L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Successful Executive Transitions: The RIght Resources, Support and Focus for New C-Suite Leaders

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

With the deeper reach--both across the world and into our lives--many companies and their products have, the leaders of these organizations are taking on increasingly complex responsibilites. In fact, according to globally ranked #1 Executive Coach Navid Nazemian, organizations are up to 35x more complex than they were 15 years ago. And perhaps even more concerning, when it comes to maintaining strong leadership, the cost of a failed CEO transition can be as much as 30x that of the executive's annual salary. This week, Navid joins the show to share his Double Diamond framewoek for maximizing the chances of success during an executive transition.

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by Get Abstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential, and building a culture of learning in your organization. This week, my guest is Naveed Nazimian. Naveed is the globally ranked number one executive coach according to CEO Today in the years 2022 and 2023. Through his firm, he has worked with leaders transitioning to executive positions at world-renowned organizations including Coca-Cola, Shell, TikTok, KPMG, and many, many others. Prior to his role as an executive

transition coach, N Navid held HR leadership positions at Vodafone, Adidas, and GE, experience that has been invaluable as he works directly with emerging leaders. Through his book, Mastering Executive Transitions, Navid teaches business leaders his patented double diamond framework for maximizing success with new C-suite leaders. Let's dive in. Hello, and welcome to L&D in Action. I'm your host, Tyler Lay, and today I'm speaking with Naveed Nazimian.

Naveed, thank you so much for joining me. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you for the invitation. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Most of the existing literature around executive transitions and how we do those correctly and how we support them seems to focus on a specific day period. Michael Watkins and the 90 day, the first 90 days, there's a couple others that you cite in your book about a hundred days,

a hundred twenty days, it always seems to be a handful of months. But what you observe in your writing and in your work seems to be that the process of an executive transition should be much more flexible and actually equate it to a roller coaster ride, which I found really funny and really effective analogy, would you mind describing exactly what you mean by that by the roller coaster ride of an executive transition process? So first thing is that all these books, the first 90 days, the first hundred days, the first 120 days, and they all are very similar in the way they have been written, point to the fact that the first few months after starting in a new role are critical, and I actually agree

with that. But my take is that when you want to transition at the very top of an organization, first 90-day approaches are nowhere near sufficient to do that properly. And so again, I'm a fan of anything that supports a more structured and more mindful, intentful onboarding, but it just so happens that at the C-suite, first 90 day approaches are nowhere near sufficient. And this is why I'm suggesting a 12 to 18 month approach. And as a matter of fact, when we get to talk about the double diamond framework

later on during our conversation, the first 90 days is one of the seven phases that I have embedded in the framework. So it is just one out of the seven, and therefore it cannot be the only one that the executive focuses on. I wanna point out that you talk about all of these different resources, these prior pieces of literature from these authors in your book.

And of the 50 or so interviews that I've done, only a handful of authors do what you do, which is approach this topic of effectively coaching as scientifically as you have done. You cite all of the works regularly anytime you make a point even if it's just you know talking about a specific business case you will specifically cite the book from which you took that business case. You list out the prior works that you're referring to and that you've learned from and you just approach it like it's it's some sort of a research paper or you're doing very serious scientific empirical research here. You have taken this

history of research, a very robust history, you've looked at history that's available generally sort of in the media, and you've taken your own experience as well and you've turned that into your education system here. And I just first first of all, want to say that I greatly appreciate that. So thank you very much. It was a wonderful read. Also, you describe this sort of approach that you take, which combines some of these elements that I'm describing here as the triple lens approach. I would love if you could describe that in your own words, and then just explain why you think

that's so critical for executive transitions, the success of executive transitions. So first off, thank you for acknowledging the deep research that has gone into this wonderful book. There were many reasons why it took me seven years to finish this book from start to finish. And I think a significant part of that is owed to the deep research that I wanted to conduct. And I really didn't want to write a memoir or autobiography or sometimes I stumbled upon a book where someone cites their own experience and tries to come up with a framework so that others are able to repeat that. And I think it's highly unlikely that one unique individual's experience can be replicable for anyone really.

