A Leader's Guide to Making an Impact

People need a map first before they can understand the terrain.

You have fresh eyes and can see what others don’t.

You are the map maker.

You have the courage to ask questions, seek to understand, and document what you are learning. This means while you started with a blank canvas, you are quickly filling it up with high value information.

Your map is not only filled with fresh info, its got your unique perspective. Your map is a catalyst for others.

You are confident in yourself, so sharing work-in-progress doesn’t bother you.

And because you are helpful, not perfect, you show your map to others – early and you quickly stand out as a great listener, a person that is insightful, and a collaborator.

This comes easily because you believe seeking to understand is a natural thing to do.

As a result, you run plays in the playbook others don’t.

And that’s why you - in your first 90 days - make an impact.

Your map has captured things like:

• What do we know. (the space, competitors, table stakes)

• What's in flight currently (discovery, pilots, test and learns, delivery, and big objectives)

• Who cares (stakeholder, customers, and upline versus peers and interested collaborators)

• Why does it matter (define business benefits, value creation and outcomes that are relevant)

• What’s valuable and to whom

Because it’s your first 90 days of a new role or team you know you get to be the "why and what" guy - it’s a free pass. So you bravely ask about everything from simple to sacred, from obvious to interesting. The questions are unlimited, the asks can be wild, bold, and profound. No one will judge.

And people love responding to questions and talking about their work or their challenges and insights.

So you can literally start booking one on one meetings or small group meetings and saying "I'm the new guy and looking to understand what you do and what context you have about abc and xyz". This creates your free pass to ask great questions.

From here you can create a large mental map:

1. Who’s your best customer
2. What’s your most valuable offering
3. Who cares about what the team does and why
4. What does success look like and what does that tell you
5. What’s your big hunch that you want to form problem statements around and validate
6. What’s your greatest area to make an impact
7. What is your perspective of the current roadmap and big objectives
8. What obstacles and challenges are becoming clear
9. What might you or the team do about this

As you put more cycles against your question, learn, document, share, repeat, you activate cross-functional discussion and get interesting diverse feedback. That feedback moves you to a place of collaboration, shared context, and clarity.

This changes everything for your early days of bringing value and perspective to the team and company.

#ThePathOfALeader
#GSD

Appreciate you,

Justin