Moving into a new role: the first 100 days | Practical Law

Moving into a new role: the first 100 days | Practical Law

This note aims to provide a structure for your first 100 days in a new role as general counsel (GC) or head of legal. It focuses on using these early months to become established in the job and plan for the longer term.

Moving into a new role: the first 100 days

Practical Law UK Practice Note w-008-3245 (Approx. 6 pages)

Moving into a new role: the first 100 days

by The Centre for Legal Leadership
Maintained • United Kingdom
This note aims to provide a structure for your first 100 days in a new role as general counsel (GC) or head of legal. It focuses on using these early months to become established in the job and plan for the longer term.
During the first three months in a senior in-house role, there's a lot to take in, especially if you've just moved from a law firm. You'll need to get to know new business processes, a new industry sector, new colleagues and learn to juggle with IT and other resources. In addition, you'll have to put together a convincing plan that the CEO and the rest of the C-suite will take seriously.
From the moment you accept the offer of a senior in-house role, it's a good idea to plan your first 100 days. The initial months in the role are crucial because how you conduct yourself in this period will influence the way senior management, business unit heads, your team and other colleagues view you. This will influence how they engage with you initially and throughout your time in the organisation. The first three months also provide you with the opportunity to assess what your new role will entail and how you'll need to shape your department and the services you offer.

Stage one: commit to presenting a forward plan for your role by day 100

This will show that you've used your time effectively to become properly immersed in the organisation and given your role some serious thought. As you gather the material for this plan, ask yourself:
  • Why am I here? Remind yourself why you chose the role and what personal milestones you want to be able to look back on in the coming months and years (see Practice note, How to assess the suitability of potential new in-house roles).
  • What does the organisation need from its legal function generally and from my role in particular?
  • What's the current status of the legal department in terms of:
    • relevant areas of law and risk;
    • ability to understand and provide legal support to changes in what the business does;
    • priorities;
    • staff;
    • budget;
    • IT;
    • authority;
    • access; and
    • advisers.
  • What needs to change or improve and how can you bridge the gap to make those changes?
  • Who else in the organisation do you want to buy into your plan?
  • How can you sell your plan to your boss and, if you are senior, to the CEO, CFO and the rest of the C-suite?
As the weeks progress, keep your analysis of these factors flexible. You'll probably review your outlook as you uncover more information and develop your relationships.

Stage two: engineer a great handover

If you're fortunate enough to overlap with the outgoing incumbent, make the most of this period. Work with them to document the scope of the role as they see it, complete with workload, priorities, internal and external contacts, and any outstanding or exceptional issues. Take account of any projects that may end, start or spill over from their tenure into yours. Finally, agree how to draft and manage any announcements about your arrival and your predecessor's exit. You should also seek to be a "good leaver" when you leave your current employer; even if only to ensure that you get good references in future.

Stage three: manage the day-to-day work

Even though you're on a learning curve and getting to know the organisation, life still goes on in the legal department. Cover all the main bases, such as:

Stage four: become comfortable with your environment

As the ideas and thinking behind your plan begin to take shape, you should also be getting to grips with the organisation and its:
  • Specific legal challenges.
  • People, including your colleagues (particularly your direct reports) and any external counsel or other advisers. If possible, get yourself a good PA or a share of one.
  • Processes.
  • The "business partners to legal". For example, HR, Finance, IT, Procurement and Internal Communications.
  • Tools.
  • Strategy, new projects, business change, budgeting and planning, forecasting, auditing, procurement and sales functions.
  • Risk and crisis management processes (whether formalised or de facto).
The key here is to watch and learn. Attend meetings and join any relevant working groups. Engage with people at all levels and adopt a frank, open, non-political tone. Try to identify the demarcation lines around who owns which issues. Be friendly, open and helpful but beware of politicians who might try to get you to make commitments, comments or decisions that suit their needs.

