Executive Engagement, the Lean Executive Way
Your executive search was a smashing success. Done in record time. Attracted the interest of top players in your market sector. Interviewed the best of the “A players”. And won over Sarah, a true global leader and supply chain visionary, who’s ready to jump in as your new executive vice president of operations in just a few weeks’ time. Now comes the really tough part: making sure that Sarah becomes a long-term success in her new role by getting her fully engaged from that very first day on the job.
The Real Job Starts When We Say “I Do”
I help companies recruit outstanding executive talent. Here’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my 20+ year career: while executive engagement begins during the recruiting process, what happens after is what most critically drives long-term mutual success. After all, in the happiest marriages, the courtship never really ends, and relationship development only truly commences after the day those wedding bells have rung. Executive relationship development is important to think about as well, especially when we’ve just devoted significant time and treasure to recruit them to our organizations.
Sink or Swim is Not an Executive Engagement Strategy
During the recruiting process we’re doing a lot of things right to attract the right leaders to our organizations. We discuss the position objectively, realistically. We tell it like it’s going to be; the awesome potential right there along with the nagging challenges. Transparent. Sincere. We walk in the candidate’s shoes, making sure to understand interests, synergies, even potential conflicts – but supportively putting forth the positive encouragement. We involve our whole team – even the CEO where appropriate – selling what we’re offering, what we believe in, making the deal happen. Engaging. So imagine the letdown if all that planning, partnering, collaboration, enthusiasm – engagement – are significantly lacking, or perhaps almost completely forgotten, on the day Sarah actually shows up for work, and during the weeks which follow? Sad to say that this is indeed the current state at all too many companies in North America today.
Instead, let’s show our new leader more of the same positive and engaging behavior we demonstrated during her courtship. Here are some ideas you can implement, at all levels of your organization.
- Deploy search process intelligence strategically. During the course of the recruitment we gather a tremendous amount of information about the candidate’s strengths, development areas, career and personal objectives, etc. We share these insights with the new hiring manager in a post-search debriefing. Used to build a pro-active development plan for the new executive, this kind of early collaboration helps the newly-hired executive rocket to a fast start and immediately address mission-critical issues, while also more rapidly assimilating into your company’s culture.
- Sarah wants specific feedback early and often. And so does the new “A player” executive you just brought on board. Just-in-time performance reviews, based on the concept of PDCA (plan-do-check-act) found in Lean & Six Sigma thinking, are possibly the best coaching and feedback system designed for high-performance individuals. Feedback - specific, relevant and timely – (delivered as quickly as manageable after the activity), presented informally and from a mentoring perspective, just simply works. These are coaching and mentoring opportunities which allow the new executive to more clearly grasp the senior leaders’ perspectives on strategic and tactical problem solving, customer relationship priorities, operational issues, and the information channels that keep the business running along. Plan for this kind of informal performance feedback mechanism, and executive religiously. Your “A players” thrive on it.
- But you promised me I’d be running the whole show in six months! Well, didn’t you? Managing the new executive’s expectations for opportunities, promotions and specific responsibilities is critical to his or her immediate engagement and long-term success. Sarah came in to our client’s organization with excellent capabilities and high ambitions for herself. The company’s CEO took the time on a regular basis to help her calibrate those ambitions with her achievements, against those of her peers, as well as relative to the company’s expectations for her. The result: a more team-focused and realistic understanding of how everyone’s ambitions and contributions build corporate growth, profitability and sustainability.
And that’s the way I see it. Adam Zak
