Navigating the Chaos - Starting a New Job and Leadership Lessons from the Top

If you’ve ever walked into a brand-new job and felt like the map was upside down, you’re not alone. The first week can feel like airport moving walkways going both directions at once. You’re trying to look confident while also figuring out where the coffee lives.

Here’s the move I’ve learned, from client work and my own career hops. Start with humility and focus. Say out loud what you don’t know, then anchor in what you do. That combination opens doors faster than a fancy onboarding checklist.

I once joined an engagement where the CEO hired me for strategy. By the time the ink dried, he announced he was leaving. Surprise. The plan changed, the politics shifted, and the work still had to get done. On the other side of the spectrum, I also started my own business in my twenties and learned that when you fire your boss, your new manager is the stack of bills on your kitchen table. They keep very strict performance reviews.

Those experiences taught me a simple pattern for week one. First, learn the land. Listen aggressively. Map who decides, who influences, and who actually executes. Second, acknowledge the obvious. “I don’t know your acronyms yet, but I do know how to build working rituals for teams like this.” Third, earn a quick win that matters to the people who matter. Small, visible, and real.

Here’s the turn. Big leaders do versions of the same thing, but louder and at national or company scale. New executives, founder boomerangs, and freshly elected officials all face the same physics. Make a splash or build a base. If you only splash, the legal and operational systems will slow you. If you only base-build, the narrative leaves you behind. The art is sequencing energy so your initial moves create momentum instead of mayhem.

In practice, I use a simple ladder to keep myself out of the chaos:

• Prescriptive: What is the baseline way we will do this for the next two weeks? Keep it concrete. One page. Names and times included.

• Ritual: How often will we do it and what proof will we capture each time? A ritual without a baked-in report is just motion. Fold the measurement into the meeting or the handoff.

• Report: What does success look like on a single screenshot? If the win isn’t visible, it won’t be believed. Make the outcome obvious.

• Repeatable: After three cycles, what do we automate or delegate? If we can’t repeat it, we can’t scale it. If we can’t scale it, it becomes process debt.

For example, a new product lead might declare a two-week “decision cadence” with three short checkpoints. Prescriptive: issues must include context, options, and a recommended path. Ritual: meet every Tuesday and Friday for 20 minutes, and log the decision and owner. Report: end each week with a one-slide decisions board that shows what moved and what’s blocked. Repeatable: after three weeks, wire that decisions board into your work system so owners and dates update themselves.

Another example many of us know too well is budget season. It is tempting to think fast. Cut here, add there. But complexity punishes speed without structure. Use the ladder. Prescribe the review template. Ritualize the comparison sessions with a built-in variance export. Report with a single truth view anyone can read. Only then decide. You trade heat for light.

Starting a new job is not about proving you are the smartest person in the building. It is about proving you can create a rhythm that produces results other people can see. Do that, and the titles, tools, and politics start working for you.

Process Debt Truth: Teams do not fail for lack of effort. They fail for lack of a ritual that reports its own results.