New Leader's First Move: Make Their Life Easier
De-risk your first 90 days in a new role by building reputational capital to invest in your long-term initiatives
You’ve just started a new leadership role. Your first few weeks are packed with new names, systems, plans, and jargon. You have been given a mandate to drive change, a certain vision to implement, and a team to lead.
You feel the pressure to prove your worth and are tempted to start pushing your agenda immediately.
But what if the most effective first move isn’t a bold declaration or a strategic masterstroke? What if it’s something quieter and potentially counterintuitive?
In recent discussions within the Sudo Make Me a CTO community, the same theme and advice have emerged. Whether you’re facing political resistance or the chaos of a new environment, the fastest path to building trust and influence can be to ask a simple question: "What can I help you with?"
Your first job as a new leader isn't to prove you're the smartest hire in the past decade.
Your first job is to make a visible impact, and that often happens by making the lives of your stakeholders, peers, and team members easier.
This is the third article in the Sudo Make Me a CTO Community Summer Promo.
With Summer here, it's a good time to take a step back, reflect on your current situation, and make deliberate investments in your personal and professional future. It's a great time to explore new avenues, discover new interests, and educate yourself on topics that interest and are relevant to you.
During 4 weeks, I'll share discount codes and special offers for joining the community. We're not in week 3 of the promo.
This is a reminder of the sequence of discounts:
🔒 Week 1:50% discount for the first 12 months.Closed🔒 Week 2 (today):40% discount for the first 12 months.Closed👉 Week 3: 30% discount for the first 6 months 👈
🔒 Week 4: 20% discount for the first 6 months
Each coupon will be redeemable 5 times before it expires.
Do not miss this third opportunity to join us at a special price!
Read through the article to find this week's code and the link to join us at a special rate before it's sold out!
The "Helper" Mindset: Your Universal Key
When you arrive in a new role, you are a question mark for many in the organization, and your peers and your team are trying to figure you out. Are you a threat? Are you competent? Are you here to create more work? Do you understand their problems? What's your agenda?
Pushing your vision from day one can trigger the defenses of many, as it positions you as someone trying to impose change. The kind of person who's not interested in learning the specifics of the new reality, one they know well. The kind of person who is only capable of replicating what they've seen somewhere else. None of this will help you make an impact, and it will turn your new role into a constant uphill battle.
Adopting the helper mindset can help you flip this dynamic. By focusing on solving the immediate, annoying problems of those around you, you demonstrate value before trying to push changes that would be interpreted as being in your interest. What's more, through this approach, you build reputational capital that you can later invest in your strategic change initiatives.
This approach is the opposite of being passive, though it might look as such on a narrow time horizon. It's a deliberate approach that helps you make the right first impression, which will become your main lever going forward.
Let's look at how it applies in a few common scenarios that we've been recently discussing in the Sudo Make Me a CTO Community.
Case Study 1: Winning Over the Resistant Organization
Consider the common case of a Change Agent: a leader hired into a new role that the broader organization didn't necessarily ask for. Such a role has usually been introduced from the top of the organization, with little support and sometimes open hostility coming from the bottom. They face a wall of resistance from established roles who feel their autonomy is threatened and openly question the value of the new position.
The Risky First Move: Trying to force acceptance by repeatedly explaining the theoretical value of their role, which only hardens the resistance. Though there is value in clarifying the scope of the role and its mandate, especially when it's a new one, fixating on it as a broken record rarely helps overcome the resistance. Even worse if it's often combined with escalation to the top.
“A good way to prove your worth is by taking the crap that other people either can't do or won't do.”
The Wiser First Move: Start by understanding the challenges people around you are facing. What are some of the issues, tasks, or responsibilities they'd be happy to have someone else take care of? Pick one or more that fall within the realm of your role, and handle them. As one community member put it, "A good way to prove your worth is by taking the crap that other people either can't do or won't do.” Remember: this will not be your long-term strategy, but rather a way to lower resistance and gain support from your peers in the early days of the new role.
How to Apply This in Practice
Listen for Friction: In meetings and informal conversations, pay close attention to what your peers complain about. Is there a cross-team dependency that’s always a nightmare to coordinate? Is there a reporting task that everyone hates? Are there processes that people constantly complain about?
Volunteer for the "Annoying" Work: Collect evidence about one or more such problems to get a better understanding of their scope and complexity. Pick one that scores well in terms of frustration and feasibility, and is compatible with your new role's responsibilities. Then step up and say, "That sounds frustrating. Let me take a look at that and see if I can sort it out."
