🚩Tactical Memo 082: Surviving a New Boss Without Auditioning

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A CEO I worked with fired his COO after ninety days, and he told me exactly why.

"He spent three months telling me how good he was. He never once asked how I decide things."

That COO was not lazy. He worked nights on decks nobody requested. He forwarded every win to the CEO's inbox.

He was auditioning.

I have watched the same pattern at every level. A new boss arrives and smart operators start performing. More hours, more unprompted updates, more visibility for its own sake.

The performance backfires because it answers a question the new boss never asked. What they are actually asking, silently, in every early interaction: does this person understand how I work?

Your first month under a new boss has one job. Learn how this person decides.

Here is what I do every time a new boss walks in.

1/ Ask for thirty minutes and mostly listen

In the first week, I request one short meeting and bring no deck. I ask two questions: what does a good first quarter look like for you, and how do you want to hear bad news. Then I stop talking and write down everything. That COO never asked either question in ninety days. My notes from that half hour become my operating manual for the next year.

2/ Match their format before pushing my content

One boss of mine wanted a one-page memo before any conversation. Her predecessor decided everything live in the room and never opened a pre-read. So I ask directly how they like information, and then I watch what they actually respond to, because the two can differ. Within a week, everything I send matches. The right answer in the wrong format reads as noise.

3/ Hand over an honest map of the mess

Within two weeks, the new boss gets one page from me: the work that is stuck, and the one fire I would put out first. I include the problems I own, with my name next to them. A new leader expects to find messes, so hiding mine only delays the discovery and adds a lie on top. The map costs me one uncomfortable conversation. It buys me a year of being believed.

4/ Stop defending the old regime

New bosses change things, and my first instinct used to be explaining the history behind whatever they wanted to change. I once spent twenty minutes defending a reporting process a new director had already decided to kill. Now I ask what problem they are solving before I defend anything. Half the time their version is better. The other half, my case lands because I heard theirs first.

5/ Deliver the first small ask exactly as given

Early on, every new boss makes a small request. A number pulled, a summary written, a meeting moved. I treat it as the test it is: delivered early, in the format they asked for, with nothing bolted on. No bonus analysis they did not want. That first delivery sets the price of my word for everything after it.

6/ Find out what burned them

Somewhere in the first month, I ask what went wrong in their last role that they refuse to repeat here. One VP told me a project blew up on her because status reports hid the truth for six weeks. From that day, my weekly update to her led with the ugliest number I had. I never surprised her, and she never micromanaged me.

7/ Keep my output at its normal volume

The instinct when a new boss shows up is to produce more. I did it once: extra reports, meetings I had no reason to attend. My boss later told me the surge read as insecurity, and he was right. I was protecting myself, and he could smell it. Now I keep my normal rhythm and let the work speak at its usual volume. Steady reads as confident. Extra reads as scared.

Ninety days after that COO left, the CEO hired a replacement. She spent her first meeting asking questions and filling a notebook. She is still there.

Watch the operators who survive a leadership change with their influence intact. They asked more questions in month one than they answered. That is the skill.

If you have a new boss now, or one coming, book the thirty minutes this week. Bring the two questions from the first item and a notebook.

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Until next time,

Justin Bateh, PhD
Founder and Editor
Tactical Memo