You may have heard the phrase, “The body rejects the transplant,” used in the medical community when a new organ is placed into a host and the recipient's immune system, recognizing it as foreign, attempts to eliminate it. When you think about company culture as I do, as an organic and living thing, this analogy can guide your thinking - I have seen and lived some rejections firsthand. To avoid rejection from the company of a new leader or their ideas, which hinders implementation of any change, I have developed a timeline with specific goals for each phase and built a framework for success.
I have observed many transitions with a new person stepping into a role at any level in business, CMO, SVP, director, wherever, and have watched things go very well and also watched the transition go horribly wrong. Changing leadership at organizations is a tricky venture; it’s not always as easy as you think, and when it goes wrong, it can go really wrong.
I have lived in nine unique markets and started at over fifteen different businesses as a new leader - radio stations, tech companies, production studios, cable networks, and a sports league. I have served on many boards, been a senior manager, an EVP, a CEO, a President and, yes, even a radio station mascot, and here’s what I can tell you: Never underestimate the first 91 days on the job.
People are usually familiar with the sage advice from Stephen Covey, the author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” which says to “Seek first to understand and then be understood.” The intention is clear - gaining understanding is the highest priority. However, using this idea as a guideline as a newly hired leader in a company can be complicated. I have had employers tell me when I have started a job to “do nothing,” to simply observe and give feedback. I have also heard, “Move slow,” and countless other ways of suggesting that one allows the time to understand what you are walking into. Problems can arise when you stop observing and start making fast decisions without understanding; mistakes can happen, and the culture can get away from you. A better approach is for you, as the new leader, to outline a framework that not only allocates time for you to observe, but also creates a clear timeline for when you will provide feedback to the board, your boss, your co-workers, and the entire company. I call this framework the 91-Day Rule.
Days 1-30: Find the Coffee Pot, Copier and Bathroom
In your first thirty days, the goal is to avoid challenging much and simply seek to understand why and how decisions are being made. You're likely to discover that people are doing things out of habit, not intention. Framing curious thoughts for the staff as open-ended questions, “Why do we do it that way?” or “Why did we make that decision?” can reveal some ingrained pathologies. Companies that slide into failure mode often either rinse and repeat the same decisions or, at worst, don’t make any. What you are doing with fresh eyes is operating from a place of curiosity rather than challenging those decisions in order to develop your view of what is happening.
As you get to know your staff and the company's culture, focus on validation. See everyone, hear everyone - make them feel valued, mattered, and needed. There is no more important job than taking the time to lay the cultural groundwork with the people who will ultimately execute your vision, which is the staff. You have to make the time to do this. An excellent tactic for this period, and every day going forward, is to “Make Rounds.” Just as a doctor makes the rounds checking in on patients each morning and afternoon, I would take the time to walk the floors each day at 9 am, peeking into offices, stepping into meetings, observing the flow of the office, and just taking the time to talk with and meet people. In the early days of being a new leader, this helps to establish accessibility and transparency.
Day 31-60: Know Thy Business
You can only know so much about ‘how’ a business works from the outside. All the research, all the conversations, and talking to industry experts can share insight, but the only insight that matters is yours: the INsight from inside the company. All companies, no matter the industry, have their quirks and unique ways of doing things. Before you can begin to fix anything, you must first understand the issues, the culture, and the company.
In their first days, executives often try to prove themselves and move too quickly, not only creating culture confusion but also causing harm to a turnaround. What you must do is know the company and know it inside and out. Content creation, where, who? Supply chain, pricing, timing? Board of Director politics, how many, who? As you unlock these deeper questions, you get a clear picture of how the existing company works – and insight into how you can improve the business.
One of the essential questions you can ask yourself to help hone and focus your vision for the business is simply: “What is the ONE thing we have, or do, that nobody else does?” What is your relative advantage as a company, and what makes you or your product truly unique? As a long-time radio programmer, I found that most programmers or people in radio were obsessed with music, focusing on finding new music and playing it. The problem with that focus is that one or two records don’t make a station or playlist unique. Competitors can easily play the same records, neutralizing your advantage. This is why I always focused so much time and attention on my station's DJ’s (On-Air talent). If I had a great morning or afternoon show, and the listeners loved it, they would choose my station over another because of the talent, as the music was predominantly the same across the country. My stations focused on promoting the talent because that is what I had that others did not. As you figure out the business in these first sixty days, learning the company, meeting staff, and trying to answer that question, you may find that there isn’t anything that makes you that unique. If that is your answer - then you have FOUND a great answer; it’s a massive opportunity to create one!
Day 61-90: Build the Vision
Having planned and implemented so many new visions over the years in so many different companies and industries, I have come across situations where the culture and the organization just feel fatigued. They may be in a doom loop of failure mode, with an air of “Well, here we go again” or “What is this person going to be doing?” In these moments, I have had to reframe the staff to build a mental shift toward success and buy-in for a new direction. This work has a solid base if you have successfully spent the first 60 days establishing relationships and learning about the company without challenging the current culture.
