A new seat does not reset your habits. It advertises them. The moves that made you effective in the last role — being the smartest person in the room, owning every number, never missing a detail — can become the reason the new team waits for you. Role-transition work is about that first stretch, not a downloadable ninety-day kit.
At Hanover Executive the work is about who can block you, which decisions are actually yours, and what you must stop doing. Hanover Executive does not run outplacement or search.
Map the rights, not the rituals
Onboarding kits love rituals: coffees, listening tours, a ninety-day plan you could have downloaded. The useful map is colder. Who signs. Who can stall. Which committees are theatre. What the chair already decided and has not said. Rituals can wait until the rights are named. If you reverse that order, you spend the first quarter being liked and still not knowing who can stop you.
I do not publish those maps. They belong to the executive. Hanover Executive has no placement practice.
A new seat also imports a calendar. The old role’s meeting stack will try to survive. If you cannot name one thing you will stop attending, you are not yet in the new job. You are visiting it. Write the stop list in the first stretch, not as a new year’s intention.
| Question in the first stretch | Useful answer | Leave it |
|---|---|---|
| Who can block a decision? | Named people and forums | A listening-tour calendar |
| Which decisions are actually yours? | A short list, in writing | A generic ninety-day plan |
| What must you stop doing? | One imported habit, named | Being available to everyone |
| When does this stretch end? | A review date | “Once I am settled” |
Prior operating chairs I have sat in are public. They are not a guarantee about your first hundred days.
Bring the old role to the first meeting
The first conversation should name the habit you are most likely to import. If you cannot name it, you are not ready to be coached on the new seat. Wait. Waiting does not mean you are unserious. Starting without the habit named is how the old job colonises the new one under a coaching banner.
When you are ready, get in touch with the role you are entering and the stretch you want to define. Do not send the old org chart as a confidential dump. Name the seat, the start date, and the habit.
What this work will not become
It will not become outplacement with a nicer name. It will not become a search brief in which the coach “keeps an ear out.” It will not become a 360 that the sponsor already wrote. If the brief is a file on someone, we decline. If the brief is a leader who has asked for help in the first stretch of a new chair, we can talk.
A sounding-board hour the night before the first board in the new seat is a different conversation and can sit beside the series. Mix them without naming them and you will get a smoother first board and the same imported habits. Name them. Then keep the calendar, or do not book the work.
The first stretch is also when sponsors get impatient. They want colour. They are entitled to process: that you are meeting, that there is an end date. They are not entitled to a file on how the new seat is going. If the brief slides toward a file, we decline. The new chair is still yours.