Stage five: get the ball rolling

To create a report and recommended action plan for agreement with the CEO, GC or your boss, you need to schedule three sets of meetings with your team and key business stakeholders. These meetings will help you to plan, shape, discuss and agree on the content of your report and action plan. You will need their explanations to understand what needs to be done and their support to do it. Identifying these people and getting engagement from them should be an early priority.
If you run a team, you may want to involve team members in this process. Their knowledge will help you to shape the report and their involvement in it will help them to commit to the deliverables that the report will recommend. It will also help you get to know them and vice-versa.

First meetings: what do you need to achieve?

Discuss the current state of the business, the legal department, your team and your role with relevant legal and non-legal colleagues, and agree the objectives you want to work towards. Create an action plan that takes account of:
  • The organisation's current plans, strategy, investment attitude, shareholder attitude and needs.
  • The organisation's legal needs.
  • Current legal knowledge in the organisation.
  • Gaps in legal knowledge.
  • Contracts, advice and training, policies, guidance, FAQs, intranet guides, precedents, contract playbooks and existing compliance training.
  • The organisation's risk appetite, management style and decision-making processes.
  • The make-up of the legal team, particularly any weaknesses or gaps that may exist.
Hold this meeting as soon as you have a good snapshot of your department and stay close to this group of advisors by email and phone in the following weeks. This will enable you to prompt ideas and test your thinking with them, and also show that you are taking their input seriously and acting on it. However, be careful not to:
  • Be too critical of what you find.
  • Say how much better you did things in your previous organisation.
  • Express astonishment that anyone could put up with or create the mess that you find.
Although your comments may well be true, they will rarely be popular and may create passive resistance and politicking that could ultimately impact your role efficiency and relations with colleagues. Except in a crisis, or where there is a clearly expressed extra, new or different need, it is normally better to talk about steady evolution rather than revolution. Winning hearts and minds will make the difference between passive blocking from colleagues and a proactively supported and delivered plan.

Second meetings: the progress report

Assess what you and your colleagues have done and, crucially, learned. Start to turn your initial assumptions about your objectives and action plans into a draft report, and test your thinking with your stakeholders. It is important to listen carefully at this point as you are trying to understand how they feel and how committed they are to your proposals, as much as whether they think that your thoughts are correct. Aim to have these meetings by around day 40. You should also have an interim progress report meeting with your boss at this stage to make sure that you are aligned with their thinking. There should be no surprises in either direction at the final report stage.

Third meetings: sum up and finalise

Prepare your draft report for the CEO, GC or your boss and include a comprehensive needs analysis and year one plan (and outline three-year plan). After the meetings, finalise the content and prepare to present your report to the CEO, GC or your boss. Hold the third meetings between day 80 and day 90 to give you time to edit the plan before the day 100 presentation.

Stage six: present the plan

If possible, arrange a meeting where you can talk your CEO, GC or boss through your plan to secure agreement on the content and permission to move forward with the action plan. If this is not possible, send the plan via email with a covering note explaining:
  • Your vision for the legal department, your team and your role. Set out how you'll use contracts, advice and training to control and manage risk. Explain which services you can and cannot provide, and why.
  • Your methods. Show the CEO how you'll prioritise risk, what you'll escalate and who to.
  • Your team structure and how your team will work with other lawyers and departments in the business. This should include a "family tree" complete with outline job descriptions and shared resources.
  • The resources you will need. Itemise what your team needs in terms of people, external spend budget, office space, tools, IT hardware and software.
  • Your proposed budget and financial forecast. Your CEO, GC or boss will naturally read your report with costs in mind and will probably share it with the finance director. As well as costs for specific resources, use a risk heat map to set the organisation's costed risk appetite and potential fines for any non-compliance.
Be prepared to negotiate and agree subtle revisions to your plan. Then, once it's agreed and documented, set a reporting structure in place and keep the CEO, GC or your boss updated on your progress implementing the plan.
The Centre for Legal Leadership provides education, coaching, mentoring and related career support services for in-house leaders to get the best performance from themselves and their teams.