I agree. And so this is one of the reasons why it took me so long to write the book. And the second reason was that I really wanted this book to be grounded by research, but also practitioner-led, which is one of the other reasons why I interviewed 20 C-suite leaders as part of this book. And at the time I conducted those interviews, I didn't exactly know how the framework is going to look like. And so what I did was based on the research, based on the groundwork that I have done with many, many executive leaders and the interviews that I conducted on top, then I could give

birth to what is called the double diamond framework. And so this is just the background history to how it all came about. But coming back to your second part of the question, which is the triple lens approach. So I have myself worked and lived in a number of countries throughout my executive tenure. And so it was a 26 year journey and I've had the good fortune and pleasure of working with some of the world's most admired companies. So I find that that is a lens that I bring to everything that I do, whether it's writing a book or coaching clients.

So I have what I call the embodied experience of what it feels like and what it is like to be an executive leader that is working in a highly matrix organization and having to deal with very commercial pressures. That's the first lens. The second lens is that after 26 years, I've spent 20 years working in the HR function.

And again, working in the HR function. And again, working in the people function naturally means that I am getting involved in these exercises, whether it's leadership development, whether it's executive hiring, whether it's succession planning. So I have a very different lens to this than if I had been the marketing director or the finance director, going through the exact same journey as an an executive just in a different function. So that's the second lens. And then the third lens that I bring to this topic is the fact

that I have been formally coaching for 12 years now and again it takes a different lens and a different approach to coach executives through their various transitions and so that is my kind of idea of the triple lens, which by the way was gifted to me by one of my coaching clients at some point. I see this as incredibly valuable because of that roller coaster idea that I opened up with and that you describe in the book as well. It seems abundantly clear having read the case studies and honestly having kind of kept an eye on the media myself for the past, I don't know, five or six years

as we've had such chaos in the business world. It seems very clear that great flexibility is needed when organizations are making major changes and seeking big time innovation to secure the future. It seems as if in reality, an executive transition, and I think you're observing this in the book, that's a broad term to describe what is actually a much more complex process that involves,

as some of the authors that you cite, they use terms like arriving, surviving, and thriving. There's the period before the transition before you actually make that role switch. And then there's a period after where you come in, you sort of get settled, and then you set the long term goals. And then, you know, into the deeper future, the things that a leader, especially a CEO is doing, you know, that carries for, as you said, you know, 12 to 18 months, up to two years, that sort of thing as well. I want to ask you, what is generally top of mind for executives in transition that you've experienced as a coach? And then what

should be top of mind for executives in transition to make sure that they're going through that process in the right sort of that roller coaster ride in the most flexible way possible that will lead to success? So in my book, I speak about exponentially challenged executives that find themselves in what we call a pony crisis. You know, if you just reflect back over the last five years, I worked with a CEO of one of the large industrial businesses and the business decided to carve out that entire business unit and do an IPO. And whilst everything looked fantastic at the outset, that IPO never happened. It actually hasn't happened yet. The first time they geared up for the IPO, there was a shortage of CPUs in the market. And that meant that because this is a business that's highly dependent on those CPUs, they couldn't really

risk and go public. And the second time after the CPU shortage was overcome, the war, the geopolitical tension between Russia and Ukraine broke out. And so again, that was, again, a point that the financial markets are quite ready to fund and value the business in the range that they would have considered to be fair value for the business.

And so that is just one example, but we could add 10 more examples like this, whether it's complexity. I'm citing a professor in my book that has been looking at organizational complexity and how it has grown over the last 15 years. And the organizational complexity has grown by a factor of 35 over that time period. Yeah, that blew my mind when I read that in the book. It is 35 times more complicated to run a business today than it was 15 years ago. When I look at other things like what is the span of control for a typical group CEO. At my early stages in HR used to work for a company called Adidas or Adidas

as they say in the US. The group CEO had six direct reports, that was it. In my last company Vodafone, an international telecommunication company, the group CEO had 12 direct reports. And so that gives you an appreciation for what is the range of the topics that the CEO gets dragged into and obviously every one of these 12 direct reports will want to have a portion of the time of the group CEO and so whether it's that or whether we look at things like the increased demands of those group you know CEOs or C-11 leaders in general, you know gone are the times where the group CEO had six or seven main KPIs to deliver against.

