Intro -Taking charge, fast
There are few career moments as exciting and as perilous as taking over the top job at a company, business unit, or department. Here are some tactics to help you take the reins running

1. Begin your transition before you start the job
   Use the interview process to get an early jump on learning about the organisation. Ask critical questions: How are decisions made? What are the key challenges? Which functions are strong, and which ones need to be overhauled? Use that information to build hypotheses about how you would change things for the better.
   
2. Travel widely within your organisation, listen carefully, and look for patterns
   Bruce Patton, co-author of Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most and a partner with Vantage Partners, a Boston-based relationship mana-gement consulting firm, advises new leaders to spend a lot of time listening and asking questions. Talk to employees up and down the hierarchy. “Soon you’ll start to see a pattern about what’s going on,” he says.
   
3. As you ask questions, look for the rising stars whom you want as part of your team
   Your listening tour may help you identify the key players whose skills you need as part of your management team. “If you’re engaging in high quality inquiry, you’ll want to keep people who had good answers,” Patton says.
   
4. Identify the kind of people who will flourish in the environment you want to establish
   Even before interviewing people to assemble your team, take the time to identify the challenges ahead — and the kind of people who are motivated by those situations.
   
5. After you’ve identified the ideal individual, identify the ideal group
   Don’t stop at finding the type of person you need. Envision how this person will interact with others to get the goals accomplished. Assemble the ideal team.
   
6. Acknowledge what you don’t know. Identify the experts and don’t be afraid to lean on them
   No one expects an incoming leader to know everything. Perhaps there is nothing more off-putting to a future team than someone who mistakenly thinks he or she does.
   
7. Don’t be afraid to listen to people who disagree
   Listen actively to the people around you, especially those who challenge your assumptions.
   
8. Clean house if you have to
   Depending on the situation you step into, no matter how clear your vision is, and how evangelical you are, acknowledge that there may be people – some of whom may have already seen your predecessors come and go — who are too jaded to follow.
   
9. Establish a way to communicate with and listen to your entire team
   Your strategic course of action is only as effective as your ability to communicate it. Have the pipeline and protocol set up to get your message out there, and don’t forget that communication goes both ways.
   
10. Don’t trash your predecessor, but don’t be shy about promoting your own agenda
    Do not assume that the prior administration screwed up or lost sight of the big picture. There’s probably an element of truth in that. But it’s almost certainly true that they had a different disaster that they were working to avoid, Patton says. If you’ve got a clear vision of what needs to be fixed, by all means, implement it.
    
11. Settle on a few major priorities. You can’t fix everything at once
    “Typically, you can’t do everything you want to do, so you need to make some strategic choices,” Patton says. “This is where you begin to align the organisation around a common vision for the future.”
    
12. Target a few early wins. Momentum counts, and nothing succeeds like success
    It’s critical for a new leader to create momentum during the transition, say Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins in their book, Right from the Start: Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role. Pick some problems the organisation has not been able to address and figure out a way to fix them quickly to establish a new direction.