100-Day Action Plan: Post #2 Due Diligence

Get the job first.

Due Diligence: Before you say “I accept,” act like an investigator and conduct a due diligence audit on the company. The potential sources of critical insider information are what Bradt calls the 5 C’s: Customers, Collaborators, Capabilities, Competitors, and Conditions. Getting to the 5 C’s by seeing how you might be connected (think Linked-in) could save you considerable heartburn. Also, the authors talk about avoiding the “Top Seven Onboarding Land Mines” such as lack of a good organizational model, poor definition and communication about the role of the new executive (you), failure to develop 360 relationships (up, down and across the organization), to mention only three of the seven.