Today, it's pretty common to have 25 to 40 KPIs in any one C-level leaders performance document. And so, any one of these challenges would be substantial in their own right. But what is the reality is that they are coming at the exec at the same time. And so the kind of topics that executives are struggling with is, especially when they're going through a transition, is things like if they're externally hired, will I be able to adjust to the new organization? Will I be able to gather a large following? Will I be able to work with, if it's a group CEO,

the board of directors and the chairman, will I be able to put in place what's being asked of me to do and deliver on? And so these are just some of those early worries or concerns that are on the executive's mind. And even if they have been internally promoted, again, just because they have received a big promotion, that doesn't mean that the expectation levels

are going to drop. It's actually quite the contrary. So the expectation levels will be adjusted as per the appointed level. And so it's kind of a very, very delicate and very vulnerable period in which executives will find themselves into. Personally, I would even add to this list of challenges, you know, direct media

scrutiny on executives, on these folks, because I, you know, at least since I've been aware of how business works, it seems as if the public, you know, especially through social media, has been especially critical of business leaders and those who are at the top of, especially in big tech and the companies that essentially impact all of our lives. Those who distribute our devices and the things that we use on a daily basis,

there's plenty of observation and criticism of the folks that are in charge of those companies. So, from your perspective, as somebody who's been close to these folks, where do they need to start focusing their attention when a transition begins? Can you even answer that question? I guess is a better question. But there are so many things to focus on. I'm sure it depends on the timing, the industry that they're in,

obviously the business needs. But can you give any sort of a framework as to where a leader in transition coming into that position should at least frame how they're focusing their attention in these extra crazy times? Sure, so first off, I fully agree with you. And this is one of the reasons when I start working with execs who are going through a transition,

my go-to tool is the Hogan assessment. And the reason I am such a big fan of the Hogan assessment is because it measures reputation, and not the identity of the leader. And I find the reputation angle very, very, very telling and important. Now, and you can, you know, look at the reputation of an organization, I think, if I were to cite just one example, a recent example, Disney, where they have had a very spectacular transition failure. The very top, someone named Bob, who succeeded the other Bob after 26 years of being groomed

for the top job and after about 10 months. And so again, it's just one of the many examples where we see major, major organizations, a safe for our fans, arguably the best choice at the time available, made and then they failed. And I think part of that is due to what you call, you know, the reputation and kind of the downside risk of being a public figure, whether people like to admit it or not. Now, the way I deal with this is and of course, I'm not a PR expert and not a public figure, whether people like to admit it or not. Now, the way I deal with this is, and of course, I'm not a PR expert and not a public affairs guru.

One of the exercises I conduct with the executives in transition is a framework that I use from DDI. And the framework looks at how, after a creative transition, the executive needs to reflect and apply, potentially apply a new mix of skills and activities in the new role. And so if I were to use that in my own little example here, so in my last position at Vodafone, I was the global head of HR, and I partnered with our group, CFO. And so that means that I had people responsibility for 27,000 employees scattered across 24 markets. Now, I was not the CHRO. And, you know, if I look at the

matrix, as in how much time did I spend on core activities, two activities I'm going to mention to you, Tyler, made up roughly two-thirds of my total time invested. And so the first one was getting work done through others. And the second activity was engaging and inspiring employees. And the first one was due to the fact that I was a manager of managers. So that means that I'm not supposed to get involved in the nitty-gritty and the full operational detail of the job. The second one is, of course,

as the global head of HR partnering with the finance function, they need a lot of engagement and inspirational engagement with their people. Now, if I were to be appointed CHR of the same organization, suddenly the orange and the yellow part, that is the beautiful matrix I'm describing to you and to the listeners, becomes almost insignificant. So the combination of these two becomes less than 5% of my total time. But suddenly, three new activities take up two-thirds of my time. These are managing high-risk decisions, navigating organizational politics, and representing the corporate line to internal and external stakeholders. And so you see how sometimes inherently what has made us successful, we would want to just repeat doing that because arguably that very

