Working with your new boss
Your new boss will have more impact than anyone else over whether you succeed or fail. Your boss establishes benchmarks for your success, interprets your actions for other key players, and controls resources you need. Building a productive working relationship with him or her while you establish your mandate and negotiate for resources is a clear early priority.
Defining your goals
When you think about working with your new boss, keep the following goals in mind:
? Clarify mutual expectations early. Begin managing expectations right away. You are in trouble if your boss expects you to fix things fast when you know that the business has serious structural problems. So it is wise to get bad news on the table early and to lower unrealistic expectations. Be careful to assess your new organization's capacity for change before making ironclad commitments to your new boss.
? Secure commitments for the resources you need. In conjunction with establishing goals, begin to negotiate for the key resources?people, funding, and knowledge?you need to succeed. Don't commit to goals without getting corresponding commitments on resources. Otherwise you won't have much bargaining power.
? Aim for early wins in areas important to the boss. Whatever your own priorities, identify what the boss cares about most and pursue results in those areas. That way, your boss will feel some ownership of your success. But don't make the mistake of doing things you consider misguided or trivial. In part, your job is to shape your boss's perceptions of what can and should be achieved.
? Aim for good marks from those whose opinions your boss respects. This is an aspect of building supportive internal coalitions. Your boss may have pre-existing relation ...