Blog

Leadership Decisions Series #3

Starting a new leadership or management role often comes with responsibility for something we did not build: a team we didn't recruit, a culture we didn't shape, a processes we didn't design, systems we didn't select, yet we may quickly become accountable for the outcomes they produce.

It doesn't take long before our internal observations begin: “That's not the person I would have hired”, "why does everything take so long here?”, “why on earth do they do it like this?”.

Sometimes those reactions identify genuine problems, but sometimes, they simply identify something that is different from what we know.

The question is: how can we deliver within systems we inherited?

The people we didn't choose: we may inherit a team whose experience, capabilities or ways of working don't match what we would have looked for ourselves. Perhaps someone doesn't communicate in the way we expect, a team member's background doesn't fit our usual profile for the role, someone we wouldn't have selected appears to hold significant influence within the organisation. We think , "I wouldn't have hired them”. But that isn't the same as “They cannot deliver what we need.”
Before deciding that the team needs to change, we need to understand its capability: who knows what? Who holds relationships or organisational knowledge that isn't visible on an organisation chart? Who performs particularly well in this environment? Where are the genuine capability gaps? Sometimes the people we inherit need to develop, sometimes the requirements of the organisation have genuinely moved beyond their current capabilities, or we may need to adjust our own assumptions about what good looks like.

Then there is culture: The culture we don't recognise, we join a team where decisions seem unusually slow. We wonder "Why does everyone need to be consulted?” Or perhaps decisions happen quickly but with little discussion and we think “Why doesn't anyone challenge this?”
People may communicate differently, approach hierarchy differently or have completely different expectations around autonomy, collaboration, conflict and accountability. Our instinct can be to compare what we find with environments where we previously succeeded. But unfamiliar doesn't necessarily mean dysfunctional. Culture carries history, behaviours that appear strange from the outside may have developed because of previous leadership, customer expectations, regulatory requirements or simply what the organisation learned was necessary to succeed. The challenge is identifying the difference between a culture that is different from ours and a culture that prevents the organisation from achieving what it now needs to achieve.

The same applies to systems and processes: The systems we don't understand, we think “why are there so many approval stages?”, “why are we still using this spreadsheet?”, “surely there is an easier way to do this”... Sometimes there is, but before removing a process, replacing a system or simplifying a workflow, we need to understand why it exists. Perhaps an approval was introduced after an expensive mistake, a manual process compensates for a limitation somewhere else, or what looks inefficient from one function protects another part of the organisation, sometimes there is no good reason at all. They say “that's how we've always done it.” Understanding the history doesn't mean preserving everything we inherit, it simply helps us distinguish between what we don't yet understand, what is different but effective, and what genuinely needs to change.

What if part of the system we need to understand is ourselves? We don't join new teams ss blank pages either. We bring experiences, preferences and assumptions from the places where we previously worked. “At my previous company, we did it this way”, that's our approach. That experience can be incredibly valuable, it can also become a limitation if we assume that what worked somewhere else represents the only version of good practice. A different organisation may have different customers, resources, capabilities, history, risks and ambitions. Leadership therefore requires more than assessing what we inherited, it also requires examining the lens through which we are assessing it.

Here’s the shift: inheriting responsibility does not mean recreating the environment in which we previously succeeded, it means understanding the people, culture and systems we have inherited well enough to determine what should be preserved, what can be strengthened, what genuinely needs to change, and where we need to adapt ourselves.

Because when we become accountable for something we didn't build, our first responsibility may not be to change it, it may be to understand it. Then we can decide what the organisation needs from us next.