If you consider that a CEO may be in office for three, four or five years, then ten days is a very short period in the professional life of a top manager. However, the first ten days of a manager in an organisation can be crucial, with small errors often having a large impact in the long term.
So what should a newly appointed CEO not do? He should not give orders, criticise, drastically change the budget or cite a former organisation where they were employed as an example. Layoffs at the beginning of a term are also not recommended. "A CEO usually takes two or three months to make clear to a company their business vision," explains Adriana Gontariu, a consultant with the consulting firm HR Excellence.
Dragos Damian's first day as CEO at Terapia Ranbaxy was on the actual day the appointment was announced, at the company's national sales meeting, in Bodrum, Turkey. "Very few colleagues from the company were aware of my appointment as the new CEO and I think many had a feeling of relief. I was someone from within the company," says Damian, who was appointed CEO of Terapia Ranbaxy in the autumn of last year.
Damian's task was made all the more complex, as his appointment came precisely at the time when the company's budget was being drawn up, so his list of priorities was extensive: merger, budget, establishing the priorities for the following months, as well as settling in to the new position.
The Italian Maurizio Barini, country manager of Accenture Romania, took up his new job in November 2006 and also started working on the very day of his appointment. Barini believes that the most difficult things in the life of a CEO are making unpopular decisions, losing good people and dissatisfied clients.
The first difficult moment is most probably the day when a CEO has to make their first unpopular decision. "They say in a company, good news comes from the CEO and bad news comes from (or through) the human resources manager. There are times when the CEO has to take on a 'tough guy' role," says Marius Balasoiu, a partner at the training company For People.
You can read in the Profesii supplement the story of two leading managers - what they wanted to do, and what they did wrong, during the first days after their appointment.
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