Are you a manager? Think here for a moment. How many times have you had the challenge of taking on a new team, making a management transition or even being a new manager, have you wondered what this experience would be like?
My name is Carlos Sampaio and today, here on the channel, I bring a summary of a very interesting and useful book called "The First 90 Days" by Michael Watkins. This book talks precisely about management transitions and presents a central idea: in 90 days, it is the crucial time for you to be able to reach a balance point between showing, winning over the team and starting to have some control over things to be successful or failure and produce results in the medium term. That's his theory.
Remembering that, in general, we consider six months, right? Six months is the break-even point it takes to master a team, a new situation, a new role, with all the challenges and situations it presents. Well, the author's theory is that it is possible to do this in less time.
It is based on five propositions. The first is that, generally, the failure of transitions lies in a bad combination of wasted opportunities, the challenges themselves, the poorly faced pitfalls of the situation, with the interaction and the individual's inability to adapt and correctly read the situation. In other words, it is not just the fault of the manager, the leader, a failure in a transition.
Sometimes, people are very successful in a certain position and that is why they are nominated for another and, in that other position, they fail dismally. So why does this happen? It's the combination of these two things.
His second proposition is that, precisely, there is a method to carry out these transitions. Although all transitions are unique due to this combination of circumstances with the individual that I spoke about, there are certain laws, certain principles that, if followed, lead to successful transitions. This is what he will present in the book.
Transitions are challenges, they are sometimes turning points in managers' careers, places or circumstances of great learning. Managers who can successfully overcome these challenges become much better managers. So, it is worth investing in this learning, training managers precisely so that these transitions are smoother, so that there is more development of both the manager and the teams and, consequently, more results.
Another principle is that this more standardized structure , this method, yields bonuses, yields dividends, yields results. It is worth it. Just to give you an idea of this, 25% of managers at the largest Fortune 500 companies change positions every 3 and a half years, three out of three and four years.
So, this is one thing, it is not an exception, it is a common thing in organizations, in public organizations in Brazil, the same thing, managers stay for three, three to four years, sometimes less, in positions, positions and private companies in Brazil, the same thing. No, managers and directors are not long-term in their positions. So, this is something worth studying, worth developing.
The book presents challenges, principles that he presents in the book that precisely guide this good transition technique. The first one is to do your own promotion. What is that?
He tells a story about Júlia. Júlia was a marketing person who was promoted to manager of a multifunctional team, which was responsible for launching products and counting on the collaboration of these different areas. What happened to her?
She started to control the team a lot, she had a very authoritarian, controlling smell, that wasn't cool. Result: within six months, she was returned to her original position and someone else was appointed. What happened to Julia?
She didn't take on a new role, she didn't see the new requirements of the role she took on. This is very common, a person, for example, who goes from technician to manager, he was there, he was attentive to details and doing things and, when you are a manager, no, you have to make people do things. Change what you will do.
If you are going to get things done, you will drown in the role. That's what happened to her. The skills she had, attention to detail, control over the process, were good for the role she held, but they were not appropriate for this new context.
She did not know how to adapt this and, consequently, she was not successful in the new role. So when you move into a new role, be mindful of the requirements of that new role. They may not match the requirements, capabilities, and skills required of your old role.
The second principle is to accelerate learning. To do this, he tells the case of Cris, who was a quality manager in an industry and was promoted to general manager of a certain factory. This factory was quite obsolete, while the other was quite up to date.
Cris came from an environment with Six Sigma requirements and investment in technology. Upon analyzing the situation, he realized that everything was wrong and started hiring consultants to implement technological processes. However, things didn't work out until his director said: "Look, you didn't stop to pay attention to what this technology-free factory was already able to do with the creativity and dedication of its employees.
All you did was fight with everyone. " So far, he hasn't heard from anyone. So, he started listening to people and completely reformulated what he intended to do.
Then, he achieved results and was not fired. He managed to reverse a process that started badly because he didn't listen to people, but to himself. To have a learning process and take on a new role, you have to listen to people, not just the numbers, but what really happens.
This is the second very important lesson. The third principle is to adjust the strategy to the situation. He gives the case of Claire, who took over an industrial products division in a multinational.
This division had had fantastic results in recent years. Claire planned and adjusted a set of very ambitious goals compatible with the boldness of that division. However, when analyzing the numbers and the situation, she realized that the previous executive had bet on short-term results, but with the risk of them not being sustainable in the long term.
This generated a time bomb for the new manager. The initial diagnosis was wrong. What to do then?
Stop, redo your goals, admit that you can't do it and reprogram, talk and explain things. But that's not what she did. As a result, she tried to follow the same strategy and the problem was that this strategy was like a pyramid.
It got to a point where the pyramid collapsed. She was unable to sustain the same strategy and had to resign from her position because she was unable to realign and renegotiate unrealistic goals. So, if you take over a team, it’s not quite like that.
