A breakfast between opposites: reflecting on my new role one month in
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my first conference as a representative of ITHAKA, which was also my first in-person conference since February 2020. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to share meals, coffees, and cocktails with colleagues and friends.
Over breakfast one morning, I listened as a new colleague reflected on his first year in a new role. He had taken on a top leadership position at a renowned institution which, as he nears retirement, is a legacy-defining opportunity.
Though he is already well-respected and influential, the next ten years largely determine how his career will be viewed through the lens of history.
He described his approach as intentionally avoiding, to the extent that he could, imposing significant change in his first year. He aims to be methodical — determined to listen, learn, and engage extensively across the organization before plotting his course.
It was interesting to hear this accomplished leader promote the wisdom in his approach one moment, and in the next, wonder if in that first year, he’d done quite enough.
The degree to which we are currently on opposite ends of a spectrum struck me immediately. He’s at one year, I’m just over one month. He’s looking at a sunset while my career is still on the rise. He’s proven and I’m being tested. He’s reflecting on his purposely slow pace while I’m questioning the unintentional speed of mine.
In my head, I couldn’t help but be haunted by Miley Cyrus sing-crying off in the distance, “I came in like a wrecking baaaaaallllll.”
I’ve worked under new “leaders” who came in guns blazing. Over eager, under informed and hell bent on making their mark. They fail. They fail to build trust, they fail to make the case for their vision, they fail to lead people through the changes, and they fail to honor the strengths and history of the organization they inherited.
That’s just not me. Coming into this new role, I aspired to be more like my seasoned colleague. Committed to charting the landscape, taking a thoughtful inventory, and slowly inspiring people to embrace a new future. Any good leader hopes for the luxury of time and ample context within which to make decisions.
But what if those conditions don’t exist?
While I am most certainly not a wrecking ball, I joined a team already in the midst of an accelerated pace change and knew from the interview process that I’d need to, as they say, hit the ground running.
I’ve joined ITHAKA at a pivotal moment as the organization works to address today’s challenges, engaging with the academic community to define and address barriers to access, whether among students or types of institutions, and help them to embrace emerging technologies that have the power to transform research, teaching and learning.
Clearly defined marketing strategies will play a key role in contributing to these areas, where fresh approaches are needed to make education and knowledge more accessible and impactful.
I’ve been brought in as an agent of change within an organization in transition on a team already in flux (in an industry experiencing rapid pandemic-induced transformation). Under these circumstances, people either spin out or soar.
Here are a few tips for swimming in this particular deep end.
Listen.
Can every new leader afford to spend a year on a robust listening tour? No. But listening and learning is still where the journey begins. Through one-on-one and small group interviews with individuals within and outside of your function, and at all levels, collect insights, observations, and ideas. You are (usually) joining a team and organization that existed long before you and will survive long after you’re gone.
You are not actually the center of this universe, no matter how intensely it feels to you or how personally invested you are in this moment. You were hired to add value in specific areas and hopefully aligned on some 30–60–90 expectations, but that doesn’t mean you’re the first person to ever think about the opportunities you’re trying to seize or problems you can help solve.
It helps to keep your questions consistent across the organization so you can quickly identify common themes around what’s working well and were there may be gaps. Get some history and perspective, reflect back what you’ve heard to validate your understanding, and then you can start to layer on your own insights and articulate recommendations.
Be transparent.
As you begin to form recommendations, tell everyone what you’re asking, hearing, and thinking. It is better to ask the clarifying question, offer an alternate perspective, and risk an overstep or overshare, than not to engage, or worse, work on your own to concoct secret recipes for success.
Obviously there are some shifts you may be working on that are potentially more sensitive than others, and you are likely still assessing where various individuals and groups are on the change curve and how you might need to educate and engage them, but for the most part, being an open book can accelerate the amount of insight you’re able to collect, and how quickly you can begin to validate or correct the assumptions you’ll use as the basis for your early decision-making. As a leader, I’ve always preferred having to slow someone’s enthusiastic roll than be there at every step nudging them forward. If you’re communicating openly and often (and still listening), necessary course corrections will happen in flight. Speaking of which…
Correct course as needed.
Did you run too far too fast? Take the feedback, reset, and move on. Be thankful you have trusted collaborators who will gift you that feedback and are invested in your success. In my case, someone kindly shared that I was describing a desired future state using terms and concepts with which they were not familiar — and nor would others be. I’d already been casually throwing around these terms, which are overused to the point of being jargon in my usual circles, but which in my new world, were completely new to important influencers, champions, and those most impacted by the changes. How unfortunate would it have been to continue circulating key strategic shifts without first ensuring we’re all grounded on the basics of what we’re moving from, and to, and most importantly, why? Taking feedback and moving on is where I’ve seen countless people struggle.
Do not become paralyzed. Do not spiral into a crisis of confidence. Do not sacrifice progress for perfection.
Do be agile. Do adapt. Do embrace an iterative process. Drink the growth mindset, Kool-Aid. It’s delicious. Hearing you might need to approach something differently is not a failure, it’s not even a speed bump. It’s 100% reality in the most stable circumstances, and especially when success in your new position requires what feels like running full speed in many directions at once.
Focus. Refocus. Focus again.
I have ADHD so staying focused and following through on the right things is a constant effort for me. That said, I’ve yet to meet a neurotypical person who doesn’t also frequently struggle to identify and stick to a purposefully small set of priorities and delivering metrics that matter. From Day 1 at ITHAKA, I’ve appreciated that it’s an organization centered around objectives and key results. Operating in an environment with a proven and consistent framework for communicating what we want to accomplish and aligning around what milestones we need to meet in order to accomplish it solves half the battle (at least). Still, as a new person coming in with your own endless flurry of ideas, and who has potentially buried themselves under the numerous ideas solicited from others during the listening phase, it can he hard not to feel like you must do everything equally well and all at once. Feel that all you want. It’s impossible. You can’t.
You can, however, imagine you’re at the Ophthalmologist. Ask yourself, ask your boss, ask your peers, ask your mom…A or B? B or C? A or C? 1 or 2? 2 or 3? 1 or 3? Compare each important sounding and urgent thing to the next until your vision is clear and you are focused on doing fewer things better. Do this as often as is needed to make sure your short- and long-term priorities are the right ones, and not just the loudest, next-nearest, or most interesting.
Take care of yourself.
If you’re still reading, you are the kind of person who really commits to a thing. You bring your whole ass to an endeavor and because of that, if you don’t set and maintain clear boundaries early on, you will burn yourself out. Could I be working right now? Absolutely. Should I be doing laundry or some other tasks for the good of my family? Of course. Is drinking a glass of wine and nurturing the seed of this essay that was planted at my breakfast meeting last week my definition of restorative downtime? Also yes.
Do you really need to listen to another leadership podcast on your (commute/dog walk) or should you let your brain wander, listen to music, or catch up with a friend?
The point is: you must be able to sustain the energy you bring in at the start. You are setting a precedent and expressed or invisible, forming agreements with those around you. At certain levels organizationally, when you come in as a new leader, you’re effectively your own pace car. Again, because you’re smart, you’re aligned with your fellow leaders on expectations in the early days, weeks, and months, but it’s up to you to set realistic expectations for how far and how fast everything else should follow.
Know that the amount of time and energy you invest across all the early opportunities can be an acute stretch, or a permanent contortion of your life around this new position. Balance wisely.
These are my musings — and let’s be honest — reminders to myself at the 5-week mark. What other notes or lessons have you learned? What tips would you add to this list?
I’d love to discuss it with you sometime. Maybe over a nice breakfast.
