Workplace promotion has always been a world-class organizational problem. The change of position and role often affects whether an employee can have greater development, and also directly affects the long-term development and production efficiency of enterprise organizations. According to the author's investigation, everyone has experienced an average of 13.5 career changes, which means that there will be an average career change every 1.3 years.
In a "representative" world top 500 listed by the author,14 managers change jobs every year. And every job change will affect the job performance of at least 12 people on average.
Therefore, multinational companies such as General Electric will even set up targeted training courses to help promoted employees get out of the predicament of new managers and avoid the trap.
Founder is a professional book full of dry goods written by management scientist Watkins at the beginning of this century, aiming at changing the professional roles of employees in organizations. This paper attempts to introduce some viewpoints of the article through simple refinement.
Although the title of the article is to help new managers get through the first 90 days, many recommenders also strongly believe that many ideas in it have a lot of reference significance for daily management. As long as you are on the road to management positions and want to continue to develop, you should need such a guide. So, if you have further interest, I suggest buying a collection.
This book consists of ten chapters, and this article will be launched from four parts: the first part is about the author's five classifications of management situations. Correct classification of situations can help you find your position in cross-dimensional management positions and avoid taking the previous management ideas for granted; The second part briefly introduces the common promotion traps that the general manager will encounter when he is promoted. There may be many pitfalls in this book, but the author chose seven to introduce them. The third part emphasizes the key principles not mentioned in the first two parts-ensuring early success (which is also the purpose of the title of this book) and accelerating learning; The fourth part is how to manage the role change of employees from the perspective of organization.
The core focus is the second part and the third part.
A clear management situation you are entering-knowing what you are going to do here.
Just like the three major questions of philosophy-who am I, where am I and where am I going? Defining the management situation you have entered and adjusting your strategy accordingly will help you better position yourself and the business of the organization you lead, thus helping you to succeed.
This book puts forward a STARS model, which divides the situation into five categories, namely, start-up (S: start-up), turnaround (T: turnaround), accelerated growth (A: accelerated growth), reorganization (R: realization) and sustained success (S: sustained success).
Different types of situations pose completely different challenges to managers. Start-up (S for short) means that managers need to re-integrate all resources and have a lot of room to play, but the disadvantage is that the business lacks boundaries; Rectification and transformation (t) need to readjust the business boundary and reorganize the team at the same time, so that the team with addicted morale can regain its vitality; To accelerate growth (a) we need to consider the problems of system and structure, how to efficiently supplement personnel and resources, and help them integrate and exert their efficiency; Reorganization (R) needs to have a more systematic understanding of the original team, act cautiously, foster strengths and avoid weaknesses; To maintain success, you should ensure that the core competitiveness elements can continuously promote the steady progress of the organization on the basis of preventing the organization from stagnation and enhancing its vitality.
It can be seen that different teams have different requirements for leaders' own strategies and styles. The first s and t need more courage and bold leadership change through charismatic leadership style; However, A, R and S need to be adjusted on the basis of the original team, requiring more operations and more credit to their own team.
At the same time, the more behind the letters, the higher requirements are put forward for leaders to control informal networks ("office politics", internal influence relations, etc.). ) and the internal culture of the enterprise, the situation that needs to be controlled is more subtle. We see that in startups, in fact, many management situations naturally evolve along the alphabetical order.
In other words, if you have achieved great success in starting a business and rectification, and entered the team of the latter three with your original successful experience, there may be corresponding problems. You may be too conservative when forming a team or rectifying the turn, or you may act rashly without knowing the company's history while maintaining success and accelerating growth.
Of course, how we understand the situation depends on our diagnosis of the organization, good business and team state judgment, which has a considerable relationship with our own business goals of where we want to go.
(2) Seven traps you may fall into.
When you have an organizational position compass in mind, we should understand some common pitfalls in job promotion. At this time, it must be explained that avoiding traps is definitely not a negative word. While avoiding risks, he is also guiding us to change our roles step by step. In fact, all traps need you to make positive and constructive efforts to avoid.
In order to facilitate understanding and classification, the author made a simple and rude division-people and things. Of course, people and things are inseparable. Because doing the right thing can help to establish early leadership quickly, building enough alliances in interpersonal relationships can help to promote all the changes you want to make.
Event article
(1) Your greatest advantage is your greatest trap.
The author describes a simple method to evaluate the biggest trap of promotion-"find the problem that you will be attracted by nature".
Poisonous apples are often the brightest. Your most advantageous ability is often the biggest reason for our promotion, and it is also the secret of success in the past few years or even decades. However, when the position is promoted, these advantages may affect our judgment on the organization and business, subconsciously inefficiently or even wrongly allocate our thinking ability and energy, and let ourselves fall into a "trap".
