Product Description

"This book can help the recently promoted cope with those frightening career moments that arise as soon as you get what you're after." -BookPage

Whether you are succeeding a much-admired boss or charged with implementing sweeping, potentially unsettling change initiatives, a new role is fraught with obstacles. To ensure that your first steps in a new job will lead to enduring success, Right from the Start lays out an action-oriented framework to follow during the early months of a transition. Dan Ciampa and Michael D. Watkins 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. Right from the Start combines this tactical advice 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41144 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 316 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781591397922
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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

Review
"This book can help the recently promoted cope with those frightening career moments that arise as soon as you get what you're after." -BookPage"

From the Back Cover
"Leadership transition is one of the most important and difficult tasks a manager will face. Ciampa and Watkins' insights-particularly about the 'early days'-and their advice for meeting these challenges are indispensable." -Henry Schacht, Director and Senior Advisor, Lucent Technologies "Ciampa and Watkins' analysis speaks to leadership in the private sector, but every page in the book yields help and insight for those of us in the public or nonprofit world as well. Right from the Start intertwines telling vignettes with advice that leaders will want follow-before it's too late." -Robert L. Gallucci, Former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, and Dean, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University "This book makes a great gift for friends who have just been appointed to new jobs. Right from the Start covers all the essentials for managing a smooth transition, a process critical to attaining leadership success. Read it now. Then read it again when you get your next promotion." -Major General Perry M. Smith, Author of Rules and Tools for Leaders, and President, Visionary Leadership Ltd. "Right from the Start skips the abstract theories and tired platitudes of so many leadership books and gets to what works-a tried-and-true practical framework for making the bottom line hum. Those who take leadership seriously cannot afford to overlook this book." (Gerard R. Roche, Chairman of the Board, Heidrick & Struggles) "Right from the Start is a superb handbook for executives in transition-a trenchant, engaging, and continuously rewarding guide through the crucial start-up period for a new leader." (Kevin Klose, President and CEO, National Public Radio)

Customer Reviews

A 'must read' for any leader entering a new organization
I found Right from the Start an extremely well researched and comprehensive set of tools which will greatly benefit any senior executive entering a new organization. It is the only book I have read which so clearly outlines the management pitfalls awaiting any new leader in his first few weeks on the job. I find it hard to imagine how even the most talented and experienced manager could not benefit from such a practical and common sense approach to the challenging task of taking over the leadership reins of a new organization, regardless of its size. As a venture capitalist and LBO investor, I plan to give copies to anybody entering the executive suites of all the companies in which my money is invested.

Dealing with leadership succession
Here is a book on leadership that has found a gap in the coverage of the plethora of leadership texts that beset us. It is concerned specifically with the transition between leaders, whether to an anointed internal successor or to an outsider. The coverage of both the issues and suggested solutions is thorough, systematic and clear and is based on extensive conversations with people in the situation of taking up a senior leadership role. It is also relatively unsurprising. My only - minor - criticism is that the book is unnecessarily long, largely because it includes a great deal of material that is common to all stages and situations of leadership rather than sticking to the specifics of the transition situation.

Great gift for a friend strarting a new job at a new company
I bought this book for a friend who was leaving one investment bank to head up a group at another bank. After reading the book, he told me that the situations described and issues discussed were dead on correct. He had thought that the challenges he faced were unique, but amazingly this book had illustrated the many common issues facing managers in a new company and gave useful guidance in how to deal with them. Oddly, he said that he couldn't put the book down--praise usually reserved for a thriller. Evidently, it applies when a book can improve your life as well.