Field Note #5: Deciding before you know what matters
“He’s got charisma, but not charm”
It seems like an innocuous statement, a throwaway line. Still, it stopped me in my tracks during a client meeting last week.
I had to ask myself the difference and whether I had mistakenly been using them interchangeably. Turns out, I had been inadvertently combining two ideas into one. Where charisma is the way we draw people to us, charm is how interested we are in others.
The conversation came about as we reflected on the impact a new CEO was having on an organisation we both knew well. It had undergone significant change since they arrived, and we were analysing why.
On the surface, it was a conversation about CEO transition. A deeper look exposed a different question:
What does the system reorganise around when leadership changes?
As the previous CEO departs and the incumbent arrives, it can be easy to explain changes as resulting from different “personality” or “leadership style”. While those differences may be relevant, I’m not sure they fully explain what happens in a leadership transition.
I think what matters more is how the team interprets the new CEO’s behaviour.
Change at the top is more than substituting one human for another. It is the redefinition of key system components: the source of authority, decision-making autonomy and power in relationships. It challenges the way the organisation operates.
People observe meetings, conversations, emails, decisions and reactions. Each one adds a data point, creating a new sense of what the system is organising around. Through those observations, people infer meaning.
They form views about:
“What matters here (now)”
“What I need to do to succeed”
“What I need to do to minimise risk”
“Who is influencing the decisions” and “Who is making the decisions”
Suddenly, what gets rewarded is different. The ‘right decision” is harder to make because what matters most isn’t the same. And that feels uncomfortable. Sometimes even unsafe.
The team perspective forms interaction by interaction. Trust, access to information, power dynamics, cross-functional relationships, decision-making authority, risk appetite and sometimes even organisational identity are in play.
The team don't have the luxury of waiting to act until they know, fully understand or trust the new leader.
Day-to-day business operations continue. People get hired and fired. New products get launched. Investments get made. All with incomplete information.
That’s not new. Leaders face that every day. The difference is that in transition mode they act before they fully understand what the new leader values. They are making a “best guess” about what matters most and whether their judgment will be applauded or punished.
From the outside, leadership transitions may look like they focus on mechanics - onboarding, getting up to speed, quick wins, first hundred days.
Perhaps one of the least visible aspects of leadership transition is that teams continue making consequential decisions while they are still discovering what good judgment looks like to their new leader.