Assimilating New Leaders : The Key to Executive Retention

Rating:
Summary: A must read for any new leader or aspiring leader!
Review: How many times have you read a book and then found yourself wishing, if only I had had this book way back when.....In this case, I kept finding myself saying, "if only I had had this book when I started this new job, I would have known that I wasn't alone in what I was going through." Apparently, the trials and frustrations of organizational politics and culture come in a common and predictable form. This book is full of insights and tips about how to build relationships and influence in an organization quickly and strategically. I found the author's description of the four stages of assimilation process to be particularly insightful. The psychology of the assimilation process really resonated with the experience I've had time and time again each time I've taken on a new job. While the author's assimilation model does not reflect radically new information about what happens when you enter a new job or company, it is full of intuitive truths about what one often forgets. After all, how many times have we repeated the experience of starting a new job, new company, joining a new team and yet how often do we learn from that experience to be more deliberate in our actions and change our behavior in a given situation to have a greater impact? Then before you know it, you've left the company, joined a new company and make the same initial mistakes you made previously. And then in hindsight, you say to yourself, "I wish I had done this differently" or that you had the power of hindsight. Well, with this book, you do. While the tactics in the book are targeted to an HR audience, the author shares a multitude of practical insights and tools to help you as a leader make decisions at those critical points, understand and analyze the political and organizational dynamics within your organization, and develop a plan for short term wins and long term impact within your organization. The executive handbook in the back of the book was particularly useful tool.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Organizations spend vast amounts of time, money and energy to recruit and hire top executives. Then those same companies let these new valuable employees sink or swim totally on their own. A new receptionist is likely to receive more attention than a new division manager, as author Diane Downey explains. Despite its jargon-laden title, this enlightening book will change the way you think about hiring or being hired. We from getAbstract recommend this book to any manager who hires, who is being hired for a high-level job or who would like to be.