Prof. Michael Watkins

Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at IMD

Michael Watkins is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at IMD. He is a globally recognized leadership transitions expert and author of the best-selling book The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter. A Thinkers50-ranked management influencer, Watkins has developed proven frameworks and tools to help professionals navigate personal and organizational change challenges. He has spent the past two decades working with leaders as they transition to new roles, build their teams, and transform their organizations.

Watkins has authored 15 books on leadership and negotiation and hundreds of articles for leading business journals. His work features in Harvard Business Review’s HBR Guides and 10 Must Reads series on leadership, teams, strategic initiatives, and new managers, and his article The future of team leadership is multimodal, co-authored with Robert Hooijberg, was the most-read piece of 2021 in MIT Sloan Management Review.

Before joining IMD in 2007, Watkins was an Adjunct Professor at INSEAD and Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. While on the faculty of these institutions, he designed and taught world-class programs for high-potential leader development, corporate diplomacy, and strategic negotiation.

Contributions

  • One of the most challenging career transitions is from management to leadership.

    Executives function as both managers and leaders, facing daily situations that require shifting between these two very different states. However, the initial transition from management to leadership is cited as one of the most difficult. These skills are rarely taught and often the hard way – through trial and error – sometimes to the detriment of the organisation. 

    Self-awareness is critical. Understanding our strengths and weaknesses in transitioning from management to leadership, particularly where the role has an enterprise-level impact on the organisation such as C-Suite or the Board, not only helps us as leaders but helps us cultivate leadership within our teams.