New to your role? How fast should you move?
You are starting a new role. You are eager to get ramped up and add value. You have a plan. How aggressive is your plan? How fast do you intend to move?
Are you coming in hot?
We hear this phrase when someone is moving too fast. It has implications. It means that the new leader has not spent enough time assessing the situation they are coming in to. They think they know the way. It means that they might not be properly respecting the existing culture. If you come in hot, you are focused on you. You are running your plays and not plays you developed with your team. You are more likely directing versus leading.
Are you creating a leadership gap?
If you are moving too slowly, you may be creating a leadership gap. Your intent is to respect the culture and people by being careful. Instead of doing that, your team starts to wonder about the value you add. You are seen as passive. In certain situations, being passive is the right approach, but not when you are ramping up.
Be Goldilocks
I know, that is a corny way to say you are looking for a balanced approach, an approach that is “just right.” How do you do that? On a high-level, you go slowly where things are working and go fast in areas that are not working. Most leaders focus just on the latter. They believe they were hired to address a particular challenge. They too often miss that they also need to respect and even reinforce what’s right.
I did this when I joined my last company. It had a very strong culture centered on delivery excellence, client responsiveness, and pragmatic problem solving. I explicitly articulated it and the plan I developed with my leadership team strove to protect and reinforce it. I could see that it was the value proposition behind the company’s legacy of success. At the same time, growth was slowing. Our plan also focused on that challenge by accelerating incremental growth right away by deepening strategic account planning and investing in transformational growth by placing some bets in areas that could be the “next big thing.”
4 Essentials of Your Ramp Up Plan
In my experience, a ramp up plan should have four key parts:
Timeline & Expectations : Your team and who you report to should never wonder about the status of your ramp up. Create and share a 30-60-90-day plan. Share what you are going to be focused on and when you will provide updates. Note that listening and learning is a critical part of the first half of your plan. This is asking for feedback from everyone you connect with and taking that input into account when developing the strategy (see below). Personal Leadership Model : Share your personal leadership model with your team. What principles and methods make up your approach to leadership? How is that manifested into the operating model? This is giving your team insight into the “why” behind many of your decisions. Strategy Development : The deliverable at the end of your ramp up plan is the strategy for your team (challenges & opportunities, value proposition, vision & objectives, alignment to company objectives, operating model, and initiatives). It looks like a lot but, in my experience, it comes together quickly. Ideally, you develop this with your leadership team. This makes it their plan too. The difference in engagement of your team if they are driving their plan versus just your plan is huge. Per above, the plan is where you explicitly protect what is working and seek to improve what is not working. On Message : Once you have the plan, roll it out. Cascade the objectives into the team so every individual knows how they impact the big picture. Be annoyingly on message.Ideally, your ramp up plan should be a few slides. It should be an outline that you fill in, which largely becomes the strategy. Be as transparent as possible through the entire ramp up process. That will fast-track building credibility with your team. It will demonstrate that you trust them. Most will trust you right back.
What do you think?
What points resonated most with you? Is there something I blatantly missed? Can you think of examples where a leader new to your organization moved too quickly or too slowly?
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Thank you for reading my leadership blog post. I hope you found it interesting and thought provoking.
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© 2025 Don Graumann. All Rights Reserved. Other than personal sharing, please do not redistribute without permission.