same thing got us into that seat, got us there the world deserve promotion. But the reality is as my fellow coach Marshall Goldsmith says it brilliantly, what got you here won't get you there. And this is one of the activities that we conduct with the coachee to sit down and having a reflection and a conversation around how they might be needing to apply a new mix of skills and activities in the new position, which may or may not coincide with what they have been doing so far. In the book, you discuss at length how new leaders, transitioning executives, should engage with stakeholders,

how they should engage with direct line leaders, those from the previous position and those from the new position, and other resources that are available for them. So before we go on, I want to talk about a few more case studies briefly and then sort of dive into the nitty gritty of the sort of sub-transition types. I do just want to ask you how you frame the resources that are available to transitioning executives, whether that's the people and the leaders that should kind of be supporting them through that process and what else should be that should be supporting them through that process

and what else should be given to them or brought into that process of transition. Yes. So first off, if the organization is keen to support the executive in transition, which is something that I would highly recommend them to do. I speak about the golden thread, and the reason I speak about the golden thread and not the red thread is because everything is golden about transitions in my book, including the cover. And so the golden thread means that there are three individual players that all need to play a role in order for the executive to transition successfully. First off, and foremost, it's the executive leader themselves. It's the way they approach the transition, it's the time they invest in this upcoming transition, it's the energy they bring to the transition and it's the way they shape

you know people around them. The second player is the organization slash the HR function. Typically HR is the owner of this process. Now I have worked for some of the most admired companies on the planet and whilst they had some of them had fantastic onboarding programs for the general public, so for the general population, as soon as you stepped into the c-suite there was nothing to be administered or applied because there's this inherent belief for some reason that if you go and hire the very best executive leaders, they have everything they need to succeed and there's no more support required, which we know is a myth. And so that is the second stakeholder that needs to play a role. And then the third one is the board of directors.

If you think about what is the core remit of any board of directors, it starts with appointing and potentially firing the CEO. And again, you know, wanting the CEO to not just to be hired, but to succeed as and when they are hired is a responsibility that falls on the shoulder of the board, and more importantly, more prominently on the chair, chairman or chairwoman. And so these are just three pointers chair, chairman or chairwoman. And so these are just three pointers that are, you know, needing to be aligned so that the likelihood of the executive leader succeeding is amplified and the risk of the failure is being minimized at the same time. So I mentioned before, there are a series of transitions within the greater transition.

I believe it's Michael Watkins who you take the sort of primary eight from. I want to talk about those a little bit you actually I don't know if you add some your own in the chapters later in the book as well or if you have kind of adopted those as well but we'll get into those. of these in your book as well. But you know, back in the day of GE, Jack Welch choosing Jeff Immelt and you know, there was three people that were kind of up for promotion there. And it was this big thing, very public. And that to me was kind of like, you know, the diplomacy challenge played out as reality TV almost we've seen in plenty of cases with big tech folks that are sort of working on the like realignment or culture focused transitions, especially when you see the sort of, you know, bro culture as it's been described of like Uber or WeWork or whatever those businesses were that had big problems with their leadership that kind of came out in a really ugly way in the media. You have somebody that comes in and they're dealing with demonstrating to the public that

it's actually not that bad or just fixing it and then demonstrating to the public that it's actually not that bad. In those cases, it's pretty clear what has to be done, I think, off the bat of that transition. In those cases, I think it probably disrupts the processes that you're describing here because you've got to get somebody in quick. cases, I think it probably disrupts the processes processes that you're describing here, because you got to get somebody in quick. They got to demonstrate really fast that they're not toxic and that they're doing things right. But at the end of the day, these challenges, they they kind of all exist because of, you know, the whole array of challenges, especially

at big companies, probably all exist simultaneously, just because of the nature of big business right now, and how rapidly technology advancing and and what all these companies are considering doing for the deeper future so With those things aside that we've seen in the media even though they're exciting and we will talk about them We have talked about them. What tends to be of those sort of eight sub transitions What tends to be the ones that are either, you know, most common, most impactful, maybe early on, or most important imperative to focus on from the start? Yes. So first off, Michael Watkins in his book, Marcio Next Move, cites eight key transition types that I pick as challenges and describe them. But I've added additional four. And one of the more tricky ones is a cross-functional move, which is, you know, I moved from sales to HR and boy, that was anything

