An established team is not waiting to be improved. It has a way of doing things that survived at least one manager, and every part of it exists because somebody found it necessary at some point. Some of those reasons are gone. You cannot yet tell which.
Find out why before you decide what
The process that looks obviously wasteful is the first thing a new manager wants to remove, and it is the most reliable way to discover a constraint the expensive way. The duplicate check exists because of an incident three years ago. The report nobody reads is read by one person in finance who will escalate the week it stops arriving.
Ask the question plainly and without implication: how did this come to work this way. You will get one of three answers, and each tells you what to do.
- A live reason. Leave it alone.
- A dead reason. Something that mattered once and does not now. Candidate for removal, once you have confirmed it with whoever was on the other end.
- Nobody knows. The most interesting answer, and the one that needs the most care, because the reason may still exist without anyone remembering it.
The previous manager
You inherit their reputation whether it was good or bad, and the team will spend a few weeks working out which parts of them you are.
If they were liked, you are the person who replaced someone the team wanted to keep. Do not compete with the memory and do not imitate them. Be predictable instead: the thing people miss most about a good manager is knowing what to expect, and that is something you can supply quickly.
If they were not liked, resist the temptation to trade on it. Criticizing them buys you two weeks of goodwill and permanently establishes that you discuss absent people. Everything you say about your predecessor is heard as a preview of what you will say about them.
The informal hierarchy
Every established team has someone who is not the manager and whose approval decides whether a change sticks. Usually the longest-serving, sometimes the most technically respected, occasionally someone who simply does the unglamorous work everyone depends on.
Find out who it is in the first two weeks. You do not need to neutralize them or win them over in any formal sense. You need to know that a change announced without their understanding will be slow-walked, and that you will not know why.
When you were brought in to change things
Sometimes the brief is explicitly to turn something around, and waiting four weeks is not neutral. Even then, the sequence holds: understand the constraint, then act. What changes is the timeline, not the order.
Say so openly. A team told that changes are coming, with a rough shape and a date, behaves very differently from a team that senses changes are coming and is not told. The second group stops committing to anything and starts updating their résumés, which is exactly the outcome you were hired to avoid.
The first change should be small and visible
Once you do move, start with something the team already complains about. Not your own priority, theirs. It demonstrates two things at once: that you listened, and that things you raise with this manager can actually change.
That credit is what you will spend later on the change they do not want.
Frequently asked questions
How should you take over an existing team?
Find out why things work the way they do before deciding what to change. Every established process exists because somebody once found it necessary, and some of those reasons are still alive.
How do you handle the previous manager’s reputation?
If they were liked, do not compete with the memory or imitate them; be predictable instead. If they were not, do not trade on it, because everything you say about an absent predecessor is heard as a preview of what you will say about the team.
What is the informal hierarchy in a team?
The person, often not the manager, whose approval decides whether a change sticks. It may be the longest serving member or the one everyone depends on. Know who it is within the first two weeks.
What should the first change be when you take over a team?
Something small and visible that the team already complains about. It shows that you listened and that raising things with you leads somewhere, and that credit is what you spend later on the change they do not want.
Related: setting clear team expectations and building team culture when you did not choose the team.