The first 100 days on the job of a newly appointed corporate executive are crucial. So much so, in fact, that countless books and articles have been written detailing the steps new CEOs must take – and what they should avoid at all cost. Yet McKinsey consultants Michael Birshan and Thomas Meakin note that the bulk of the literature available on the subject tends to be descriptive or anecdotal in nature. In publishing their recent article, How new CEOs can boost their odds of success, they opted for a data-driven analysis, based on the actual strategic measures taken by nearly 600 CEOs shortly after starting the job. The main conclusion of their article: what does and does not work depends largely on the circumstances – but one thing that’s certain is that merely ‘holding down the fort’ is guaranteed to fail.
As part of the research for their article, Birshan and Meakin divided the participating CEOs into two groups: those who took over management of a healthy, successful company and those who found themselves leading an underperforming company. They then looked at strategic decisions CEOs made in the first few years into the job (which, by and large, could be compared across the different companies), ranging from implementing strategic change to management reshuffles and from new product launches to entry into new geographic markets.
The researchers noted that while all participating CEOs in both groups took several of these types of measures (it turns out that management reshuffles are fairly run of the mill), CEOs who take over an underperforming company are significantly more inclined to implement strategic changes and do so with above-average success.
