the real thing, they are usually hidden and are often undetected until it is too late. The awareness that land mines exist is a key factor in limiting their devastating potential.

This chapter provides a map showing where those onboarding land mines might occur, how they are created, and most importantly, when they are most likely to exist. Embedded in our 100-Day Plan is a land mine deactivation methodology. Each step suggested in our 100-Day Plan has taken into account the most common derailing land mines that executives create.

The Dangerous Seven

There are seven major onboarding land mines, each of which you should be looking to dismantle at specific ...