The key to success - having a plan
And executing to it. Building a 30-60-90 day plan and executing to it demontrates you know where you're going and how you'll get there, how you'll measure success or course correct. It'll also show your management you can deliver to a crisp set of goals that are clearly agreed upon!
Saved me in my own situation
After receiving a promotion and getting additional responsibility in my organization, the transition to the next level required a major learning curve. This book outlined a lot of helpful information that made my ability to plan, re-organize and gain the support of my colleagues to succeed beyond what I even expected for myself. Armed with the strategies and proper analytical methods to implement changes, as covered in this leadership book, helped me foresee the issues that often plague those who are ill prepared.
Excellent book.
This is essential reading for mid-level and high-level management positions.
Highly recommend.
Helpful and Informative
Do you ever dream of landing a promotion? Who doesn't? You could finally nab that corner office with a view. Your colleagues would start looking up to you as an adept leader (theoretically). Your newfound ability to buy a beach house wouldn't hurt, either.
The reality is different. Promotions, no matter how fantastic they sound, can pose a serious challenge. Just ask leadership transition expert Michael D. Watkins. This former Harvard Business School professor, who now chairs Genesis Advisers, previously wrote the renowned transition guide "The First 90 Days." In his newest book, he chronicles the obstacles that fresh-off-the-promotion leaders face.
"Your Next Move: The Leader's Guide to Successfully Navigating Major Career Transitions" explores how to effectively navigate eight common types of promotions. The types of promotions in the book cover common challenges that leaders face, from leading former peers to politicking correctly in your new position.
Each chapter in this guide is dedicated to one kind of promotion. Starting with a case study of a person facing the situation in question, you learn what risks come with the promotion, why they happen, and how to navigate your new role successfully. Watkins uses academic research, diagrams, and bullet lists to help you understand his points. You'll also learn how your company can help you with your transition in each chapter.
Content
The first chapter describes leadership challenges you might face after being promoted to a new position within your company. In the next chapter, you learn how to effectively navigate the challenges associated with leading former peers, such as asserting authority and changing your relationships.
After that, Watkins moves on the challenges that higher-level leaders face. The "corporate diplomacy challenge" tells authoritative, results-oriented managers how to successfully politick, influence, and build alliances. The "onboarding challenge" shows you how to ease into a new organization without being alienated by the existing culture.
Next comes a relatively condensed chapter on moving to a new location (this is such an involved topic that it really deserves a book of its own). After that, you learn how to navigate the turnaround of a troubled organization, and realign a complacent organization in order to prevent crises.
Your Next Move concludes with a chapter on handling a mixed scenario, or "business portfolio challenge." Here, you figure out where to focus when different parts of your company are at different states of the STARS (start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, sustaining success) continuum.
Comments
Your Next Move prepares you well for any number of promotions. Watkins admits in the first chapter that the book doesn't cover every single transition challenge. But "if you can deal with these eight tough transitions, you can deal with just about anything," he writes. What he does cover, he covers thoroughly, so you're exposed to elements that could appear in a multitude of challenges.
As with any preparatory guide, it is best read with a level head. If you read it in advance of a promotion, as part of your general business education, you'll learn what to expect. When you are promoted, some of the scenarios Watkins describes won't come as a surprise. Instead of firefighting, you'll have an idea of what questions to ask. I think this is the best way to read the book. I'm not sure how helpful it would be if you're already in the midst of a stressful promotion-the book doesn't address survival in depth.
The book assumes basic business knowledge; expect "businessy" language. Personally, the only jargon I found overwhelming was the author's frequent mention of STARS. I thought that despite some technical and academic language, the book flows well.
Watkins' intimate knowledge of transitions makes the book a valuable read. There's no question that Watkins really knows what he's talking about. You don't risk getting uneducated advice in Your Next Move. Watkins integrates a lot of his own rigorous research, but puts it into language most business-minded people can understand.
Overall, I recommend it. It is valuable for anyone with a general business interest, not only those who anticipate an imminent promotion. Read it before you even expect to get promoted, so that you learn how to start off on the right foot.
(Review by Drea Knufken)
Very good book for the manager or executive seeking to climb the corporate ladder.
"Your Next Move: The Leader's Guide To Navigating Major Career Transitions" by Michael D. Watkins is a good book for those who are advancing up the corporate job ladder. It is a sequel to Watkins' "The First 90 Days," also a book I liked.
I'll say up front that this book is not for the person who is looking for a major career transition by completely changing occupations, etc. If you are an accountant, lawyer, or some other profession and you are looking at changing occupations or professions, this is not really the book for you. If you have just gotten promoted, transferred to one of your company's overseas offices, or were hired to come in and take a leadership role in an existing corporation, this book has some excellent advice on these kinds of transitions.
I think the book is best suited for those people in leadership positions of larger corporations or organizations. It's not geared as much for the smaller business owner. The other also expands on his model of situations for leaders from "The First 90 Days" by adding a fifth situation and he calls this STARS. The acronym stands for: Start-up, Turnaround, Accelerated growth, Realignment, and Sustaining success. This model is addressed in several chapters, but most in-depth in chapter 8.
The eight chapters focus on the common career moves the author chose to address in this book. They include: 1. The promotion challenge. 2. The leading-former-peers challenge. 3. The corporate diplomacy challenge. 4. The onboarding challenge. 5. The international move challenge. 6. The turnaround challenge. 7. The realignment challenge. 8. The business portfolio challenge.
Each chapter describes the challenge by first using an example. Then suggestions and solutions are presented, and the chapters conclude with a short checklist of questions to think about and implement in your transition situation. Again, the book is geared toward the larger corporate setting, and for those that are facing a transition in such a situation, this book provides some good advice and will make you think about things that are important to your successful transition. For those wanting to transition out of their chosen path to something else, there are other books for that.
Transitioning to a new role in the corporate jungle can bring many challenges. Watkins' book will help you face those challenges to accelerate your career and help you organization thrive. Very good book for the manager or executive seeking to climb the corporate ladder.
Reviewed by Alain Burrese, J.D., author of Hard-Won Wisdom From the School of Hard Knocks and the dvds: Hapkido Hoshinsul, Streetfighting Essentials, Hapkido Cane, the Lock On Joint Locking Essentials series and articles including a regular column on negotiation for The Montana Lawyer. Alain Also wrote a series of articles called Lessons From The Apprentice.
Guide to Managing Career Change
"Your Next Move" is a follow-on book to Michael Watkins's widely read The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels. More a guide to managing personal career change than anything else, this book offers an interesting framework for handling career growth and change.
The greatest value that I found in this book is the framework laid out for career change -- an area with great potential for unpredictability and disorganization. Put another way, Watkins offers up a good way to think about -- and approach -- a wide array of career change scenarios.
Using the "STARS" framework (Start-up, Turnaround, Accelerated growth, Realignment, and Sustaining success), Watkins gives the reader a set of tools to use when approaching different types of career changes. I think the book goes beyond just career changes -- it offers an interesting way to think about managing different business situations and scenarios in general.
This is an interesting book with direct applicability to professionals undergoing career change. I recommend reading The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels first, however, to begin thinking about how to approach a new major work assignment or career move.