but a smooth transition for me personally. And I think for anyone else doing that, they are likely to face something very similar. And I think it's fair to say that just because I spent six years working in sales and then moving into an entry level position into HR, nobody gave me any cookie points for having spent six years in sales. I had to perform from day one like anyone else who had studied HR and was kind of an HR junior at the same time. And so I think

there are multiple of these challenges that can come your way. Rather than picking out one or two where I believe these are crucial, I think you know the one insight I want to share is the fact that one single appointment can lead to a multiple stacking of these transitions at the same time. And that is what is the actual tricky part of the transition. So if I use my own example, I used to work for a fast-moving consumer goods company called BAT, and I was headhunted to come and work for another organization called Roche. The challenges that I faced as part of that one appointment where the new organization

challenged, so Roche was a new company to me and as a matter of fact a new industry and pharmaceutical industry is an industry I never worked in before. The second one was the big promotion challenge. I went from being a regional head of HR to becoming a global HR head. The third challenge that I faced was that I moved from a regional role into the global head office of a large multinational company. And I think it's fair to say that each time you get closer to the center of gravity and the power of the organization, you should expect heightened level of politics or as Michael Watkins kindly puts it, corporate diplomacy challenges. The fourth challenge that I faced

was the international move challenge, which again, you know, some would say, well, you move from Germany to the German speaking part of Switzerland. But I would say it would be the same time if you were getting a promotion to work in Glasgow tomorrow, which technically is an English speaking place. But I think, you I think between New York City and Glasgow, there is a different cultural challenge that may well come in the way. Happen to love Scotland, so I hope that I would thrive in that scenario, but do get your point very much. Yes.

And then the last challenge I was faced with was one that I don't see Michael Watkins talking about, was the fact that the role that I don't see Michael Watkins talking about was the fact that the role that I stepped into was newly created. And that meant that as and as and when I stepped into that position, I had to work with some of the most senior peers of mine to give to me what was supposed to be my new remit. And I think it's fair to say that some of them just wouldn't have any of that and so you know you can imagine how I have to overcome five transition challenges at the same time although technically I was just moving from one company to another. So speaking of stepping

into a new role I would almost make the argument that any leader stepping into a high-up position right now is more or less stepping into a new role just because of what we're dealing with in terms of artificial intelligence and the next phase of the fourth industrial revolution in technology. You make it abundantly clear that a failure to transition executives well has a huge, huge downside. And again, we've all kind of seen this play out publicly

in some cases in the media, but you give plenty of direct financial evidence that this is bad, losses of millions, missing financial goals. There's the reputational damage that comes with a failure like this that not only kind of harms the company, like I said, in the media eye,

but also probably makes it subsequently harder to get somebody into that position and succeed, just because now there's even more pressure on it. I would also say that the loss of time of having somebody who's making concrete decisions, whether they're good decisions or not, but the loss of time of somebody who's making strong-minded concrete decisions,

who's pushing a company forward at this point in time when making big plays technologically and, you know, surveying the land of AI and how that can alter your business and help secure the future. Like I said earlier, future proof things, the loss of time with a failed executive over the period of six, 18 months, you know, two years, four years can really set you back in your industry. And I wonder if there's going to be cases like the fall off of GE among big tech big tech companies now just simply because of, you know, sort of executive transitions going poorly and not making strong moves in the world of technology.

Do you agree with that? Do you see that as being a particular issue at this point in time? Absolutely. I mean, when I started to do the initial research for my book and I stumbled upon the 40% failure rate I thought of it to be a typo I couldn't believe that four out of ten executives don't make it now I cite five independent studies that all come to very similar if not the exact same conclusion and The most validated one that I use in the book is the work that Hydrogen Struggles did.

