Right from the Start,
Dan Ciampa &
Michael Watkins,
Harvard Press, 1999
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.
"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 Adviser
LucentTechnologies
"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
