Latest / Fit Happens: Why CEOs and Leaders Succeed or Fail / The One Sentence Every Executive Should Write Before Day One
Transcript
- (0:00 - 0:23) Jason Baumgarten: I'm Jason Baumgarten and you're listening to Fit Happens, the podcast where top leaders, investors, and board directors share the stories, surprises, and hard-earned lessons behind finding the right fit. Let's get into it. Let me start with a question that sounds obvious and ends careers when it isn't answered. (0:23 - 0:42) Jason Baumgarten: What were you hired to do? I've watched this happen more times than I can count. A company hires a new executive, CEO, CFO, CHRO, it doesn't really matter. They have an impressive background, strong references, and the announcement, the PR, sounds like a victory lap. (0:42 - 1:01) Jason Baumgarten: And then 90 days in, the air changes, not because the executive is incompetent, but because they're just, they're solving the wrong problem. Here's what it looks like in real life. A board hires a leader because the industry is shifting, technology is rewriting the economics, competitors are moving faster, customers are changing their expectations. (1:01 - 1:11) Jason Baumgarten: They need innovation, they need transformation. They need a leader who can disrupt their status quo before the market does it for them. So the executive shows up and does what they've always done. (1:11 - 1:40) Jason Baumgarten: They protect, they're stable, they optimize the current model, they reduce risk, they manage for continuity. Those are valuable skills, just not for this company and not for this moment. They wanted to hire a transformation leader, an innovator, and they got a little more of a caretaker, an optimizer, and that gap between what the executive believes the job is and what the organization actually needs is where fit breaks and performance breaks soon after. (1:41 - 1:58) Jason Baumgarten: On Fit Happens, we talk about a simple truth. Performance is not about capability, it's performance applied to the right mandate, in the right context, with the right stakeholders, in the right sequence. Most executives, most failures aren't a core talent problem. (1:58 - 2:09) Jason Baumgarten: They're a fit problem. They're a mandate problem. So today I want to talk about a framework you can use immediately when you just started a new role or you're six months in or you're about to take the new one. (2:10 - 2:19) Jason Baumgarten: It's about the clarity of your mandate. You have one sentence. If you can't write this sentence about your role, then you don't have clarity. (2:20 - 2:30) Jason Baumgarten: Here it is. It's pretty simple. I was hired to do X as measured by Y while avoiding Z and by building systems and teams that make it repeatable. (2:31 - 2:36) Jason Baumgarten: That's the whole episode. We're just going to unpack it. X, Y, Z, repeat. (2:36 - 3:19) Jason Baumgarten: So let's start at X. What problem did they hire you to solve? What thing are you here to do? Not your job description, not a list of functional responsibilities or list of stakeholders or meetings on your calendar. The actual problem, the outcome, why now? Why did they hire you this quarter, this year, this moment? Why didn't they promote internally? Or if you are the internal promotion, why you? It tells you the real mandate. Do they need to restore investor confidence after missed quarters? Is there a business model disruption they're worried about? Do they need to professionalize something, stabilize cash flow? This is not about a list of tasks. (3:19 - 3:35) Jason Baumgarten: It's actually the mandate, the big thing you're there to do. If you define that X as a series of activities, you'll have a lot to do, but you won't necessarily be successful. So that's the X. That's the X factor, if you will, the big mandate for a job. (3:35 - 4:10) Jason Baumgarten: It's important to really understand what it is, why it is, why it is now. And that allows you to move on to the Y. How will your boss, whether it's a board of directors, a CEO, or maybe your first manager ever, how will they judge success? What I find a little bit scary is that most people, even when they have a clear definition of what they want you to do, they may not have thought through what success looks like or what your success should look like versus some other performance metric that you actually can't control. Everyone assumes the scorecard's obvious. (4:10 - 4:14) Jason Baumgarten: You want to win. You want to have great results. But often it isn't. (4:14 - 4:31) Jason Baumgarten: There's hard metrics, there's trust metrics, there's soft metrics, and many people have some they're drawn to. Hard metrics are more straightforward, revenue, margin, churn, CAC, attrition. Those are things that we can measure. (4:31 - 4:58) Jason Baumgarten: They're relatively unambiguous. There are also soft metrics, credibility, cultural health, decision quality. So when you have a hiring manager, a board or someone else, you need to really focus on in 12 months, 6 months, 18 months, different time periods, what would make them say they've made a good hire and what would make them say they didn't and that they need to make a change. (5:00 - 5:56) Jason Baumgarten: And if you don't know the scorecard, what will be the process to firm it up? Is it all about the bottom line or is it about something else? The other thing is that once you know the scorecard, once you know the results you're trying to deliver, you can also get a little bit more detailed around can you control those outcomes? Now, famously, Amazon is one of their leadership principles, talks about inputs and outputs metrics. I'm a big believer in this because sometimes if you're a public CEO or executive, the market might just not like your sector for a couple