So Hydrogen Struggles, for those that don't know them, is one of the largest search firms on the planet. And they had done over 20,000 executive placements over a 10-year time period, of which 40% were not around anymore 18 months after they were appointed. And so obviously excluded from this is any promotions. And so, you know, if that is the case, and Harvard Business Review comes to a very similar conclusion, McKinsey comes to a very similar conclusion, Genesis Advisors comes to a very similar conclusion, Genesis advises comes to a very similar conclusion. That then brings us to the question of how can this be? What are the top reasons for executive transition failure? Next to some of the reasons we discussed, which is related to the exponential challenges

that leaders are faced with, and the pulley crisis they find themselves into. If I wanted to aggregate the top three reasons for failure, there would be people, culture and politics. So that means, in other words, this is what HR has been preaching for over two decades now, it's the soft skills that is getting in the way and not necessarily the technical or the functional or the lack of those that is getting in the way of the executive churning. And again, there are multiple studies that are cited in my book. One of them was done by Stolart and Wyckoff that puts a direct cost of failure to CEO exits in the

range of $12 to $52 million, depending on the size of the organization. There's another one that talks about a dollar number as well, but my simple formula is that executive transitions are likely to cost the organization roughly 30 times the cost of the executive salary in a year. It's huge. And so, you know, if that executive is paid a million dollar a year, the total package is a $1 million package. That is a cost of roughly $30 million that the company is looking at as and when the executive is failing. And so I make a very

compelling business case for why this is a worthwhile investment and not a nice to have. So speaking of those three categories of failure, people, culture, and politics, you actually give 10 different reasons, you know, the major reasons for the failures in those transitions. I would like to pick out one or two of those if you don't mind and chat about those. I would like to almost propose my own addition there. Maybe not addition, but reframing of maybe one of them. It feels as if there's sort of an EQ and emotional intelligence disequilibrium that takes place somewhat frequently in these 10 and in the cases that we've seen publicly that results in a transition failure. And by that, I mean, you have like a temperament mismatch is one of them that you describe, just kind of, you know,

lacking the emotional intelligence to sort of be in that position. There just seems to be a handful of those that whether it's the fault of or you know the onus of the individual transitioning or you know the company itself and the people that are supporting that transition there seems to be some sort of emotional disequilibrium and you know a mismatch there of some sort. I'd like to address you know those sorts of failures and if you can offer some insights as to which interventions are maybe best in those cases, or how to, you know, cut sort of cut that off at the head. Sure. And I fully agree with what you said around the EQ, it

just so happens that unfortunately, I do not have that data available to me. This is why I don't cite it as one of the validated reasons for failure. So if more and more leaders were kind enough to share their EQ reports, then we would probably be able to draw some conclusions between their failure rate and their low levels of EQ. But to cite a concrete example, and again, just to be completely clear, I do not know this gentleman. All I know about him is through media and publicly available information. So the name of the gentleman is Dr. Lea Apoteca, who was appointed as Group CEO to Hewlett Packard. He was

brought in with a hoopla and the big mandate by the board of directors. The board of directors at the time wanted HP to be more like Google, more like Apple, more like Amazon. They wanted the HP culture to evolve from what had been arguably a very successful organization. I mean, HP for most of my lifetime has been a champion in their own rights. Whether, you know, it started with printing, it later moved to servers, and then moved into software solutions. But HP has been a fairly successful company, if you think of it.

Now, what happened with this gentleman is he barely lasted 10 months, and he was fired after that time period, and the company had to pay him $7.2 million severance package. But essentially what happened was that he came in from a different organization called SAP, another tech player, and the board of directors gave him the mandate to change that company culture around. But I guess you could call it the lack of EQ or low levels of that. But I guess what happened was that when he started to

tour the world and meet with HP employees, he had all these big old hands all around the world, he met with key suppliers, key customers and so on. This was supposed to be what is called a listening tour, but it turned into a preaching tour. So what this gentleman did was to go around, I mean, just imagine this is his first week, his first two weeks, three weeks, into the new organization. And all he had to say is about all the things

that are not working in this current organization and why they need to change and how much they need to move towards the likes of SAP and other companies that he has been working for successfully. And I think this is a big mistake, obviously, A, because even though the board of directors brought him with that mandate into the company, I talk in my book about the right to earn the right to bring about culture change. And to earn the right to bring about culture change means that you need to spend, I don't know, maybe six months or so at least to learn about what the organizational culture is like, what from those cultural traits you want to preserve and maintain, and which new traits and

