The REVIEW :
Get Commercial ready
+ Get Venture Capital
See Blue Ocean Strategies
- Click here

The BUZZ:
Passing on the Business?
Exit well
See Drew Le Grand's
Strategic Presentation - Here

Round The TRAPS:
AusIndustry Export Initiatives
you need to know about
- Click Here to see Austrade

The THEORIES REVISITED
The First 90 Days: New Talent Leadership Management
The path to success for
new Executives - Click Here

The OBSCURE TRENDS
Part 2 - SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
Follow up exploring the How-to
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Melbourne (03) 8610 2400

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The First 90 Days : New Talent Leadership Management

Each year, in organisations all around the world, significant numbers of mid- to senior-level managers are promoted, laterally directed, or hired to new leadership roles. Everyone involved is looking to capitalise on the first 3 months of the appointee's experience and the extremely high expectations of him or her.

Safeguarding investment in leadership talent or your own career is critical to current and future success. However, despite best intentions, high expectations, and rigorous hiring processes, the failure rate for newly transitioned leaders is quite high. Studies have found:
o As many as 50 percent of outside-hires fail to achieve desired results.
o Estimates of the direct and indirect costs to a company of a failed hire at the senior-executive level range as high as $2.7 million.

At any management level, a failed transition can result not only in organizational expense, but also in negative impact on the career and personal life of the failed leader.
The Advisory Firm offers The First 90 Days leadership management program which allowing leaders to actually accelerate their transitions by learning unique, critical actions to take in them. This program is built upon the research and work of Dr. Michael Watkins, co-author of Right from the Start and author of The First 90 Days.

The Core Tenants are:

Promote Yourself. Many leaders fail because they rely too heavily on the success of actions they previously took - actions that were appropriate in a different context. This task helps leaders identify potential strengths to leverage, as well as vulnerabilities that could significantly impact their real-world transition. Make the mental break from your old position.

Accelerating Your Learning. One must learn a vast amount of information at the beginning of a transition. Assist in proving using your learning as a chance to understand the people in the organisation as well as the tasks in order to accelerate their results.

Secure early wins by prioritizing to succeed. Leaders have much to do in a limited amount of time. This task helps leaders identify early wins and establish A-item priorities to ensure short- and long-term.

Work with the Boss. This task helps leaders identify specific strategies for conversations with the individual who can most impact their transitions success: their boss.

Build Up Your Team. While a leader is in transition, so is his or her team. This task focuses leaders who are inheriting or building a team on initial steps to take to generate team momentum. Build your Team – when you inherit a team, manage the tension between their short term goals and your long term goals

Creating Partnerships. Recognising that leaders must rely heavily on others during a transition, this task helps them analyze the complex map of the space in which they must learn, work, and achieve results.
Outcomes

As a result newbys are able to:
o Reduce the time it takes to make a successful transition
o Prioritize transition tasks with the highest payoffs
o More quickly add discernable value to the organization

The TAF program typically includes mentoring, monitoring, research, network development, planning and transitions tools, relevant to the individual’s capabilities. This is a critical function with major organizational implications. This program enables new leaders to take charge quickly. Find you need to get your newest leaders up and running see about The Advisory Firm’s 90 day program.

Is there a theory we should revisit on your behalf click here to submit your comments here.

Strategic Parable from Jim Clayton of Clayton's Manufactured Homes (US) "First a Dream"

...How do you know which way to go if you don’t know where you are? That was the crux of the problem on our flight back from Finger. But such a question applies to more than just an airplane ride. A business, a family, a relationship, or an individual all need a plan to reach the desired goal. For whatever endeavor a human being is engaged in, an anchor is needed – reference points –to provide directions to the destination, along with the time and resources required to get there.

For example: Selling 10 widgets with an average margin of $100 each? Keep overhead and operating expenses at $800, and you’ll definitely have a net profit of $200 before taxes.

Of course, that assumes you stick with the plan, instead of impulsively change in the plan along the way. With the widgets, you might lose control of expenses or allow the sales staff to tinker with the price.

Allow that, and suddenly your plan has lost its way, and your projected profitability may quickly nosedive into insolvency. That’s like fiddling with a working plan in mid-flight, as I did on my way back from Finger.

On that trip, I had all the facts at my fingertips. My flight plan was packed with plenty of detail to get us to our goal. But I abandoned it the moment I go into trouble.

Never mind that the plan worked fine on the flight west to Finger that very morning. Never mind that I as working fine half the way back. Forget that hundreds before me had used a similar plan, so it was tried and true. Forget that hundreds before me had used a similar plan, so it was tried and true. Forget that I’d thoughtfully reviewed the plan just the day before, and found it satisfactory.

With all that going for it, I should’ve had enough confidence in my plan. But the second the plan seemed not to work, I threw the plan out the window and let my feeling take control.

Call it what you will – impulsive behaviour, seat of the pants decision making, emotional response. Some people pride themselves on these qualities, but to me, it’s all just thrashing around, like flying in circles.

Abandoning a well-thought and well-researched plan is an act of desperation that occurs just before a crash-an-burn. Stay with the plan.

A bad plan is more likely to work than no plan at all.

Instead put your emotions in proper perspective. Recognise in the course of a day you’ll segue through dozens of different feelings. Chart your course with strategic planning. Think of a business plan as your map, with a timeline and checkpoints to follow en route. When something goes haywire, don’t scrap the plan. Instead, expect some variables along the way and adjust them, just as a pilot adjusts for unexpected winds...

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Back by popular demand, we're offering another chance to win! This month's most inspired comment or feedback will receive a hard cover copy of
Corporate Cannibals - The taking of Fairfax by Ryan Colleen Burge Glenn.

The takeover of the Fairfax publishing group during 1991-92 was one of Australia's hardest-fought and closely watched corporate battles. Ryan and Burge, finance writers with the Sydney Morning Herald, trace the takeover from its origins in the difficulties the company faced in the late 1980s through to the success of the Tourang bid in 1992. They profile the major participants - including business figures Kerry Packer, Conrad Black and Tony O'Reilly, lawyer Malcolm Turnbull and journalist Trevor Kennedy - and assess the role of the federal cabinet, the Parliamentary Print Media Inquiry and the Friends of Fairfax Group. Includes an extensive list of key players, a chronology of events and a breakdown of the enormous fees paid by John Fairfax to bankers, lawyers and consultants.