Nearly 40 Percent of Executives Leave Their Jobs in the First 18 Months.

An in-depth podcast with George Bradt, co-author of The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build Your Team, And Get Immediate Results

George Bradt

Onboarding is the process of interviewing, hiring, orienting and successfully integrating new hires into the organization's culture. The best onboarding strategies will provide a fast track to meaningful, productive work and strong employee relationships. Onboarding activities begin pre-hire through effective and accurate recruitment communications, followed by an interviewing and screening process that increases the success rate of position acceptance. The orientation of new hires starts prior to the employee's start date and usually is extended through (at least) the first 6 months of employment. Onboarding is applicable to promotional opportunities within organizations, and strategies implemented to promote and orient company veterans to new roles follow the same time-line.

George and his PrimeGenesis team have found there is a huge difference between the leader who has a plan, hits the ground running, and makes an impact on his first day on the job, and the executive who walks through the door, expecting a plan to be in place. Good luck with that concept.  The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan is really a workbook, with detailed, step-by-step action plans to guide you through the first 100 days in a new job. Obviously, this book is written for executives in leadership roles, but I think any professional can benefit from using the PrimeGenesis methodology - and knowing the difference between onboarding and "employee orientation." If your starting a new job and  onboarding has not been part of the process, buy this book and onboard yourself!

Moving into a new position of leadership can be a difficult process, even for the most experienced business executives.  Approximately forty percent of new leaders fail in their new roles within the first eighteen months. These failures can be devastating to the individual, costly for companies and damaging to morale.  Often, these failures are the result of crucial mistakes made during the first 100 days on the job.  These potentially crippling errors, however, can be identified and avoided by following the important lessons contained in The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan:  How to Take Charge, Build Your Team, and Get Immediate Results, by George Bradt, Jayme A. Check and Jorge Pedraza (published by John Wiley & Sons).

A successful transition into a leadership role depends highly on the individual’s ability to prepare a transition and action plan that goes into effect on Day One.  The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan presents proven solutions and techniques for each stage of a leader’s transition into a new role.  The handbook presents a comprehensive, yet easy to follow action plan and timeline for the stages of on-boarding leading up to and through the first 100 days in a new position.  Filled with examples, case studies, and tools, the book shows leaders and their sponsors exactly how to deliver better results faster while building high performing teams with lasting power.

About the Authors:

George Bradt is the founder and Managing Director of PrimeGenesis, the premier (and fastest growing) “executive transition” consultancy.   After his education at Harvard and Wharton, George worked for two decades in executive roles around the world at Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Disney, Coca-Cola (in Europe and Asia), and J.D. Power and Associates.  PrimeGenesis’ approach to accelerating new leaders and their teams’ transitions has produced astonishing results across a range of disciplines and industries.

Jayme Check is a founding Partner of PrimeGenesis and helped develop and evolve its executive transition acceleration method. He has a history of achieving results in traditional and entrepreneurial environments from Wall Street to Asia. He has broad-based experience in sales, business development and strategy at Guidance Solutions, NHI Medical, Cape Enterprises, Brice Manufacturing and J.P. Morgan. Jayme has an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School.

Jorge Pedraza is a founding Partner of PrimeGenesis and a founder of Unison Site Management, a specialty finance company in the wireless telecommunications field.  He has worked in strategy and business development in the world of new media at Concrete, Guidance Solutions, Le Monde Interactive and Unison Site Management.  He has a PhD from Yale.

George Bradt, Managing Director of PrimeGenesis, has a unique perspective on helping executives accelerate transitions based on his combined senior line management and consulting experience.  Prior to founding PrimeGenesis, George served as chief executive of J.D. Power and Associates’ Power Information Network spin off and in general management, marketing and sales at Coca-Cola in Europe and Asia, Procter & Gamble and Lever Brothers. George has an AB Harvard; MBA Wharton.

Executive Summary –An “OnBoarding” Process for Leaders at Every Level
Source: PrimeGenesis 

Whether the new leader is a veteran CEO taking the reins of their next organization, or a new frontline supervisor, The New Leader’s 100 Day Action Plan will help manage that leadership transition so they take charge, build their team and deliver better results faster than anyone thought possible. This matters because 40 percent of leaders going into new roles fail in their first eighteen months . (Yes 40%!)