behaviors do you want to bring about in the new culture that you would like to establish. And so this is really something that went horribly wrong and probably one of the main reasons why he was fired, because nobody really liked him and nobody really wanted to be on the journey with him. But I think, you know, if we were to kind of, you know, rewind this case and think of the company supporting him with a transition coach and the HR person being a good confidant of his that he would listen to. We would go about to do the exact same thing. We would do the actual listening tour, which means listen more than speak. Stop, you know, heroically talking about your

previous company because you're now in a new organization and you need to listen to learn about them. And just, you know, on the back end of the tour, let's say after three months or so, you then come back to everyone in a large global communication by saying, what is it that you have heard? What are the traits and behaviors and qualities that you would like to continue and maintain and bring forward? And what are one or two things you want to change

and this is based on everything you have heard. Now you see how sometimes that is a much better case to build a coalition of allies and supporters towards bringing about the exact same change that you wanted to bring about, but the way the how you go about it is different as well as the action part. I'd like to take this time now to kind of open up the floor to you to help those HR folks out there that are listening With this process so you put forward the double diamond framework

There is a few different components to this the five C's the diamond acronym as well It's a robust framework and it puts all this together in a really actionable plan. So if you don't mind, I'd love to just give you the floor and have you explain that to our listeners. So first off, it's a seven phase framework. And because I don't know about you, Tyler, but I can never remember anything more than three things at any point in time. So it's seven phases. And if you look at the first letter of each phase and add them all up, they amount to the word diamond. So that's my way of being able to remember what the different phases are. So the first phase is called this cover. This is your day minus 90 to day zero.

And again, it never occurred to me why it would be a good idea to start to do anything until it's your first day on the job and then finish and drop the ball on day 90, which is what the first 90 days and all the other books are suggesting. So again, I think there are very concrete things how an executive leader can prepare themselves for the upcoming transition. Oftentimes they're even announced and they have signed their agreements and so on. Which means that they can be shared with, you know, confidential information about the new company, about maybe minutes of the executive board meetings and so on. So there are concrete ways how the executive leader can start to engage with the new position, although technically they haven't started performing in the role yet. The second phase is called immerse. This is your typical day one to day 90. And again, as I said, I think

any application, anything that's structuring the onboarding process for anyone is a good thing. And of course, there are very concrete things that the executive can do during the first 90 days. That brings us to the third phase called ADAPT. This is your day 91 to day 120. So this is your fourth month into the transition. And here you need to start to think about, okay, if I'm Leo Apotheca, I've learned all about the HP culture, I've learned about what's made this company successful. I know everything about what great leadership looks like in this firm and I also want to bring about some changes which brings me to the phase four. This

is called Mobilize. This is your month four to six where I need to start to bring about some initial change. I need to start to show to the organization that this is the new direction of travel and these are the three incredible reasons why I believe we should all be moving into this direction from where we are to where we would like to get to. And that brings us to the fifth phase called operate. This is your month, sixth month, nine, where you need to start to actually demonstrate that what you have said initially is actually worthwhile to be pursued. And this is the phase where you

also need unless you're the group CEO, you need to start to generate buy in from this neighboring function. So let's say, if I'm the marketing director, and I want to bring about a new product or a new service, I need to make sure that I got finance on the journey with me. I need to make sure that I need to liaise with the technology function because ultimately they are going to build the product for me. And so this is where I need to start to impact sideways and not necessarily upwards or downwards all the time. And that brings us to the sixth phase, which is called nourish. And I have to use the dictionary to find a word that starts with N, that replicates what I wanted to say in this phase.