Take some of our colleagues for example. If you like one-on-one customer development for a long time, you may unconsciously ignore the organizational structure of the whole team and the consideration of product structure and product marketing. However, the long-term emphasis on marketing has neglected the long-term maintenance of partners. There can't be such an example again.
In addition to the influence of work, relying too much on superior ability, the deeper negative effect is that it will limit our rapid learning in new positions, thus delaying our time to adapt to the organization and truly create value, making it easier to make wrong decisions, and it is also an important reason why most people fail in their final career transformation.
As Maslow famously said, "Everything is like a nail to a man with a hammer in his hand".
The dominant ability is the right hand of most people, but while exerting the strength of the right hand, don't forget that the left hand also needs strength training, so that you can have a more systematic advantage.
(2) Don't have the misunderstanding of "action must be taken"
There is often a sense of fear when a new official takes office. They feel that as soon as they take office, they naturally need to act quickly, so that they want to put their own brand on the organization too soon and too early. However, there is a paradox in the role change itself-all the newly promoted leaders are incompetent.
According to the author's investigation, the break-even point of middle and senior management cadres is about 6 months, and it takes 3-4 months to really generate value for the organization.
Too hasty decision-making often means hasty decision-making without comprehensive understanding, which is likely to lead to the failure of early leaders (except, of course, the fire chief who must act).
This not only makes others doubt your judgment, but also easily leads to a crisis of trust. To make matters worse, such an action methodology will hinder your access to information. Exposing your true thoughts prematurely increases the threshold for subordinates to put forward opinions contrary to yours out of thin air. This truth is the same as the following one.
(3) Don't enter the post with the "correct answer"
Whether it is a promotion or an "airborne soldier", entering a new post often brings some ideas of their own.
In my lower post, I have my own ideas about the decision-making of leaders and my own views on the business market, and I often believe that these are correct; The middle and senior managers of multinational companies entering private enterprises often believe in the long board of systematic management, and then hope to change the organizational structure of new companies.
But neither the promoters nor the paratroopers look at this issue from the current position.
If you make up your mind from the beginning and act blindly, you will not only waste the opportunity to get a better solution, but also hinder your rapid learning and may "step on the thunder".
If we don't know how the original productive forces came into being, how private enterprises grew up creatively under the condition of extremely scarce resources; Do not understand the new departmental culture and potential influence network. Then the probability of success will be greatly reduced.
In this case, on the basis of learning, it may be a better choice to change the model through hypothesis, pilot and rapid iteration.
(4) trying to do too much
Paying too much attention to details obviously violates the principle of leadership and will gradually make subordinates your enemies.
When your position changes, what you need is a different way of thinking, not along the original track of success.
As Einstein famously said, people can't get the same result by doing the same thing.
Human goods
(5) Missed the opportunity to establish a supportive alliance-especially the horizontal relationship.
According to the author's investigation, most new managers tend to pay too much attention to the vertical relationship-subordinates and direct subordinates, but they are more likely to ignore the horizontal relationship between peers and other stakeholders, thus missing the early opportunity to establish a supportive alliance.
In fact, the higher the position of a leader, the more complicated and abstract the affairs he handles. Especially in organizations with unclear organizational structure, the higher the position, the weaker the authority effect brought by the position itself, and the stronger the influence brought by the relationship network. This is unimaginable when most people are at the grassroots level (in fact, this is not a wrong thing, and it is often the choice of people's brains to maximize efficiency). Therefore, if the support network cannot be established as soon as possible, the change will be easily frustrated.
Tips 1: Draw an influence map.
The author points out that senior decision makers are often greatly influenced by the ideas of people they rely on very much. Informal organizations often exert greater influence in organizations than formal organizations. As a newcomer, trying to draw an influence network may help you understand the company's business faster.
As you get to know this organization better, the influence map will get deeper and deeper. Determining a person's influence is often determined by confirming the source of his influence. These sources are often his professionalism, information sources, other people's relationships, resource control or personal loyalty.
For example, A may listen to B because of friendship, and B may listen to C because of professional authority.
Tips2: building a personal influence network
The path usually follows three steps:
A knows what support he needs;
B find out whose support is more critical;
Develop an impact strategy.
There are two tips about strategy: (1) Many people tend to ignore the role of their potential supporters as amplifiers and pay too much attention to dissidents; (2) The speech strategies often put forward by Mr. Wang are also suitable for one-on-one communication, such as comparison, storytelling and so on. Aristotle also put forward three elements of rhetoric, namely, rational appeal (rationality), emotional appeal (for example, talking about our values) and personality appeal (more about depicting vision).
(6) communication expectations-don't set or have unrealistic expectations.
Learning to expect management is a lesson that a new manager must do well.
