“In Search of Failure.” That’s
the title of chapter seven in Frederick Reichheld’s book The
Loyalty Effect. In that chapter,
Reichheld points out that an investor who built a stock portfolio out of the
companies profiled in the book In
Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman) would have seen their returns
trounced by the mediocre performance of the S&P index during the ten year
period following the book’s 1982 publication.
In fact, by time Reichheld’s book came out in 1996 only one-fifth of the
original companies profiled as “excellent” had remained excellent. If success breeds success, how in the world
did those companies lose their lofty status? In Reichheld’s opinion what really helps us to achieve
excellence is actually the study of failure.
It’s not exactly in our nature to seek out failure though; in fact, your
career path is probably linked to success.
And yet, about 40 percent of new executive hires fail within their first
18 months, according to Fortune. If four out of ten of
us are failing in our new roles, it’s easy to see how excellent organizations
quickly lose their status. The onboarding process for new leader often calls for them to
outline their first 90-day action plan. In fact, these plans are supposed
to be a road map for taking charge quickly and effectively during the
transition period. So what’s the problem?
Are action plans out-of-date, or are we building them wrong? In my role as an interim
CMO I’ve put together several 90-day action plans as I’ve
worked with various organizations to transition them into the content and social
media marketing world. The following list is not intended to be
comprehensive. For example, I don’t mention
“resources” in the form of budgets, technology or people. All of which are very important because
marketing is not free, and if you don’t have the right resources in place it’
going to be tough to bring your strategic marketing plan to life. But this list does offer some key factors
I’ve found to be linked to a successful start. 1. “What will I have to do to hear you say; well done, great job, I
like what I’m seeing!” I like to ask that question before I accept the
assignment. I want to know exactly what
early results the executive team is looking for. Too often executives do a lot of work in the
first 90 days without addressing the one or two things that their bosses really
care about. 2. Connect, and connect early.
Before starting a new assignment, in fact during the interviewing and
scoping process, I reach out and connect to all constituents on LinkedIn,
Twitter and other social platforms. I
read their blogs and use this time to build trust, credibility and rapport with
everyone who may be involved with my assignment. Too often executives fail to build trust and
rapport early in the game with the people they’ll need to get support from. 3. Accelerate learning. Almost every organization is really
working from a sequence of short-term plans, so it’s disastrous for an
executive to think they have six, nine, or 12 months to get up-to-speed. You need to accelerate the learning curve in
order to understand the market, products, systems and culture. That’s
exactly why all marketers
should be lifelong learners. The goals of your plan do need to be realistic and based on the
current state of the company. The plan
also needs to be updated as you acquire new information and gain a better
understanding of what you’ve signed up for.
This is not to say you are going to solve all the problems in the first
90 days with your documented plan. But
first impressions and creating momentum are important to moving the company in
a new direction, and all plans have to start somewhere. |
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