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This Harvard Business Review collection, featuring the work of celebrated author and advisor Michael D. Watkins on leadership transitions, includes the international bestseller The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded as well as the 2012 Harvard Business Review article, "How Managers Become Leaders."... More

You've got big plans and ambitions in your career, and you've done well. But are you ready for your next move? Because your path to the top will be built through a series of major career moves, and each time you make a change you have the opportunity to shine or to stumble. Shine and you will be pos... More

As more companies go global, more and more executives are leaving the comforts of their native customs and cultures to pursue leadership opportunities abroad. The stakes are high, as many companies face mature domestic markets and are counting on international markets to drive growth. Executives tak... More

Joining an established business from the outside is never easy. The new leadership role is often ill-defined, the organizational architecture will most likely be unfamiliar, and the politics are even more complex than usual. To increase the odds of success in their new roles, onboarding executives n... More

Many leaders are used to wielding authority and making executive decisions with their place in the hierarchy in mind. But what happens when leaders move into positions where getting things done suddenly depends more on influence and the ability to build coalitions of support than on authority? Wheth... More

If it hasn't happened already, it is very likely that you will experience the challenge of leading former peers at some point in your career. Many go through it multiple times as they climb the corporate ladder. But too many learn to make this challenging transition through trial and error. They mak... More

A promotion marks the end of years of hard work to persuade influential people in the organization that you're willing and able to move to the next level. But it also marks the beginning of a new journey in which you must figure out what it takes to excel in that new role, how to exceed the expectat... More

While there are many different types of transitions leaders will go through in their careers, there are certain underlying imperatives that are fundamental to all of them: to diagnose the situation rapidly and well, to crystallize the organizational-change and personal development challenges, to cra... More

It's possible that as a new leader in an organization, you'll encounter one of the following transition scenarios: start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, or sustaining success. The reality, however, is that you'll rarely encounter a pure situation that fits neatly into one category. ... More

On the surface, turnaround and realignment scenarios can look remarkably similar. But there are important differences between them--differences that have a significant impact on the strategy a new leader will adopt to address the transition challenge at hand. In realignments, the first order of busi... More

When it comes to turnarounds, time is of the essence. Your initial actions as the new leader of a turnaround should be aimed at immediately stabilizing the business, preserving the core so it will survive. Then you can shift your attention to reworking the business, laying the foundation for growth.... More

Provides guidelines for how to successfully enter a new senior management position. Identifies key traps into which new leaders fall and provides a framework for organizing to succeed in the first few months on the job.... More

Challenges conventionally held views of negotiations, arguing that they are simplistic, static, and sterile. Develops seven propositions about real-world negotiations emphasizing the impact of complexity and the need for learning and adaption.... More

This case lays out a framework for how smaller companies should approach building strategic alliances with larger partners.... More

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This Harvard Business Review collection features the best in leadership transitions from celebrated author and advisor Michael D. Watkins. Watkins, who has worked for decades guiding senior leaders into new roles to help them and their organizations succeed, is the author of the international bestse... More

This case explores the conflict between Shell Oil and Greenpeace over Shell's plans to sink the aging Brent Spar oil platform in the North Atlantic. It details the tactics Greenpeace employed and examines Shell's responses.... More

A small start-up in 1993, Millennium Pharmaceuticals was a name-brand biotechnology company by the end of 1998, with a market capitalization of $1.4 billion. The Cambridge-based company's growth strategy had relied heavily on building alliances for early-stage drug discovery and licensing its gene-b... More

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AT&T's Universal Card Services (UCS) has been extremely successful during its short lifetime. Dedicated to improving service quality and customer satisfaction, chief quality officer Rob Davis and his quality team have designed and put into place an unusual measurement and compensation system based o... More

Chronicles M. Douglas Ivester's 26-month term as chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Co., and how he navigated the company through a series of what some considered "small crises."... More

Describes Douglas Daft's first quarter as chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Co. Highlights actions taken to resolve issues that arose under M. Douglas Ivester's 26-month term.... More

Anatolia National Telekom is a multiparty negotiation simulation patterned after the Turkish government's aborted attempt to privatize its state-owned telecommunications monopoly, Turk Telekom, in late 1997. Provides participants with an opportunity to identify and negotiate complex issues related t... More