Executive onboarding in two steps
“A company asked me to work part-time for ten weeks, when the intention is to turn me into a full-time head of marketing. They also revealed that it is also an opportunity for both sides to assess their suitability.”
This tentative temp-to-perm lease has pros and cons for both sides. The advice to anyone who receives such an offer is to write their own story.
The advantages for the organization are immediate assistance and a low-risk way of assessing capabilities, motivation and adaptation. The disadvantages are starting a relationship with less than full commitment, communicating some skepticism on the part of the organization, and leaving the door open for the probationer to use the time to find a better job at a different organization.
The benefits to you as a new executive are a foot in the door and a chance to prove yourself, while giving you a chance to assess the organization and continue to explore other options. All of the downsides stem from the organization’s less-than-full commitment to you, which means people above, below, and across the board may be more focused on testing and evaluating you than investing in your future success together.
Hero on a mission
As Robert McKee and Joseph Campbell taught us, a great story is about a hero on a mission.
Start by refining your search. Aim to:
- Make this a full-time role?
- Build a portfolio of part-time, consulting or fractional roles?
- Use this as a stepping stone to a better full-time role somewhere else?
This choice determines how you approach the role.
Pathway to a full-time role
The seven stages of executive onboarding always apply before first contact through offer, acceptance, convergence through Fuzzy Front End and the first few days on the path to team development. While it’s always best to converge the team before trying to evolve it, the key questions here are the timing of the Fuzzy Front End and your rotation from convergence to evolution.
If, like Ajay Banga at MasterCard, you’re taking a role on the way to a different role, you should treat the entire first role as the Fuzzy Front End of the second. Banga came in as President on his way to CEO. Others may come in as X’s deputy on the way to X, or work on a special project on the way to take on a different role.
If, like the up-and-coming head of marketing who sent me the initial offer, you’re in the role you want, but on a part-time or temporary basis, you should act like you’re in the permanent role from day one. The art will be to synchronize your axis from convergence to evolution.
The base case would be to converge for about a month and then rotate with some sort of imperative workshop for you and your team to co-create the way forward: mission, vision, approach, action plans, ways of working.
You’ll want to move faster or slower than this if the need for change is more or less urgent.
In any case, don’t wait for someone to give you permission or to anoint you a permanent leader. Instead, start doing the permanent work. Do it so well that there is never any question on anyone’s part as to whether or not they will give it to you.
Portfolio approach
Other times, you may not want a permanent full-time position. You may want the part-time, consulting gig, or fractional role to continue indefinitely.
Leadership is always about inspiring, enabling and empowering others to do their best together to realize a meaningful and rewarding shared purpose. A key difference between the permanence approach and the portfolio approach is that at some point along the path to permanence you want them to say that you are indispensable and that they need you full-time. With the portfolio approach you want them to say that you make others better, and as long as you have a part of you.
Stepping stone
While you always want to do your best and you always want to create real value, if the role is just a stepping stone on the way to something else, don’t let it distract you from your search. Make sure you block out the time you need for your job search and prevent scope creep into the stepping stone role.
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