Essays for newly-promoted senior leaders on the operational realities of leadership at altitude. Identity, decisions, transformation, and what successful executives actually do differently in the first 90 days and beyond.
Most newly-promoted senior leaders treat their transition as a skill problem. They look for new techniques, new frameworks, new approaches. They attend trainings. They read leadership books. They...
Industry studies consistently report that 60 to 70 percent of organizational transformations fail to deliver the outcomes they were designed for. The standard explanations (bad strategy, wrong...
Most newly-promoted senior leaders inherit broken meeting structures and try to operate within them. They attend the meetings their predecessor attended. They keep the cadences they were given. They...
Search any leadership development library and you'll find executive presence treated as something performative. Stand up straight. Speak with conviction. Wear the right thing. Modulate your voice....
Most leadership content treats ambiguity as a problem to be solved. Get more data. Run more analysis. Wait until the picture clears. Decide when you know.
Internal promotions carry a specific challenge that external hires don't face.
Most newly-promoted senior leaders spend 60 to 70 percent of their time making decisions one or two altitudes below their pay grade. They don't know they're doing it. The decisions feel important....
You're operating as a senior individual contributor inside a leader's title.
The 90 days aren't a transition. They're the calibration window, and what happens in them sets the pattern for the next two years of your tenure. I want to walk through what that means in practice.
Here's what it looks like.