In one’s professional life one always faces transition where one may be asked to lead a new project within a strategic business unit or you may be transitioning from a smaller role in a bigger organization to a bigger role in a startup company. How one approaches such transitions become very important for one’s success or failure.
In a startup situation the challenge is to build the structures, systems and strategy from scratch without any clear framework, recruiting and building a high performance team and all but with limited resources. In a situation where you have been told to save a business acknowledged being in deep trouble the challenges are to re-energize the demoralized employees and stakeholders, making effective decisions under time pressure and going deep enough with painful cuts and difficult choices. In case of managing a rapidly expanding business the challenges are to put structures and systems in place for effective scaling and integrating many new employees. In case of re-energizing a previous successful organization that now faces problems the challenge is to convince employees that change is necessary and carefully restructuring the organization. And in case you are in a situation where you have to sustain success where you are told to hold a position by a very successful leader then the challenge is to manage the team the leader has created and also have to find the ways to take the company to the next level. In many cases the challenges may be a mix of the above for which the challenges and to-do list will vary.