If you don't fully communicate with your superiors and subordinates, your good performance may not meet the expectations of stakeholders. Especially in the transitional period, you need to communicate with your superiors and make corresponding transformation plans. Especially in this period, you need their support.
Communicating expectations with leaders and subordinates is also an important way for you to adapt to your new role.
(7) Don't neglect the family-build a stable rear.
The new position may bring about changes in the pace of work, which you need to communicate with your partner in advance.
Especially in the early stage, the fast learning period may be your information explosion period, and a good rear can bring you a relatively stable thinking environment.
Therefore, the author reminds everyone to be cautious when moving, and if necessary, you can ask the company to provide resettlement services (people who change jobs or jobs in different places often encounter it). Learn to protect familiar things, such as family rituals, small objects and so on.
At the same time, think about other support systems besides family members, such as your good friends, coaches, lawyers and doctors.
Other key principles:
In fact, we have listed several principles before, such as building a supportive alliance, being good at adapting and using informal networks, building a team, and not bringing the right answers.
There are some important principles in the book, which are not traps, but must be emphasized and unavoidable.
(1) Ensure your early success.
Early success will bring a virtuous circle. First impressions will help you gain your partner's trust, build your leadership and build your own confidence. On the contrary, there will be a corresponding crisis of distrust and a vicious circle of leaders losing patience.
But at the same time, early success is only a result of you-fully understand the organization, establish leadership, act cautiously and make correct judgments.
The picture is from the original book and has been deleted.
At the same time, this book also introduces the skills and precautions to ensure early success.
What your boss cares about is striving for success.
Not what you care about, or what you think your boss cares about.
Get success in an appropriate way.
People who are promoted or appointed will naturally be considered more popular.
Everyone will look at you with a magnifying glass. Therefore, if you are suspected of using manipulation and disgraceful means to succeed, even if you don't, you will certainly have corresponding troubles for a long time.
It doesn't mean that we have given up many possibilities of success, but we should pay attention to some potential factors and try our best to avoid or solve problems through communication, instead of burying bombs invisibly.
C removing small and stubborn stimuli, such as shortening meeting time, coordinating my tense external relationship and improving physical space equivalence, are all cost-effective choices to establish team prestige.
Learn to write your own story.
A lot of people are watching you. If you take the time to introduce yourself to the people in the support team, tell gossip that is beneficial to you, and pay attention to your fragmentation behavior, these small details will become the core of the widely circulated story.
When you achieve early success, you can naturally introduce new behaviors through early successful project opportunities, and at the same time boldly promote your change agent and reshape your team step by step.
(2) Make plans to accelerate learning.
New managers will face a huge flood of information, and it is inevitable that they will easily fall into specific affairs. Therefore, systematic organizational diagnosis training and systematic learning planning are almost widely missing in the "menu bar" of new managers everywhere.
But if you can't speed up your study, it means that it is difficult for you to really adapt to your post quickly, and it is also difficult to achieve enough early success in a substantive sense.
On accelerating learning, this book also puts forward several viewpoints:
Sincere desire to learn and understand can be gradually transformed into greater credibility and influence;
B. pay attention to the importance of organizational history; History can help you figure out where the logical source of everything is.
C while learning from the data, talk to people who have mastered key knowledge (strategy, technology, culture and "politics", etc.). );
Try to organize the learning process. For example, interviewing subordinates one-on-one and asking standard questions for comparison can help you quickly understand the business and subordinates.
In addition, this book also systematically emphasizes the importance of organizational consistency (whether it is strategic direction, organizational structure, core process, skill base, corporate culture, etc.). All done), and how to build a team and manage yourself. I won't introduce it in detail for the time being.
How do organizations pay attention to new managers?
When new managers encounter difficulties, in fact, the biggest loss is the enterprise organization itself, so many large enterprises will involve corresponding courses and process systems to help employees complete the transition period as soon as possible. The last book put forward ten principles, and the author simply chose a few of them.
(1) Understand how many roles are changing in the organization.
This question seems naive, but many organizations actually don't know these figures. These include: those who have been promoted, those who are likely to be promoted, the number of employees at the same level who have changed jobs, and the frequency, structure and reasons for the role change of similar positions. And which positions are the most risky. Is there any guidance on the classification of stars in the promotion process?
(2) Pay attention to the transition period of key leadership positions, and provide coordinators (dredge superior and subordinate intelligence information) or counselors (independent diagnosis veterans) as far as possible.
(3) Combine with the talent system, integrate the employee recruitment and entry system, carefully weigh the gains and losses between personal ability and cultural adaptability, strengthen the evaluation, and reduce the recruitment risk.
(4) Diagnose the role structurally and provide support in time.
Above.