My first 30 days at Capitec: How did it go?

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Previously on Scary Management...

Morning friend, ☕️ 

In two recent posts, I outlined how to win in a new job. (Since I just started a new role at Capitec. I wanted to start strong and with intention):

• In Your First 100 Days, I summed up the advice from two experts: Michael Watkins (The First 90 Days), and Niamh O'Keeffe (The First 100 Days).

• In Think Like Faceman, I said listen, and observe during your first 30 days in order to derive insight about key issues that you can have early impact on.

Today let’s review how my first 30 days actually went.

Not just in the office, but life as well.

Spoiler - it was not pretty.

I chose Thomas Shelby from Peaky Blinders as the satirical foil for this post because he operates like many of us do during the first 30 days of a big leadership role: composed on the outside, chaos underneath. He thinks fast, speaks little, and always moves three steps ahead.

Even when life gets in the way.

"Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Let’s quickly recap the original plan for my first 30 days.

1. Approach: Learn and Be Curious

The idea was to find out how things get done (culture), what’s going well, what’s causing frustration, and areas/issues where I can have impact with my role. According to the Zone of Curiosity model, I aimed to spend most of my time in the “genuine interest” zone.

2. Plan: Build a Stakeholder Map and Interview them.

Who sits above me on the pecking order?

Who are my direct reports and their direct reports?

Who are my peers (within my department and outside)?

How do we all come together to deliver value to our clients?

3. Outcome: Identify 3 key challenges that will have impact within the first 100 days.

My manager gave me some keen insight recently. He said if, after the first 100 days, I have delivered on some significant and impactful initiatives, then it means I have done what I needed to do during those 100 days to lay the foundation with my team.

Results matter.

Now, that was a great plan.

But, "The best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley" - Robert Burns

So, how did it actually go?

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While the plan looked good, life had other ideas….

The new role required relocation to the Capitec head office in Stellenbosch.

So while my first 30 days were in play, I also needed to:

• find a place in Cape Town.

• rent out our house in Joburg.

• get my son enrolled in a school.

• arrange movers to transport our stuff.

• say emotional farewells to our friends and family here.

Stressful stuff.

I also had 3 trips to cape town to meet the team and attend some key events.

Part of the first 30 days was to grok the culture.

I couldn’t do that remotely.

So, a lot was going on.

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So, how did it actually go?

Stakeholder map and interviews - I must’ve had a couple of thousand rands worth of coffee chats. I spoke to many stakeholders across various levels, and gathered valuable insights. But, there are still many more to go. I simply could not get to 80% done with everything else going on.

Key insights and challenges identified - I identified major insights around the culture of the company, thanks to some key events I attended like outgoing CEO Gerrie’s farewell, the Tech & Data conference, our induction and also immersing myself into the business-as-usual routines. I also identified 3 main issues/deliverables to focus on and aligned on these with my manager (can’t share too much about those here though).

Next steps: For the next 60 days, I have to put a strategy in place to address the key issues and then execute on this to deliver some tangible results for the first 100 days. More on this in upcoming blog posts.

Key Takeaway: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”

I had a great plan for the first 30 days based on advice from the experts.

However, the plan was met with some strong headwinds due to life getting in the way. I picked my battles, managed my energy, and tackled impediments one at a time.

Even though things didn’t go exactly according to plan, the planning itself was essential. It provided comfort and direction during a period of extremely high uncertainty.

I managed to achieve some of the key outcomes - figure out how things work here, build a stakeholder map, interview as many as possible (still plenty more to go), identify key areas where I need to focus.

Now, I need to move to the next steps of aligning my strategy to this situation and then executing on it in the next 60 days to deliver some results as aligned with my manager.

Stay tuned for updates on these stages in the coming months :-)

That’s it for today folks - hope you enjoyed!

Till next week! ☕️ 

Vaugan

PS: I would love to hear your feedback - please rate us below :-)

Chess Puzzle

Black to play and force mate.

You can move the pieces and try to solve it here.