Setting New Starters Up To Fly Or Fall

It was largely with indifference I casually read of Apple's handing of the baton.

No-one seems untouched by their astonishing rise these past three decades. Bursting from the Jobs re-reign. Treading water perhaps, albeit of the most sun-blessed azure kind, yet growing twelvefold since through Cook.

Now there's Ternus. Who? Who cares. What is of note to us solution sellers, is the platform the new boy's been given.

Apparently a new iphone is coming. Yep, there's one every year isn't there? And each iteration seems less buzzy, certainly less relevant, than what went before. Yet this one, the 'leaks' insist, is different.

For it folds.

I have seen people use such devices as they exist today. They look useless. The crease just doesn't work. But. Know how the pre-Apple smartphones went too?

Forget the actual tech step. Think of the context.

This product is apparently years in development. Considered if not a game changer certainly the giant's biggest launch in years.

So the outgoing boss would have every right to hail it. In all his valedictory glory. But no. The limelight is instead afforded to his successor.

I also read a while back a broadsheet columnist described as "serial entrepreneur". I read them now, bewildered by precious little evidence they have actually ran a fledgling, growing business from the 'advice' they impart. So generic or vapid or unbrushed by reality it regularly appears.

As can be the case, the problem we can agree on. The fix is another matter entirely. Here's one such point they make. Anyone new in-post "wants to show a few quick wins and ensuring there are some ready for the new appointment to deliver is a great way to help establish them as a leader".

Apple's succession planning is doing that in part here.

Yet there's clearly more.

The platform you create for the newbie to make their telling mark, whether they rise from within or parachute in, can get overlooked. And let's be frank, HR aren't going to mould it for us.

All too often we'll see a new starter left to it along with their 'little black book' for instance. Spoiler: that never works. (Two reasons, it won't exist and just chucking 'em in never works).

I also think on the latest transfer window just shut in football. Where some elite EPL clubs new managers have supposedly been 'undermined' by their upstairs recruitment gurus underperformance. Leaving them without the tools with which to work their magic.

Taking someone on is never enough.

We must sculpt their environment to best allow them to then succeed. Sales reporting that sings. Leads genuinely qualified and as hot as can be. Targets realistically set by those with Sales DNA, challenging yet achievable. And most importantly, a sales process that shows sustainable, repeatable and refineable qualities.

I've seen new sales appointments fatally flounder from the very off. Quickly bemoan the 'dross' they've been left with. Shorn of authority to pursue their given goals. Shouting in a silo where no-one answers their echo.

Adherence to process is one key thing. Wrapping it all up in a coherent framework quite another to give your new starter the runway to fly, rather than setting them up to fall.