What do these leaders not know or see? What do they not do? Why are they not able to deliver? In most cases they miss one of the crucial tasks that must be accomplished in their first 100 days. Some don’t understand the impact of their early words and actions and inadvertently send their new colleagues all the wrong messages. Some focus on finding a new strategy, but fail to get buyin and fail to build trust with their new team. Some do a lot of work without accomplishing the one or two things that their bosses are looking for. No leader wants this to happen.

This summary and the book itself are designed as action plans, with timelines and key milestones new leaders need to reach week-by-week, to set them and their team up for success in their first 100 days. These are distilled from insights gleaned from working with clients of our consulting firm, PrimeGenesis, whose sole mission is to help executives moving into new leadership roles. But even this summary will help you know what you need to know, see what you need to see, and do what you need to do to deliver, or to help them deliver success quickly and decisively.

Over the years, we have noticed that many new leaders show up for a new role smiling, but without a plan. Neither they, nor their new companies have thought things through in advance. On their first day, they are welcomed by such confidence building remarks as: “Oh, you’re here… We’d better find you an office.” …Ouch! Thankfully, some enlightened companies have a better process in place. If you are lucky, you will be associated with a company that actually puts people in charge of preparing for a leader’s transition into a new role. Imagine the difference when a new leader is escorted to an office that is fully set up for her, complete with computer, passwords, phones, files, information and a 30 day schedule of orientation meetings.

…Better. But still not good enough. Even if the company has done this for the new leader in advance, if they have waited until this moment to start, they are already behind, and they have stacked the odds against themselves.

We have tested and evolved PrimeGenesis’ onboarding methodology in many different environments, with all types of leaders. We have found there is a huge difference between the leader who has a plan, hits the ground running, and makes an impact on their first day on the job, and the leader who waits until Day One to start planning. Clients who have used our methods have been able to deliver better results faster. And they’ve reduced the rate of failure of leaders going into new roles fourfold from the 40% we quoted above to well under 10%.

Here are our three most important recommendations for leaders going into new roles:

1) Take charge of the “OnBoarding” process. It should include discrete steps structured and driven by the leader over time. (Mirroring the steps in this summary.)

2) Get a head start before the first day. Day One is a critical pivot point, and a major opportunity to accelerate progress if the new leader can hit the ground running. A little early momentum goes a long way.

3) Think team. In the first 100 days it is essential to put in place the basic building blocks of a high performing team. New leaders will fail if they try to do everything themselves, without the support and buy-in of the team. As a team leader, their own success is inextricably linked to the success of the team as a whole.

Consider the example of the Puritan Foods team at Procter & Gamble, which in six months, accomplished more than anyone thought possible. The new team leader was given a budget to test market Puritan Foods. A budget, but no team. He had to recruit volunteers to work on the project in their spare time. The good news was that this meant that everyone that worked on the project was doing it by choice. Their mandate was to get a set of new products into test market as quickly as possible to learn about those products and their consumers. The team was comprised of people from product development, finance, sales, market research, and marketing. They identified outside suppliers to create, manufacture, and distribute the products and to manage instore tests. They rented a townhouse as a base for the team in the test market, established their own sets of communication and decision practices, laid out their plans and timelines. And they went to work, picking up some early wins along the way and adjusting team members’ roles as appropriate. The result was that they went from “Make it happen” to twelve new products on the shelf in under six months – faster than anybody thought possible at Procter & Gamble at that time. Four of the twelve test products were expanded into successful businesses. Furthermore, what the team learned about health conscious consumers made a big impact both on the balance of the Puritan business and on other Procter & Gamble businesses. Better than anybody thought possible! How? Why? In essence, the leader and his team did everything they were supposed to do in the first 100 days. The new leader had a plan for hitting the ground running. He got started working with key people before Day One. And he focused on getting the right people on his team, aligned around one burning imperative throughout.

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