How long should a newly hired executive spend learning the business before taking ownership of decisions?

Chandra Narayanan · Mar 13, 2024

The second reason execs fail is arriving with strong preconceived opinions from past experience that don't match the reality on the floor, and telling rather than listening

When he joined Facebook from PayPal he assumed his years of risk expertise meant he knew better and spent his first weeks telling people what to do, until his manager pointed out he needed to listen and bring people along

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Matt Lerner · May 31, 2024

The biggest mistake growth hires make in their first days is arriving with their playbook from their last job and assuming they have the answers, instead of showing humility and curiosity about how this business works

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Jason Citron · Nov 25, 2024

The main cause of executive mishires is new execs changing things immediately, which costs them credibility with the team that is very hard to win back.

The team doesn't understand why the new person is making those decisions, and if the decision turns out wrong the exec loses credibility permanently.

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Stevie Case · Jan 25, 2023

A sales leader joining a new role should ask everyone questions, get time with executives, and proceed without fear — no question is stupid

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Kevin Niparko · Sep 29, 2023

A product leader starting a new role should begin with a listening tour

Only when you're new can you ask the most fundamental questions about customers and the product they use

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David Meyer · Nov 1, 2023

A new product leader should change as little about how the company works as possible in the first ninety days, and pursue early wins that are human rather than vanity or technical

There's a failure mode of rushing to build comprehensive frameworks to give sales confidence; human early wins build the followership you actually need

56:44 Change as little as possible in first 90 days and pursue human not vanity wins

Noah Desai Weiss · Jun 16, 2023

A new CPO should avoid rash decisions and sequence their work: first process and execution changes that reliably accelerate product velocity, then team and culture, and only last the fundamental strategy or mission

Velocity accelerators are the lowest hanging fruit; understanding team, culture, holes and gaps takes time; changing strategy requires enough context to have an informed perspective, and nobody expects rash moves early

44:26 New cpo should sequence process changes first then team culture then strategy last

Jason Citron · Nov 25, 2024

New executives should be given roughly 60 days to purely learn the business before doing any work, expressing a point of view in month two and taking over their team by the end of month three.

There is so much context to absorb that if you expect someone to run things on day one they don't know what's going on; the learning transition sets them up for success.

22:59 Roughly sixty days of pure learning before taking over the team

Marty Cagan · Dec 7, 2022

New product managers should not be allowed to make product decisions until they have visited a large number of real customers in person, including across geographies

Marty was certain he knew his customers because he was an engineer building for engineers, and within two days of a 30-customer trip realised he knew nothing about them

38:13 New pms must visit many real customers in person before making product decisions

Marty Cagan · Dec 7, 2022

A product leader starting a new role should first establish a foundation of trust with the company's other leaders, and the best way is to immerse with customers until nobody doubts they know those customers.

Being on first-name terms with major customers removes any doubt among peers that you know the customers and the issues.

52:18 New product leaders build trust with peers through customer immersion

Geoff Charles · Dec 6, 2023

A product leader starting a new role should massively overcommunicate work done, decisions made, trade-offs, and open questions to leadership

Founders are probably very anxious, and sharing what's in your mind in a form they can opine on builds a lot of trust

48:50 Signpost explicit micromanagement period then step back

Geoff Charles · Dec 6, 2023

A product leader starting a new role should massively overcommunicate work done, decisions made, trade-offs, and open questions to leadership

Founders are probably very anxious, and sharing what's in your mind in a form they can opine on builds a lot of trust

48:50 New leader must overcommunicate decisions to build founder trust

Mike Hudack · Sep 13, 2024

A new CPO — and really anyone starting a new role — should ship fast and get an early win to put points on the board

60:53 Ship fast and secure an early win in a new role

Jean-Michel Lemieux · Mar 20, 2024

Real autonomy is only earned after a lot of deliberate alignment work, so new leaders should be onboarded by 'pair programming' on leadership with their boss

Leadership is as complex and bug-prone as programming; shipping concrete things together — three assigned projects plus three the new leader finds — is how two leaders actually get to know each other, after which autonomy can be granted in years two and three

24:36 Pair programming style shared projects with the boss earns a new leaders autonomy