Deliver: Now it's time to operate reliably. Once you've devised a plan, communicate it openly to your peers and dedicate a significant portion of your time to the task. Proactively update and communicate on the progress. Ask for further input when unsure, and make sure you bring home the result of making your peers’ lives easier.
This approach systematically disarms resistance and builds trust. Your peers stop seeing you as a potential threat and start seeing you as a valuable resource. Someone capable of understanding their needs and delivering on their promises. They will naturally start to involve you more in key topics and decisions that influence how the organization operates. All that without forcing your way in.
Case Study 2: Leading Through the Unknown (Enterprise vs. Startup)
Now, let's look at two leaders facing ambiguity, but from opposite ends of the spectrum.
The Enterprise Modernizer: A new manager from a different technical background, now leading a senior team tasked with modernizing a 40-year-old legacy system. They will manage a team of very senior engineers with deeper technical competencies than they do, particularly on those legacy systems. They feel a classic case of impostor syndrome.
The Startup Organizer: A new senior leader at a fast-moving startup, one that tends to plan in weeks rather than years. Their task is to show a significant impact in 90 days with no team, vague business requests, organizational weirdness, and a culture that emphasises speed above all else.
The Risky First Moves: For the Enterprise Modernizer, it would be trying to operate as the technical expert as they used to do in prior engagements. They might give up to the urge of having to prove their worth in an unknown territory for which they lack key technical competences. For the Startup Organizer, it would be getting lost in creating a perfect long-term strategy while delivering no immediate value. One that involves many big investments, organizational changes, and a good deal of trust in the leader's ability to deliver despite the constantly changing context.
The Wiser First Moves: Both should start by making someone's life easier, but their focus will be different.
How to Apply This in Practice
For the Enterprise Modernizer, the focus is internal: Their job is to make the team's life easier. They do so by ensuring their mission is achievable and that they are set up for success. They'll find ways to break down the massive endeavour into small incremental deliverables that will capture value at each step. They will shield the team from bureaucracy, removing their technical bottlenecks, and facilitating clear communication. They don't need to be the best coder. They might not need to code at all. They need to create an environment where their team members can deliver value safely and effectively.
For the Startup Organizer, the focus is external: Their job is to make the business's life easier. They do this by being resourceful, such as engaging contractors to deliver quick wins while building the long-term team. They will work closely with stakeholders to turn their vague requests and wishes into concrete and actionable plans. They'll perform as an internal product manager, surveying the organization to surface the key problems that need to be addressed. Their value will be in creating clarity and delivering tangible results quickly, as the organization expects.
For the Enterprise Modernizer, the team's respect comes not from their direct code contributions, but from the fact that the team's work becomes tractable, smoother, and more impactful thanks to the new leader's support. For the Startup Organizer, the business's trust comes from seeing real progress, which buys them the time and support needed to build their long-term foundational strategy.
Both have proven their value by solving the immediate problems in front of them, without forgetting the long-term perspective while doing so.
De-risking your first 90 days
Regardless of which specific challenge you're facing when taking on a new leadership role, be it politics, self-doubt, or a chaotic new environment, your safest bet is the same. Build social and reputational capital in the short term, and use it as your main lever to make bigger and bolder transformations in the long term. You earn this capital by delivering immediate, tangible value to the people around you.
It's OK to put your grand strategy on the back burner for the first few months, no matter how much you itch to implement it. Focus on being the most helpful person in the room. Solve the small, annoying problems. Make their lives easier. Pick those areas that are compatible with your role and mandate, but besides that, don't be too picky.
In a matter of a few weeks or months, you will be able to bring to the table your key strategic initiatives, which will be received with a lot more openness and willingness than if you'd started with them from day one.
I hope this helps, and if you're going through a similar transition right now, it'll never be a better moment to join the Sudo Make Me a CTO Community to leverage the help of a network of diverse and capable leaders.
Summer Promo - Week 3 Discount Code
If you missed your opportunity to snatch a great deal last week, this is your second chance.
Here is this week's code to join us at a special price.
Using the code SUMMER3006, you'll benefit from a 30% discount over the first 6 months, or click on the link below to have it automatically applied to your checkout.
The standard 30-day money-back guarantee applies.
Don't forget: there are only 5 seats available at this price, and the coupon will only be valid for one week.
Don't miss this opportunity to join a community of talented and thoughtful engineering leaders to accelerate your personal development.
To find out more about the community and the promo, visit the official Notion page where you'll find all the details.
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