You must use your new understanding of the company and its current operations as a foundation to form and develop your vision. What have you observed and learned, and how will you establish a new direction and a winning culture? In my experience, people are sometimes so desperate to hear from you as the new boss, or you are so excited to implement initial ideas of your vision that you begin sharing parts of your new strategy prematurely. This 100% can feel like the right thing to do in the moment, but it is not. As the new person, everybody will be waiting to see what you are planning, how you will change the company and culture, and your next steps. If you are not allowed to frame it properly, bits and pieces of your developing vision will be taken out of context. Judgment will be passed before you even present it to the company or the board. Remember, you must “Build the vision,” not “Share the fun parts,” to get a quick ego boost. Build the vision, but also build a timeline to clarify, finalize, and present that vision.
I have found on multiple occasions that this period can be particularly challenging for the company and for you as the new leader. You can feel the pressure to make clear your ideas, make an impact, and effect change. DON’T. Don’t piecemeal out parts of the valuable insight you have been building and pieces of the plan. Instead, focus people on when you will roll it out and prepare for that moment.
Day 91: The Reveal
When you start in your new role, it feels like this day will be forever coming, but when you reach Day 91, you realize that it came faster than you were ready for! It is time to share your vision in its entirety. You will share what you see and what you learned and paint a new outline for the company to begin to fill in the colors. I have tried several ways to bring this reveal to life for companies, from an informal meeting to emails to holding town halls – no matter what feels authentic to you, your main job is to bring your vision to life. The success of your vision, no matter how big or small, will almost exclusively rely on how much life, energy, and excitement you bring to this presentation. This is the moment you light the fire that fuels the culture.
My advice for you is to condense your vision down to three or four sentences that you will keep coming back to daily with the company in emails, meetings, and conversations. This is the moment you “Speak this strategy into existence.” Keep returning to those three or four lines you developed through your thoughtful work for the past 90 days.
One of my favorite examples of this is from the turnaround of the Oprah Winfrey Network in the summer of 2011. Sheri Salata and I arrived in Los Angeles as co-presidents and knew our hands were full. Turning this network around was going to be challenging and had the added layer of being high profile because of Oprah’s name on the door. If this were some other network, the press wouldn’t care, but because it was OWN, everything was magnified and criticized. There were many challenges in almost every department, but what we knew was the press had gutted the soul and belief of the channel to the staff. Negative article after negative article had a compounding morale impact on the staff, and we had to reframe and change the narrative.
In a town hall setting, in the middle of our break room, I asked everybody to close their eyes and imagine a day when this statement would be true, “You have all been a part of the most high profile and fastest turnaround in cable history! You made History.” I asked people to raise their hands if they thought this would be something they would be proud of in their careers. Everybody raised their hands. Then we boiled it down to a few statements, “Who wants to be part of history?” Hands went up again. We talked about the hard times and the work ahead, but if we wanted to make history with Oprah, we’d all have to buy into the work. This became the rallying cry for our staff every day for the next several years: “Who Gets to Do this? Who wants to be part of history?” People smiled, people saw opportunity, people believed in the art of what was possible - making history.
When times got hard and meetings got challenging, I would say, and then the staff would say to keep us a touch lighter, and focused on the goal: “Hey, who gets to do this?” It was a simple statement that rooted and galvanized us back to the historic mission ahead. When you hear your team starting to use the three or four statements which crystallize your vision, you know the culture is turning, and it’s very validating to you as the visionary.
Years later, at a network up front, showcasing all the new talent and shows for the upcoming season, I thanked the advertisers and then, as I am prone to do, I went off script. On a stage in New York City with over 300 people in attendance, I said, “We have made OWN the fastest, most high-profile turnaround in cable history - I want to thank everyone here.” The corporate PR staff for the parent company, Discovery, the board, and other companies kind of lost it on me. “You can’t say that, you can’t prove that, you can’t say that, it’s not true.” I said to them, “Okay, prove to me that it’s not true - until then, I will keep saying it.” You may guess the only group of people who loved it, was our staff, because they believed and knew it was our mission. We all spoke it into existence. In not too much time, the press was writing the same words. Months later, other C-level executives discussed OWN’s turnaround on their earnings calls and panels. I shared all that press with the staff—a stark contrast from where we had started.
The staff believed, the talent believed, we all believed, and we all wanted to be a part of history with one common vision. Looking back, “Who Gets to Do This?” is a privilege, a blessing, and was exactly the energy we needed at that time.
Turnarounds are living, breathing things, and as the leader, it’s your job to unlock the box of what creates the spark and vision. I believe, more than ever, success depends on the first 91 days.