The Worst Thing a New Leader Can Do Is Show Up With a Plan

The first query people ask when you take on a new management position is often some model of “What’s your plan?”

It is a truthful query. When you are new, there is a natural temptation to show your worth by displaying up with fast solutions, or a checklist of issues you plan to repair. I have discovered that there is a higher place to begin.

I’m early on in my position at BILL. The questions I keep coming back to in these first three months are how do I need my first days, weeks and months to look. Where should I spend my time and why?  How do I strip away noise and “get to signal” rapidly?  How do I create proximity to the prospects and to groups without slowing down the group’s work? These are issues an entrepreneur is confronted with every day, whether they are stepping into a new position, growing a staff or navigating a altering market.

Every chief is tempted to deliver their playbook. In my opinion, playbooks are a point-in-time illustration of how issues were carried out — perhaps in a totally different company, at a totally different time. 2026 is wildly totally different from even 2025, not to mention 2020. We have to leverage the classes from our previous while building for the future, backed by fashionable applied sciences and buyer expectations.

In a new position, credibility comes from being clear about what you need to accomplish and getting in the trenches. It comes from studying the business, understanding people’s day-to-day, and the buyer pains that help inform a go-forward plan. Your job is to pay attention to the people closest to the buyer and the work, determine the obstacles stopping them from transferring sooner, and empower them.

I believe it’s important to rethink the attainable, but change for the sake of change isn’t useful.  With AI evolving as rapidly as it is, there’s more at stake. AI is reshaping what groups can accomplish, and markets and buyer expectations can change rapidly. The manner I think about it is: How do we prioritize, sequence and deliver the group along on the journey?

Here are 5 rules I am utilizing to study before I lead:

1. Question outdated assumptions, and take a look at your own.

Past selections should inform but not decide current selections. The selections that were proper a yr in the past, or even six months in the past, may not be proper now. The mindset should be: What is working effectively as we speak? Where are prospects encountering friction? Where do groups duplicate work? Which assumptions about the manner we operate are primarily based on present actuality and which ones are merely holdovers?

That doesn’t imply every resolution made before you arrived is improper, just don’t rely on the previous to make go-forward selections.

2. Diagnose before you determine.

As a sensible working self-discipline, remark before motion is important. Finding what’s value protecting is just as important as discovering out what’s lacking or wants to evolve. A new course of or organizational change may finally be essential, but assess the need first. Ask: What downside are we attempting to resolve? What does the group and the buyer truly need? And could technology help us handle it more successfully? This is one place where expertise actually can rely. I not too long ago instituted a forecasting course of that didn’t exist before. Its absence puzzled me, and expertise advised me it was essential to the company’s future success.

3. Let specialists be specialists

Your position is to construct, align and empower a staff, not be the area knowledgeable in every space. In the previous, I have had jobs where I needed area experience, but the greater and more complicated a management position becomes, the more you have to let that go. A new chief earns trust by recognizing the experience already inside the group and making it clear that purposeful leaders have actual possession.

4. Be candid about what you don’t yet know.

Credibility does not require projecting whole certainty. It requires being trustworthy about where you need to study and displaying that you have a disciplined manner to do so. In a position this broad, that means building and aligning the staff while empowering the people closest to each area to lead with their experience.

My duty is to deliver those views collectively, help the staff work toward its best and create the situations for us to succeed collectively.

I use AI as a second mind. As I was beginning at BILL, I obtained tons of of paperwork, including board decks and inside supplies. Leveraging them, I used our major AI device to construct role-specific assets to help me operate. It wasn’t troublesome, and I now use AI as a second voice that helps me sift through and recall giant volumes of info. It’s something that you can use to strategize and validate alongside. There’s a lot to keep in mind, and AI can actually be a pal in that regard. I can use it to rapidly revisit the historical past of an initiative, make clear an acronym or remind myself of the strategic rationale behind a resolution.

Key takeaway

The first weeks in a new position are not about proving that you have every reply. They are about creating the situations for higher solutions: getting close to the buyer, studying from the people who know the work best, difficult assumptions and being deliberate about where to act.

You can’t wait perpetually to make selections, but velocity for velocity’s sake is not prudent, so sluggish down a bit at the starting before you begin to dash. In a market transferring as rapidly as this one, the leaders who will be most efficient are the ones who study fast, ask arduous questions and give their groups the readability and confidence to transfer ahead collectively.

The first query people ask when you take on a new management position is often some model of “What’s your plan?”

It is a truthful query. When you are new, there is a natural temptation to show your worth by displaying up with fast solutions, or a checklist of issues you plan to repair. I have discovered that there is a higher place to begin.

I’m early on in my position at BILL. The questions I keep coming back to in these first three months are how do I need my first days, weeks and months to look. Where should I spend my time and why?  How do I strip away noise and “get to signal” rapidly?  How do I create proximity to the prospects and to groups without slowing down the group’s work? These are issues an entrepreneur is confronted with every day, whether they are stepping into a new position, growing a staff or navigating a altering market.