of years. If you're leading the company during those couple of years and continue to have great inputs in terms of the quality of the product, the number of customers, the average revenue per customer, the low churn, the low customer acquisition cost, great industry accolades, those are things you can control. (5:56 - 6:20) Jason Baumgarten: Share price, while it's super important, may not be directly in your control. It may be that people are worried about AI or they're worried about something else. Again, really thinking about what you can control that you hope will lead to the output metrics you all care about, but making sure that you are measured on the things that you can do something about and that you have appropriate mandate for. (6:20 - 6:33) Jason Baumgarten: If you're the CEO, that scope is pretty broad. It could be everything from culture to customer churn. If you are the head of product, you probably want to think really hard about what you have control over in these metrics. (6:33 - 6:47) Jason Baumgarten: I'll tell you a funny story. When I came back to Spencer Stuart, I was asked to open a Seattle office and I thought that obviously meant we'd open an office. Now this was pre-COVID, pre-virtual, pre-work from home. (6:48 - 7:05) Jason Baumgarten: And about a month in, I had gotten a couple of clients and I'd sort of gotten the team ready and I went to my boss and I said, okay, I'm ready to start looking at real estate. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, well, we're going to open an office. And he said, well, I thought everyone could just work out of their houses for a while. (7:05 - 7:20) Jason Baumgarten: Well, again, it was a great example for myself of not having enough clarity. He wanted revenue, but I actually wanted to control the team, the environment, the quality of work. And back then that required having an office. (7:20 - 7:51) Jason Baumgarten: It was a big ingredient, a big input, something we had to do to get credibility. Now, after some back and forth, we eventually agreed we would open an office, but it was interesting that it didn't occur to me to even ask that opening an office meant opening an office. Proud to say we now have an incredible team here in Seattle and an incredible office, but it just goes to show that we can all learn to clarify the mandate even more carefully and then really get crisp on the judge of success. (7:51 - 8:04) Jason Baumgarten: For me, I would have assumed opening a physical presence was part of that success criteria. For him, it was really just revenue. So again, if you don't know the scorecard, your results may not count. (8:05 - 8:22) Jason Baumgarten: So then you get to Z. What can go wrong? What do you have to avoid? What are the third rails along the way? Now this often feels a little political, and the reality is it is, but it's also reality. Every role has third rails. Every role has things that can blow you up. (8:22 - 9:10) Jason Baumgarten: Even if you have the right objectives, the right goals, the right team, the right resources, that could be we've got a member of the team that the board doesn't want to see you replace, or we don't want conflict with a founder, or we don't want surprises, or we don't want to spook our top investors, or we have no interest in risking breaking anything that is there today, but we would try some experiments on the side. You don't know till you start poking and asking, what are the ways that you might fail? What are the unwritten rules? What are the things that are third rails? Now sometimes the company itself, the hiring managers of the board haven't thought these through because they're unwritten. It's how the organization protects itself. (9:10 - 9:33) Jason Baumgarten: It's how the board protects itself. It's not something that you violate from a rule book, and it's often the subtle aspects of fit that make you either really excited about your job or really annoying. I always remember years ago, we ran a session for the top 100 executives at Kodak. (9:33 - 10:12) Jason Baumgarten: Now this was back in the 90s, and Kodak was really debating how to address digital photography. They were actually a leader in the space, and interviewing one of the top executives, we talked about what did he love about his job? What drove him nuts? What were the irritants, as I always call the sandpaper, and it turns out there were a lot of little things that made it very hard for him to do his job that he felt that he just wasn't empowered to fix because it was this subtle, unwritten rule of who got to do what. And part of the key unlock was really being able to say, these things are things in your control that you can impact. (10:12 - 10:30) Jason Baumgarten: And for him, that was a big aha, because he didn't think he could change the fax paper. He didn't think he could change a procedure. And when we started saying, well, why not have you tried? It turned out that this was a third rail that actually wasn't a third rail, but he thought it was. (10:30 - 10:54) Jason Baumgarten: So really poking and prodding at what's possible can be incredibly effective. And then you get to the last piece, the system. What is the machine that you have to build to sustain what you want? What is durable versus a quick flash in the pan? And you know, most executives are not hired to be a hero, to be an individual contributor, to save the moment. (10:55 - 11:12) Jason Baumgarten: You're there to build something that is durable beyond you. And whether you're a CEO, part of the C-suite, or frankly, a first line manager, you want to create the right conditions where the right work gets done by the right people. And you shouldn't have to be the one pushing every button yourself. (11:12 - 11:27) Jason Baumgarten: So what is that operating