Right From The Start: Taking Charge In A New Leadership Role

by Dan Ciampa, Michael Watkins

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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Have you recently been handed a new leadership challenge? Are you about to start a new job, or are you expecting a big promotion? With today's surge in start-ups, spin-offs, change initiatives, and reorganizations, chances are that you'll be in a position to accept a leadership role sometime soon. Before you do, let "Right from the Start" show you how to balance the tensions and challenges inherent in any leadership transition. It will prepare you for the often-treacherous task of navigating an organization's strategy, politics, and culture so that you can smoothly and effectively get to work on your new agenda.Whether you are succeeding a much-admired boss or charged with implementing sweeping, potentially unsettling change initiatives, a new role is fraught with obstacles that can undermine your efforts to establish authority and build support. In "Right from the Start", authors Ciampa and Watkins lay out an action-oriented framework to follow during the first six months in a new job. The tactical advice is supplemented with absorbing profiles of CEOs, COOs, and EVPs who candidly discuss their experiences - the successes and the failures - with transitioning to a new leadership role. Make no mistake, say the authors: the planning you do before you take the leadership reins is critical to achieving your goals. "Right from the Start", with its timeless lessons of leadership, succession, and transition, is for everyone who wants to ensure that their first steps in a new job will be the ones that lead to enduring success.

Amazon.com Review
According to Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins, 64 percent of executives hired form the outside won't make it in their new jobs. While executives from within the ranks know the challenges, culture, and politics of a company, newcomers face a corporate minefield. Right from the Start is Ciampa and Watkins's survival manual for leaders taking starting work at a new company. "Leadership is never easy," they write. "This is never truer than when a new leader enters an organization from the outside and must change its culture in fundamental ways." Through interviews with dozens of corporate leaders who have succeeded or failed in such transitions, the authors provide a strategy for getting it right from the outset.

Ciampa, an independent consultant, and Watkins, a Harvard Business School associate professor, advise three key missions for new leaders: Create momentum; master the ability to learn, convey a vision, and build coalitions; and know and manage yourself well. A fast start is especially crucial. In fact, they say, the most important period starts with the recruitment or interview process and runs through the first six months in a new role. Right from the Start provides plenty of real-life examples of successes and failures, in everything from building coalitions to changing corporate culture. The stories tend to suffer sometimes because the executives remain anonymous. Nonetheless, the book is instructive for business people assuming new management roles. --Dan Ring

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 4 out of 5 stars

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Great Guide for New Leader, 2008-10-14
I utilized the concepts in Right from the Start to support my success as I transitioned to a new career opportunity as National Training Director. I had led smaller teams in the past, but this team consisted of 40 professionals geographically dispersed throughout the USA. I also was interfacing with C suite executives on a daily basis. The concepts described within this book helped me navigate the corporate maze, garner cooperation and drive results. Thank you!
Kathy Kanzer-Johnson

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1 out of 5 stars

I was scamed, 2007-04-24
This download is a trick. All of the reviews and product descriptions depict the hardcover book which is hundreds of pages long. Do not be fooled like I was thinking you would get the entire book in digital form. I payed my money and recieved a 12 page version of the full book I expected to get.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Thanks for saving me money, 2005-11-18
I read the ebook experiences others had and decided not to purchase the ebook and for that matter the book period today through Amazon.

Amazon needs to take seriously the buyers that come to its online stores and remove such eBooks if they are only a 9 page summary.

Disgusted and will buy from another online provider.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1 out of 5 stars

Be careful downloading e-books!!, 2005-04-30
I was disapointed when I downloaded it and got 8 pages.
As a customer, I expected to have the digital version of the full book and not a summary.
I thought that the price difference was due to the absence of paper, printing, handling, shipping, etc.
The hardcover version is more than 300 pages; if you take the price per page of the digital version, the hardcover version should cost then ten times more!!!
All the examples are referred to that version and nowhere I was said that I was paying 5 dollars for a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PRODUCT.
I honestly believed that I was buying the full book.
I will think better before ebuying again....

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1 out of 5 stars

Content of the Digital Version, 2004-05-15
Thanks to the other reviews I knew I would be buying a summarized version of the book. I was hoping it would still provide the essence and condensed insights supposedly in the full version; however, I was quite disappointed.

I was a CEO of a tech company and have recently been asked by the venture capitalists to CEO a growing company in the same industry (as opposed to a turnaround effort). I was hoping to find nuggets of advice on how to effectively and sensitively assume the leadership position from the current co-founder & CEO who has done well up to this stage and is respected by his loyal staff.

Either the full version lacks the insightful information I am looking for, or the summarized version by Execubook is simply too high level. In fact, the cover page advertises: "Buy the Full Book". I guess it's purpose is pretty clear. Nevertheless, the summary makes you wonder if the full book also suffers from 'common sense' type of advice.

For example: the Table of Contents:
Introduction p.2
Four Pieces of Advice p.2
The 5 Primary Challenges p.3
Traps to Avoid p.5
Taking Action p.6

Briefly, the content of the book:
Four Pieces of Advice
1. Take advantage of the transition period into the new job
2. Don't underestimate the importance of advice and counsel
3. Show some empathy for the person you're succeeding

5 Primary Challenges
1. Acquire needed knowledge quickly
2. Establish new relationships
3. Juggle organizational and personal transition
4. Manage expectations
5. Manage personal equilibrium

Traps to Avoid
1. Falling behind the learning curve
2. Becoming isolated
. . .

Taking Action
1. Plan on taking 2-3 years to make measurable progress
2. On arrival, you should understand the organization's existing strategy, goals and challenges and shoul have formed hypotheses about operating priorities.
. . .

Each numbered item was followed by a paragraph or few lines of description, but those explanations left me saying, 'no duh.'

In fairness, it is hard to summarize without sounding too general, but there was very little in terms of new or provoking frameworks & mindsets, assumption challenges, or interesting insights.

Buy the original or look for something else altogether.

One last comment. I've now seen several unfavorable reviews on Amazon about the digital versions of what are supposed to be good books. I believe the concept of eBooks is great, but it looks like it's still in an immature, buyer-beware stage.

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