How new leaders can achieve collective quick wins

The breakneck pace of today's business environment makes quick wins critical. But for 40% of new leaders, striving for such wins leads to failure. In this month's Harvard Business Review, Mark E. Van Buren and Todd Safferstone, practice manager and managing director, respectively, of the Corporate Executive Board, look at how the pursuit of quick wins affected the successes and failures of 5,400 new leaders. They talked with Kathleen Melymuka about their findings.

Your research shows that the most successful new leaders secured quick wins. Why are quick wins so important? Van Buren: The payoff is things like improved performance, but beyond that, there are significant business ramifications of not getting off to a quick start. In this economic environment, there is a really strong imperative on leaders moving into new positions to demonstrate that they are able to get the business to where it needs to be in a really short period of time.

We think this is especially critical for IT leaders, because many of them are in positions where they will be working on projects with a long payback, and it's important for them to establish credibility with business leaders as quickly as possible. That quick win can buy them the luxury of time for the more difficult challenges.

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