When You Get Promoted, It’s Easy to Think You Know What to Do

You don’t need to arrive with all the answers. In fact, that’s often the risk. Here's what to do when you move into a new leadership role.

When you get promoted, it's easy to think you know what to do. You've been in the business for a while. You've seen what's working, what isn't. You've probably got a list in your head of things you'd change if you had the chance. Then you get promoted and suddenly you do have that chance.

It's very easy to walk in and start changing things. In fact, it can feel like the job: new role, new energy, visible movement.

But think about it from the other side. Have you ever had a new manager come in who had no real understanding of what you're capable of? Or worse, someone who changes everything, including the things that were already working? It's frustrating, because the context is missing: the history, the trade-offs, the quiet ways the team has made things work despite the structure, not because of it.

So I did something different. Instead of acting straight away, I took time to understand what was actually going on. I spoke to everyone, not in a formal sense, just proper conversations. What's working? What isn't? Where does work get stuck? What would you change? And just as importantly: what do you want from your role? What do you enjoy? Where do you want to go? Then I listened, no judgement, no correction, no trying to steer the answer.

People are usually very good at describing the reality of the business. They know where things break, who others rely on, what slows them down. And across enough conversations, the same themes start to appear. That's the signal, not the individual opinions, but the patterns underneath them.

The temptation is to act on what you hear immediately. Fix a few issues, make some quick changes, show progress. But that's just reacting to fragments. You solve visible problems in isolation and often reinforce the underlying ones. So I waited until I'd spoken to everyone and the patterns were clear.

The strategy didn't come from me sitting in a room with a blank page: it came from organising what was already true. Connecting the dots across all of those conversations and making it coherent. What are we actually trying to do? What needs to change structurally? What do we stop doing?

When the strategy reflects what people already know, it lands differently. It's not something being imposed: it's something being recognised. So when it came time to make changes, including restructuring, it didn't feel random. It felt necessary. People could see the logic. They could see their own input in it.

You don't need to arrive with all the answers. In fact, that's often the risk. Your job is to understand the system you've stepped into, properly, then shape that into something clear enough that people can move.

There's always pressure to act quickly. But the quality of what you do next is almost entirely dependent on how well you understand what was already there.