When starting a new role, Jim Stengel's first move is to interview leaders in other functions and ask, 'What can I do for you to help you achieve your goals?' This simple act builds immediate trust, uncovers hidden organizational challenges, and establishes a collaborative agenda from day one, transforming the spirit of the room.

In your first 90 days, resist the urge to be the expert. Instead, conduct a "listening tour" by treating the organization as a product you're researching. Ask questions to understand how work gets done, what success looks like, and what challenges exist at a systemic level.

To quickly build a new sales process, a sales leader joined every single discovery call. This allowed them to understand customer problems firsthand, iterate on the process in real-time, and gradually certify reps by taking over less of each call over time, rather than building a process secondhand through call reviews.

A PM's first job is to earn influence, not exert authority. This is achieved with a 'listening tour'—proactively meeting key people in engineering, sales, and marketing to understand their challenges and build relationships before proposing any product work.

First-time leaders often feel pressure to have all the answers. Instead, they should embrace a "beginner's mind," openly admitting what they don't know. This creates a safe environment for the team to share mistakes and learn collaboratively, which is crucial for building a playbook from scratch.

When you're hired into a leadership role, it's because the company needs something fixed. Conduct a "listening tour" specifically to understand the underlying issues. This reveals your true mandate, which is often a need for more innovation and faster speed to market.

Target sales leaders who were promoted from an individual contributor role within their current company. Acknowledging this specific achievement shows deep research and helps you build a narrative around consistency and execution, which can then be used as a metaphor for your product's value.

Many leaders mistakenly manage their team as a single entity, delivering one-size-fits-all messages in team meetings. This fails because each person is unique. True connection and performance improvement begin by understanding and connecting with each salesperson on a one-on-one basis first.

A sales leader's success is determined less by personal sales ability and more by their capacity to attract a core team of proven performers who trust them. Failing to ask a leadership candidate 'who are you going to bring?' is a major oversight that leads to slow ramps, high recruiting costs, and organizational inefficiency.