Page 27 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

12 Just Promoted!

afforded little slack. You must learn what you have to very quickly and then
learn continuously thereafter. We have been asked about the importance of
what is called “learning agility.” Learning agility is the ability to learn from
your experiences, as well as in many other ways, and apply what you have
learned to new, challenging, and often unmapped situations and challenges.
Very frequently, leaders who are transitioning into new roles are faced with
high-challenge responsibilities that lack clear maps or courses of action. For
recently promoted leaders, well-lit paths to deal with their high-challenge roles
are few and far between.
You will need to develop and act upon an accelerated learning plan. If at
all possible, this should start before you even begin in your role and certainly
no later than your actual start date. You and your organization will be greatly
advantaged if you can develop a relationship with the incumbent and spend
time being briefed and exchanging information, perceptions, and insights
about the role and its many nuances. You can jump start your accelerated
learning in many ways. Read as much relevant information as you can. Infor-
mally speak with people, and count on staff and resource professionals who
may be available to you to provide information and support. Be sure to inter-
view stakeholders who will have a role in either your success or failure. Your
accelerated learning plan should address the knowledge, skills, and the orga-
nizational cultural elements specific to your new role and responsibilities.
Importantly, you will also need to quickly learn the politics of how things
really get done. The Just Promoted Leader Tool entitled Accelerating Your
Job Learning, with its accompanying Accelerated Learning Plan, can help you
organize your thinking and construct a course of action to rapidly address
your knowledge, skills, and cultural learning needs. These tools will be pre-
sented in Chapter 2.

4. Determine who is “on the bus” and who is not. The old model of lead-
ership transitions included gradually determining who would remain or be
selected from outside to be on a leader’s team. But today, because of modern
management’s very high expectations for results and its low patience in wait-
ing to see results achieved, you will likely need to make your most important
staffing decisions quickly and, frequently, more quickly than you might like.
It is important that much of your leadership team be selected, whenever pos-
sible, before work begins to determine your longer-term business and organi-
zational vision, strategies, and goals. This order is described very well in Jim