This is your month nine to month 12. And the nourish phase is where even the strongest opponents of my appointment and my suggestions and recommended actions now are getting to see that it is the right course of action. Let's say and I cite the example of Hannah Sammitsreiter who came to Vodafone Germany and Vodafone Germany has had at the time he joined for something about three to four years declining market share. And so, you know, when he came in, he brought about all these big ideas and I think about half the organization didn't quite believe that what he's suggesting is

worthwhile. But after they saw, after about, you know, nine months of Hannes being around, that actually the market share is starting to pick up and that the RPU, which is the average revenue pair per user is going up, that the profitability of the business is increasing. This is your first low-hanging fruit or first results demonstrating to the rest of the organization that it is worthwhile. This guy knows, this woman knows what he or she is doing. And that concludes the six phases. And the seventh phase and the first phase are the ones that are oftentimes skipped by

leaders because they don't quite believe that they are as important as the rest. And the seventh phase is called develop. This is where the executive leader and the transition coach will sit down after the successful transition and reflect on how the journey evolved, what were some of the surprises that they didn't expect that they had to overcome on the way, and what are one or two things that the executive leader is going to apply next time they're going to a transition. So this is the, you know, what I call the vertical learning element of being in the

trenches, learning how to do things, sometimes making mistakes and learning from those, but sitting down and reflecting and capturing those learnings so that next time they go through a transition again, they do not repeat the mistakes that they made as part of this one transition. And that is the shortest way I can describe the double diamond framework to you or to anyone else. It's I think six minutes now. Fantastic. Thank you so much.

I'm glad that you finished that with develop the final D because you're talking about reflection there. And in my last episode of this podcast, it was our annual one year anniversary. And I decided to do a solo episode on the topic of reflection and how unfortunately in all facets of life but also learning at work and you know in cases of promotion and in cases of transition we tend not to reflect and I feel very strongly and the evidence seems to show that we lose a lot of what we learn and we don't grow as successfully because we simply do not reflect so I appreciate that capping it off there as well. I also, I would like to maybe just ask

as our final question about the five C's that you also embed in the diamond framework, in the double diamond framework, context, culture, commitment, circles of influence, power, et cetera, and confidence. The context, we've talked about a good amount, I think already, and how impactful that is. That's incredibly important.

But my question in an overarching sense is how do we implement these five Cs throughout this seven step framework that you've just laid out? Yes. So first off, anyone who wants to buy the book, if they buy the paperback or the hardcover edition, they will get the actual workbook, which means it's a 31-page document where they can apply the Double Diamond Framework to their own transition. Or if they work in the HR function, they can use it to work with the leader that they're supporting to help them go into those seven phases.

And so the application of this is quite simply, you know, at each stage and before the transition is upcoming, the leader will take some time to sit down and think about when we use the example of context, which is one of the five Cs cited in this example. And by context, we, you know, it's arguably the most important C of all, because it touches upon the circumstances of the organization, the competition, the landscape, the government and the society. And so the executive is invited to sit down and reflect on what is the context of this position of this organization that they are stepping into. I described to them what are the typical activities that I have observed happening during this phase.

And then we talk about how they might want to emphasize some of the elements in this particular scene. And so again, what may be applicable to Tyler and his transitioning into this new role and into this new organization may not necessarily be the same as Nabeel going through a different kind of transition in a different kind of organization. But it's the combination of the five Cs that really helps to de-risk the transition and help the leader to hit the ground running more quickly and more productively. And again, there are three studies that I cite how working with an executive transition coach helps executive leader to shorten what is called the time to productivity By what 50% or more and so again every one of these levers and every one of these

frameworks is really there with the intent to the risk the transition and to give a neck up to the executive and help to Help them to succeed more more quickly. I didn't realize that there was a workbook with the primary book as well, so that's wonderful. Mastering Executive Transitions is the name of the book. Naveed, is there any other way that you'd like to promote yourself? How can people learn more about you? Where can they find you on the internet? I am very active on LinkedIn. One of the top voices on LinkedIn, I post once or twice a week.

I feel very passionate about thought leadership and more importantly, practically implementable thought leadership advice. So I would welcome anyone to reach out to me. I'm very friendly. I connect and manage my inbox myself. So I think that's the best probably starting point to reach out and connect with you.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed our conversation and for everybody listening at home, thanks for joining us as well. We will catch you on the next episode. Cheers. You've been listening to L&D in Action,

a show from Get Abstract. Subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player to make sure you never miss an episode. And don't forget to give us a rating, leave a comment, and share the episodes you love. Help us keep delivering the conversations that turn learning into action. Until next time.