Move 3
Map the organizational landscape before pushing your agenda
What it is
A written map of every executive whose support, neutrality, or opposition materially affects the new VP's function — usually 8 to 15 people. For each, the leader captures stated priorities, unstated incentives, current standing with the new VP, and the fault lines between this person and other senior stakeholders. The map is updated weekly through the 90 days and remains a working document well past them.
Why it matters
At VP altitude, the majority of consequential work happens through peers and stakeholders who do not report to the new leader. Resourcing, strategic priority, cross-functional execution, headcount, and the ability to ship an early bet all depend on alliances the leader either builds or doesn't. Leaders who treat organizational dynamics as something they refuse to engage with are not being above the fray — they are playing the game badly. The map is the difference between reading the organization well and being blind to it.
The specific practice
For each name on the map, capture four fields:
- Priorities. What is this person being measured on this year? What are they trying to deliver? What are they worried about?
- Incentives. What is the stated incentive structure? What is the unstated one — visibility, board exposure, succession planning, function expansion, headcount? The unstated incentive is often the load-bearing one.
- Current standing. Where does the new VP currently stand with this person — aligned, neutral, skeptical, or unaware? How fresh is the assessment, and what is it based on?
- Fault lines. Where does this person align with other stakeholders, and where do they disagree? Fault lines are the structural features of the executive landscape that any new VP's agenda has to route around or across.
Invest the first 60 days in alliance-building and fault-line detection — not in advancing any agenda that requires the stakeholders' support. Trying to push the agenda before the map is built almost guarantees that one of the unmapped fault lines will block the work.
The common failure mode
Two failure modes recur. The first is moral squeamishness about organizational dynamics — treating the map as something dirty rather than as the basic geography any senior leader operates inside. The second is building the map only of the people the leader already likes, which misses precisely the stakeholders whose neutrality or opposition will determine outcomes. For a deeper treatment, see organizational awareness for senior leaders.
What excellent looks like
By day 60, the leader can describe each of the 10 to 15 executives on the map with specificity — their priorities, their unstated incentives, where they currently stand, and which fault lines run between them. The leader has had at least one substantive 1:1 with each, has identified two or three durable alliances, has named the one or two stakeholders most likely to oppose their early bet, and has decided how to route around or address that opposition before the bet is announced.