How to Make a Greater Impact at your Next Job

As warmer weather approaches, most military leaders understand that summer season is a time of transition and changing jobs.  If you’re changing jobs this summer this article is for you.

Transition Plan

Many of us transition from one job to the next moving at 100 mph and don’t have a chance to give much thought to their next assignment, let alone have a plan on how they are going to manage the transition.  This article lays out a 90-day plan that leaders can implement to maximize the value they provide their organization during these transitions.

Why 90 days?

90 days may seem like a long time to transition into a job that you may only be doing for one to two years.  This 90-day plan doesn’t have you sitting back for three months.  In fact, with this plan, you’ll be making a positive change in your organization one month into the job.  90 days allows sufficient time for you to learn the new organization and its environment so that you can appropriately determine how to gain some quick wins and improve performance before bringing in new and innovative ideas. This 90-day plan is broken down into three 1-month phases. Phase 1 is dedicated to learning. The second phase is dedicated to quick wins and increasing momentum.  Phase 3 is dedicated to innovating with new ideas into the organization.

Phase 1-Learn

You can’t expect to be very effective in leading an organization that you don’t understand. Take your first 30 days to get to know the organization’s mission and its people.  Take time to introduce yourself and let your team get to know you as well.  Learn not only the organization’s mission but learn how it operates as well.  Try to understand the operating environment. You can do this by learning the organization’s recent history and key relationships of leaders in the organization.  Start building a relationship with your boss as well as your team. Gain understanding of the organization’s current strengths and weaknesses.  Learn what challenges the organization faces and conversely what opportunities lie ahead (every challenge can be seen as a future opportunity). Once you have a firm grasp of the organization, its mission, people, challenges, and opportunities, you’ll be ready to start making a positive impact.

Phase 2-Increase Velocity

Making a positive impact with only 30 days on the job can be difficult.  However, you’ve studied the organization for the past month and have a better appreciation for the team and its people.  In the second phase, you want to gain some “quick wins” to get some momentum going under your leadership.

What can you do to gain “quick wins”?  One good place to start is by removing obstacles that hamper your team’s ability to do its mission. You should have gained a good sense of these obstacles when identifying challenges in your first month on the job. Obstacles for your team can include duplicative efforts or processes that seem to be cumbersome and slow.  Obstacles can include gaining approval for tasks or projects at levels that are inappropriately higher than they need to be.  By removing obstacles that hamper your team’s ability to do its job, you will increase the speed at which your organization can operate.  This will give your team some momentum and demonstrate your ability to add value to the organization.

Phase 3- Innovate

After you’ve gained a greater understanding of your new organization and have increased the teams’ momentum, conditions will be set to begin innovating with big ideas and any bold changes you want to implement.  Before your team is ready for change, they will have to know that you care and are competent and worthy to follow.  By now, you’ve taken the time to learn and understand in your first month and have proven your value in the second month.

Now that your team trusts you, as you’ve earned some street credit, they are ready to follow you through change.  Innovative ideas can stem from ideas you had before coming to the job or based on ideas your team wants to implement. If the changes you want to implement stem from goals you had prior to joining the new organization, you’ll want to ensure that these goals are still relevant based on what you observed in the first two months.

Conclusion

If you follow the three-phase plan above you will likely improve not only your performance as a leader but also improve the performance of your team.  You’ll also set conditions to gain buy-in from your team members for bold changes and foster an environment of innovation.

At no time do you need to wait to correct deficiencies in the organization or correct behavior that is detrimental to the team.  This 90-day model is meant to ensure that you’ve given sufficient time to learn your organization, its people, and gain some credibility prior to implementing any vas changes.

Going into a new position with a transition plan gives you some direction. This plan is merely a framework to follow that you can adjust and not meant to be a rigid process. You can always audible from the plan if a crisis emerges.  If you go into a new endeavor without a plan, you have no basis for adjustment and are really just shooting from the hip.

Give the 90-day transition plan a shot and let us know how it works in the comments section. Also feel free to share any of your tips for transitioning to a new job.

Question: What do you do to facilitate job transitions?  Please comment below.