When Tim Armstrong left a successful job as an executive at Google to be CEO of AOL in 2009, he stepped into a company that was largely demoralized.
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The CEO of AOL explains a smart way to spend your first 100 days in a big new job
Listen first, then take action. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong did this, and spoke with thousands of employees during his first 100 days.
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong met thousands of employees in his first 100 days as CEO.
AOL "was something that everyone had given up on, but they had a lot of resources, a lot of users, and they had a lot of talent," Armstrong told Business Insider US editor in chief Alyson Shontell i
After he compiled the feedback from those three processes, he found an interesting pattern among the responses he got back from employees and management.
He told Shontell:
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"After the 100 days, we held a meeting at the Time Warner Center and I put up three whiteboards. On one white board I wrote back the results from the entire global team of what they thought we should invest in.
"I put up a white board of what the management team thought, and I put up a whiteboard of what I thought. I flipped them all around at the same time. Each one had five things on them. All of the white boards were identical, except for one area on the white board that I had flipped around on my personal side.
"So the whole company was already in alignment and I think that got people excited. They weren't told what the strategy was. They got input, and everyone was on the same path in believing in it."
A common mistake new leaders make is to take action before they fully understand problems in the new organization they're joining. By including AOLers in his planning process and listening to their concerns, Armstrong made them feel ownership in his turnaround plan, which in turn helped boost morale.
Listen to the full podcast interview:
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