Stories from our work · 4 min read
The team that was already there
When a new executive joins, most of the talk is about their first 90 days. Their plan, their priorities, their early wins. Hardly anyone talks about the team they are joining, even though that team will decide how far the new leader gets.
Executive integration · CXO-Accelerate · Leadership teams
One of our clients was about to bring a new executive into its leadership team, and it asked us to help through our CXO-Accelerate programme. The goal was simple to say and hard to do: get the new leader aligned with the organisation's goals quickly, without the long, expensive months of misunderstanding that can follow a senior hire.
Two pictures of the same job
By the time a senior leader starts, two pictures of the role already exist.
One belongs to the new executive. It has been built over weeks or months of interviews, shaped by what they were told and by what they hoped to hear. The other belongs to the people around them: the team, their peers, their own boss. Those two pictures rarely match perfectly. The gaps usually stay hidden until the leader has been in the job long enough to bump into them.
Our work was about bringing those gaps into the open early, while they were still cheap to fix.
Listening on both sides
We began with the new leader. We wanted to understand their vision for the role and the team, and we wrote down their early thinking, so they could test it against what they were about to learn.
Then we turned to the people around them. We gathered their insights, their expectations and the issues they could see coming. We kept who said what confidential. People are far more honest about a new boss when their words cannot be traced back to them.
One room, one picture
The real work happened when we brought it all together.
We shared what we had heard with the new executive and the team, and we did it with them in the same room, looking at the same picture. Together they turned the expectations, hopes and concerns on both sides into a single action plan.
Across our wider integration work, that kind of session is often where the most important moments happen. New leaders realise there is work to do with their team before they push ahead with their own agenda. Some rethink their early approach, and build much stronger support from their team because of it.
After that, we stayed close, coaching the leader in real time as they put the plan into practice.
What happened next
The new leader aligned with the organisation's goals quickly. There was a bonus, too. The conversations strengthened the cohesion of the whole leadership team, not only the newcomer's place in it.
Then the client asked us back to help integrate other leaders as they joined.
Why we tell this one
Integration works best when the team is part of it from the start. And for any advisor, there is no better review than being asked to come back and do it again.