There’s nothing like that first day of school feeling. Or you know, as an adult, the first day of a new job. New surroundings, new people you’re excited to work with, and new problems to solve. It’s pretty easy to be enthusiastic and hit the ground running with all that newness. You make all sorts of promises to yourself about your preparation and new ideas!

But what if your new role is at the same place you’ve been for a couple years? Perhaps you’re managing for the first time. Or you’re taking over a new team. Maybe you’re managing managers now. You have the same surroundings and much of the same routine. But you’ll need to start fresh in some way. Because what got you here won’t get you there!

So how can you get in the new mindset? How can you shift your focus to tackle these new responsibilities?

Many of you have relayed the difficulties of balancing the old and the new when undergoing a role transition. It’s not easy! Here are a few ideas that might help along the way:

Play A Game of Clue
You’ve parachuted into a new world..sort of. Survey these new surroundings with a blank slate. Go interview your team members and cross functional peers as if you’ve never met. Find out what they think is going well. Not so well. What are their expectations for you in this new role? How would they define success if they were you? Get a whole new perspective by talking to these people in a new way “for the first time”.

Energy Audit
I stole this from Matt Mochary’s book “The Great CEO Within”. It’s a good read if you want to go deeper on the operational aspects of running a company. In Chapter 9 he encourages you to do an energy audit by going through your calendar for the week and marking meetings/activities green (+) or red (-) for the things that give and take your energy. This can be a really helpful guide for the projects to keep and/or delegate to team members so you can keep those levels high. It’s all about the levels!

Set the Goals
As you go through your data collection process and begin to figure out what’s giving & taking energy it’s time to set the goals. What are the activities that are going to help drive outcomes? Sure you’re trying to “grow revenue” or “ship product” but what are the things that result in those outcomes? It might be a lot of phone screens to hire the team that will grow revenue or ship product. Start at the beginning and work your way forward.

Define Expectations
Ok, you’ve got the goals! Next, it’s time to set expectations for the team and yourself. You have to clear up any ambiguity. It helps set the stage for hiring and performance management – promotions and…when necessary, firing. The more clear the expectations the easier to evaluate a new team’s performance.

That should be enough to get you started. Play a game of clue, audit your energy, set the goals, and clearly define expectations. You must re-examine your habits in order to become the pro you’ll need to be. Have fun with it! There are only so many “first days” out there.