Executive Influence: Leading Through High-Stakes Leadership Shifts

In the current business landscape, the "honeymoon phase" has effectively vanished. As we navigate a global economy defined by rapid technological shifts and evolving social contracts, every stakeholder—from the boardroom to the frontline—is silently asking the same question: Did we make the right choice?

Research indicates that the earliest actions a new chief executive takes (or pointedly avoids) shape a narrative that quickly hardens into a permanent reputation. Once that story is written, it is nearly impossible to rewrite. Despite the critical nature of this window, leadership transitions remain crucially important, yet under-supported. The data is sobering: nearly half of new CEO appointments are viewed as failures within just two years.

With C-suite tenures shrinking to an average of just four years, there is no margin for error. You are expected to deliver impact from Day One.

In this edition of the Governance Compass, we explore how CEOs in traditional and founder-led environments can survive the pressure cooker of transition. We will dissect the pitfalls of "premature action," the trap of "legacy success," and the high art of "Perceptual Discipline."

I. The Velocity Trap: Speed vs. Progress

There is a pervasive myth in executive leadership that "decisive action" must be immediate. New CEOs often feel an immense internal and external pressure to "break things" or "make a mark" within their first week. However, in the first 90 days, haste is often a betrayal of leadership, not a hallmark of it.

The Pitfall of Premature Action

Jumping into major strategic pivots or reorganisations without a deep-tissue understanding of the business culture is the fastest way to erode your credibility. When a leader acts on superficial diagnoses, they often send the organisation "off in the wrong direction".

Research shows that the root cause is often Executive Hubris: the overconfident belief that because you solved a problem at Company A, you already have the solution for Company B. When you reorganise a department in Week Three without knowing the "why" behind the current structure, you aren't leading—you’re guessing.

The Danger of Dithering

Conversely, the "Analysis Paralysis" trap is equally lethal. While you must learn, a 90-day "study period" without visible direction is often perceived as a weakness. In a vacuum of leadership, three things happen:

1. Internal Resistance: Naysayers identify your hesitation and begin organising.

2. External Threats: Rivals sense the transition gap and begin poaching your top clients.

3. Talent Drain: Your best performers, anxious about the lack of direction, start taking calls from recruiters.

The Framework: Urgency with Insight.

The goal is not to move fast; it is to move calibrated. You must combine "quick, focused wins" that prove you can execute, with "deliberate learning" that proves you can think.

II. The Legacy Trap: Why Your Past Success Is Your Greatest Risk

The very resume that got you the job can often be the thing that loses you the job. Many CEOs enter a new role over-indexing on their "Legacy Playbook." They attempt to force-feed signature strategies or, more dangerously, "loyal lieutenants" from their previous roles into the new ecosystem.

The "Old Cronies" Backlash

Nothing demoralises an incumbent leadership team faster than a new CEO who immediately installs a "shadow cabinet" of former colleagues. This immediately fractures alignment, creating a 'New Regime vs. Legacy Guard' divide — a particularly destabilising fault line in mid-market growth environments. In founder-led companies, this is particularly toxic. Early employees often revere the founder’s methods; if you are seen as dismissive of the past, you aren't a leader—you’re a "foreign invader."

Honouring the Heritage

A transformative leader knows that the organisation needs both fresh eyes and historical context. You must evaluate existing talent with an open mind. As a rule of thumb, give internal talent a fair chance to prove their alignment before making personnel swaps. You can always change the team later, but you can never reclaim the trust lost by a premature "wipe out and replace" strategy.

III. Perceptual Discipline: The Art of the Listening Tour

If you cannot act, and you cannot wait, what do you do? You practice Perceptual Discipline. Perceptual Discipline is the methodical approach to separating signal from noise. It means treating your first 30 days as an "Accelerated Learning Mission." While you should have done your homework on financials and products before Day One, your "in-seat" learning must be about the unspoken.

The Executive Listening Tour

Top-tier CEOs use their first weeks to conduct a rigorous "Listening Tour." This is not a series of polite coffee chats; it is a strategic intelligence-gathering operation.

Whom to meet:

• The Formal Leaders: Your direct reports and the Board.

• The Informal Leaders: The mid-level managers who actually hold the culture together.

• The Front Line: The people who talk to your customers every day.

• The Critics: The people who were passed over for your job or those most sceptical of change.

The Power of "I Don't Know"

During these tours, the most influential thing a CEO can do is admit what they don’t know. In the high-stakes environment of the C-suite, admitting a lack of knowledge is disarming and builds immediate psychological safety. It signals that you value the expertise of your team more than your own image.

Key Questions for your Listening Tour:

1. "What is working here that I should be careful not to break?"

2. "What is the one thing that, if changed, would make your job 50% easier?"

3. "What are people most afraid I will do in the next six months?"

IV. Cultural Listening: Sensing the Undercurrents

Executive influence is not just about making the right financial calls; it is about "sensing the room" at a corporate scale.

Cultural listening requires you to absorb the "feel" of the place. Every company has a "shadow culture"—the unwritten rules about how decisions are actually made.

• Is this a "consensus" culture or a "top-down" culture?

• Is there a deep-seated mistrust between Sales and Engineering?

• Is the ghost of the former CEO still making decisions from the sidelines?

By exercising executive influence, you become aware of the hidden undercurrents of the system, and you avoid the twin dangers of impulsive judgment and strategic hesitation. You are making sense of the organisation in a structured way so that when the time comes to strike, you hit with the full weight of the organisation behind you.

V. Strategic Coherence: The First Win as Influence Accelerator

By Day 60, your role must evolve from quiet observer to visible integrator. This does not mean rushing into symbolic victories, but rather initiating a coherent action that embodies everything you've learned.

To establish executive influence, your first visible move must:

1. Demonstrate Cultural Attunement — Reflect that you’ve truly listened and understood the organisational texture.

2. Be Systemically Aligned — Solve a problem that bridges short-term friction with long-term direction.

3. Build Forward Trust — Signal how you intend to lead—through clarity.

For example, resolving a long-standing operational pain point, such as a procurement bottleneck that has quietly eroded morale, can generate disproportionate goodwill when the action is interpreted as a sign of systemic understanding.

True influence is earned not by speed, but by signal coherence. When your early actions resonate with the organisation’s real needs, they create the relational capital needed to lead through complexity.

VI. Executive Influence: The Decisive Force of Your Tenure

Influence is not granted with the title—it is earned through early, deliberate behavioural choices. Executive influence becomes the multiplier of all future impact. It is not merely about popularity or visibility; it is the ability to align, energise, and move systems without coercion.

Key elements of executive influence: 

• Behavioural Authenticity: Consistency between what you say, do, and reward. 

• Alignment Credibility: Your ability to resolve contradictions between stated strategy and day-to-day operations. 

• Narrative Control: Crafting a coherent story about where the organisation is headed, why, and how each person fits into it.

A CEO’s influence is most visible not when they speak—but when others start echoing their language, decisions, and direction.

The transition into the CEO role is as much a psychological shift as it is a professional one. You are moving from being a “functional expert” to being a “cultural architect.” Your influence no longer comes from what you do, but from what you enable.

As you navigate these high-stakes shifts, the goal of the first 90 days isn’t to be “right”—it’s to be trusted. Once you have trust, the “transformative” part of your leadership becomes inevitable.