model? And what is that make the mandate repeatable? Who has decision rights? What are the cadences? Again, this is something that a lot of executives may get the mandate right. They may get the measurement right. They may get the third rails right. (11:28 - 11:43) Jason Baumgarten: But then they fail because they don't build something that's sustainable for them or the organization. They rely a little bit too much on their personal horsepower and they need the infrastructure around them. And again, this would be that fourth piece that allows it to be sustainable. (11:43 - 11:49) Jason Baumgarten: You can't be in every meeting. You can't be in every project. So now you have the clarity. (11:50 - 12:03) Jason Baumgarten: You've got the sentence. How do you get it right fast before the job fills your calendar and steals your attention? Here's a simple approach. In the first 30 days, your job is actually not to prove yourself. (12:03 - 12:16) Jason Baumgarten: It's to really align on the mandate. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, if you give me six hours to chop a tree, I'll spend four hours sharpening the ax. Have the mandate conversation with your hiring authority. (12:16 - 12:41) Jason Baumgarten: Hopefully you've already had this as part of the hiring process. But really dig in further now that you're part of the team and sitting on the same side of the table. If you could only pick one outcome for me this year, what is it? What can't go wrong while I chase it? Where do you expect resistance and from whom? What do you expect in 30 days, 90 days, 180 days? Get crisp and tactical. (12:41 - 13:02) Jason Baumgarten: If I'm going to reflect back, what do I think I'm being hired to do? What am I not being hired to do? Ask that question. That single move changes the trajectory because you're not performatively trying to score points. You're aligning on what game you're playing because it prevents that silent mismatch that kills trust later. (13:02 - 13:16) Jason Baumgarten: You might think you were hired to do a lot of innovative work and you spin up a bunch of projects, launch a bunch of things in the market. And the board says, actually, you are here to ensure that we have reliable earnings. So that would be the first couple of weeks. (13:16 - 13:47) Jason Baumgarten: Then you really want to validate with a broader group of stakeholders who can accelerate and be part of the play or who can block you visibly and clearly or subtly and passive aggressively. For the CEO, that's typically the board, could be major investors, could be a couple of members of your exec team that are critical to that particular playbook. If you're a C-suite leader, you drop down, it could be your peers, people with institutional memory and access, and your CEO. (13:48 - 14:07) Jason Baumgarten: For each one of them, what would you notice if I'm not doing this well? How would you feel if we got the following mandate done? Early signals create confidence and confidence buys you time and room to operate. Ask them to think about the next 60 to 90 days. Ask them to think about the landmines ahead of you. (14:07 - 14:40) Jason Baumgarten: And then as you get past the first couple of months, you're really looking at how do you build the system? Build the smallest set of systems that will deliver your mandate. What are the operating metrics? What are the key talent moves? What are the decision making approaches? What is the data you need? And be really clear about making sure everyone knows the mandate and the system behind it. A really early test is get your team together and ask them all to write down what the strategy or the mandate is and how we'll know when we've achieved it. (14:41 - 15:01) Jason Baumgarten: You can ask them what moment we're in. What is the mandate? What is the scorecard or the measurement? What are the big risks or third rails? And then how will we reinforce this with the system? The more you circulate this, the more you engage with people on this, the more they'll understand it. And importantly, not just understand it for you, but for them. (15:01 - 15:20) Jason Baumgarten: What is their part in that moment and that mandate? Some of the common ways executives get this wrong. First, they assume that their strengths or the mandate or what they did in their prior job. And the reality is you're not hired or you're not evaluated on your history. (15:20 - 15:37) Jason Baumgarten: You're evaluated at what you're doing now. So not just what are you great at, but what does the organization really need right now and how will I deliver that? The second is people confuse activity with alignment. They get really busy. (15:37 - 15:41) Jason Baumgarten: They've got lots of energy. They've got lots of output. They've got lots of wins. (15:41 - 15:53) Jason Baumgarten: But actually, a lot of people either don't understand what they're trying to do or they don't understand how they fit in. So again, here's your assignment today. Write this sentence. (15:53 - 16:09) Jason Baumgarten: I was hired to do X as measured by Y while avoiding Z and by building a system that makes this repeatable. And if you can't write that, whether you're brand new in the job or 10 years in, get clarity. Share it. (16:09 - 16:19) Jason Baumgarten: Share it with the people who matter to you, not just your boss, but even your family. Because this is where fit happens. Because performance isn't just what you can do. (16:19 - 16:36) Jason Baumgarten: It's what you are hired to do here, now, and in this moment with the people around you along for the ride, on the team, cheering you on as part of the game, playing to score the points to win. That's what makes the work so exciting. I'm Jason Baumgarten. (16:37 - 16:37) Jason Baumgarten: See you next time.