The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build Your Team, and Get Immediate Results, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 3

Map and Avoid the Most Common Land Mines

Land mines—we read about them every day in the news as IEDs (improvised explosive devices) are everywhere. They are easy to create, seldom detected, and can cause significant damage and surprise when 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 your 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. Being aware that land mines exist and learning how to anticipate them will limit their devastating potential. Learning how to deactivate them safely will help you sail straight through to success.

This chapter provides a map showing where those onboarding land mines might exist, how they are created, when they are most likely to occur, and, most importantly, what to do to avoid them. Our 100-Day Plan provides you with a land mine deactivation methodology. Each step suggested in our 100-Day Plan has taken into account the most common derailing land mines that leaders like you are liable to ...