Right From The Start: Taking Charge In A New Leadership Role - Softcover

Ciampa, Dan; Watkins, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1591397928 ISBN 13: 9781591397922

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 2005

Synopsis

Whether you are succeeding a much-admired boss or charged with implementing sweeping, potentially unsettling change initiatives, a new role is fraught with obstacles. To ensure that your first steps in a new job will lead to enduring success, "Right from the Start" lays out an action-oriented framework to follow during the early months of a transition. Dan Ciampa and Michael D. Watkins prepare you for the often-treacherous task of navigating an organization's strategy, politics, and culture so that you can smoothly and effectively get to work on your new agenda. "Right from the Start" combines this tactical advice with absorbing profiles of CEOs, COOs, and EVPs who candidly discuss their experiences - the successes and the failures - with transitioning to a new leadership role.

About this title

Review:

According to Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins, 64 percent of executives hired form the outside won't make it in their new jobs. While executives from within the ranks know the challenges, culture, and politics of a company, newcomers face a corporate minefield. Right from the Start is Ciampa and Watkins's survival manual for leaders taking starting work at a new company. "Leadership is never easy," they write. "This is never truer than when a new leader enters an organization from the outside and must change its culture in fundamental ways." Through interviews with dozens of corporate leaders who have succeeded or failed in such transitions, the authors provide a strategy for getting it right from the outset.

Ciampa, an independent consultant, and Watkins, a Harvard Business School associate professor, advise three key missions for new leaders: Create momentum; master the ability to learn, convey a vision, and build coalitions; and know and manage yourself well. A fast start is especially crucial. In fact, they say, the most important period starts with the recruitment or interview process and runs through the first six months in a new role. Right from the Start provides plenty of real-life examples of successes and failures, in everything from building coalitions to changing corporate culture. The stories tend to suffer sometimes because the executives remain anonymous. Nonetheless, the book is instructive for business people assuming new management roles. --Dan Ring

From the Back Cover:

Let Right from the Start show you how to overcome the tensions and challenges inherent in any leadership transition. In Right from the Start, Ciampa and Watkins lay out an action-oriented framework to follow during the first six months in a new job. They supplement their tactical advice with absorbing profiles of CEOs, COOs, and EVPs who candidly discuss their experiences - the successes and the failures - with making the transition to a leadership position.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1591397928
• ISBN 13: 9781591397922
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336