You need to be frank, sincere, demonstrate with numbers and renegotiate goals so as not to be held responsible for not meeting unrealistic goals. This is the worst thing that can happen, goals that you set yourself. The next principle is to ensure initial gains.
This means that management will not wait 2, 3 or 4 years to see results. People want short, medium and long term results. He tells the case of Helena, who was promoted from team manager to general manager of a company's call center.
This unit had many service and quality problems . Helena diagnosed that these problems derived from an authoritarian culture based on punishment and fear. She focused on cultural change.
To do this, he involved employees in the change, identified team leaders who did not adapt and replaced them. Initially, she took the people who were aligned and had competence and did a pilot project. This pilot project was successful, it expanded and a year later the rates improved significantly.
This shows that, although we are aiming for the long term, we need to guarantee short and medium term results. Otherwise, you give a false impression that you are not doing anything. It's like being a football coach: you have to secure some wins in the game.
The next lesson is to negotiate success. He cites the case of Michael, who was appointed IT manager at a unit of an oil company. Michael had a more patient planning and team-building style , while the director was aggressive and aimed for quick wins.
There was a diagnosis that they were going to collide, as other managers had already collided. What did Michael do? He negotiated.
He sat down with the director and proposed being judged on the results, not on the way he managed IT. They combined goals and results. He managed to meet his goals and the relationship was successful.
This shows that butting heads is not a sure recipe for success. Differences must be recognized and negotiated. The next lesson is to realize alignment.
He tells the case of Hannah, who took on the role of vice-president of HR at an investment company. She realized that the company's growth and recent decisions led to conflicts between departments. She sought to gather data, information and suggestions for realignment.
This ended up generating results: conflicts decreased and profitability increased. This shows the importance of identifying alignment between strategy, structure, systems and people's capabilities. Sometimes it is necessary to change processes and even people to achieve this alignment.
The next principle is building the team. He cites the case of Liam, who took over a precision instruments unit in an industry. He noticed a dispute between the person in charge of marketing and the sales manager.
The previous marketing manager's reviews were exceptional, but Liam felt otherwise. The sales manager had a more constructive and productive vision for the division. Eventually, the marketing manager was fired and a compatible person was hired, aligning with the sales manager and generating results.
This shows that, when taking on a team, it is necessary to evaluate who is really in the right position and make the necessary changes to form a cohesive team. The next principle he cites in the book is creating coalitions. To this end, he mentions the case of Jack, who was a country manager in a global multinational company and was promoted to international marketing director for the entire company around the world.
Jack always had a somewhat authoritarian style because he was a national manager and had a lot of autonomy to make decisions, being judged by the results he presented. He soon realized, intelligently, that in this new role he would not be able to impose his decisions using only authority. He needed to convince the national managers who were part of his team to accept and agree to sell certain products.
If they were unable to convince them, they would change their approach, starting to identify those most likely to accept and invest in these national managers. These managers began to generate results, and Jack used these results to convince other managers who initially did not accept his approach. This generated excellent results for all these national managements.
The lesson is that you have to use different strategies in different situations, not just towards your boss, as I mentioned earlier, but also towards peers or collaborators. You need to make people realize and believe in certain things, buy into the idea, thus facilitating the process. Every good manager and leader needs to learn to persuade, not manipulate, but rather make people see other perspectives that they are not seeing at the moment.
The next principle or factor is maintaining balance. He mentions the Kip Ericson case. He was promoted while working in New York to a better position at a Canadian branch.
He was married and had two daughters. He was unable to overcome or reconcile the challenges of the new position combined with the challenges of his personal and private life. It almost ended in separation due to the daughters not wanting to go to school and not adapting to the apartment, in addition to the wife's career.
This generated a conflict that made him reevaluate the situation and he asked for remission and returned to New York to try another path that could make his personal and professional life compatible and balanced. It's not just that kind of challenge. When you are promoted or in any other situation, you need to consider your balance.
You are not a machine, so your personal life will have some impact on your professional life and vice versa. It's something that people don't worry about much, but they should. We found this chapter very interesting because it deals with this transition situation.
Examine, talk to your family, see if, before accepting a promotion, you will be able to handle it, if your family will really adapt to the new situation. It's not just them sacrificing themselves in your name, but whether they will endure that sacrifice. If not, it is too great a sacrifice that will end up having repercussions on their lives and, consequently, on yours.
This principle is quite important. And so, closing the set of principles that is to accelerate everyone, which is success, it is not just you as a leader or manager. You are not the superhero.
This will depend on the joint effort of a team. The more you can involve your team, align everyone, the better the learning will be, the better the results will be and the less costly the transition will be. This book is fantastic for you to learn from the lessons of others and be able to make better transitions, observing these principles that I have observed on several occasions.
When you take over a team, you will have a much safer transition that is more likely to be successful. If you liked it, don't forget to like the video and we'll see you in the next video. Goodbye!
