While driving in to catch a Metro-North train, I heard that the railroad had named a new president. His voice came over the radio: "I know this organization, I was here from its first days in 1983, I worked here for decades."—That was the gist of the new Metro-North leader's message.
Why would he say that, I wondered. This railroad has a terrible reputation right now. 2013 was a year of derailments, commuter deaths and power outages. Why would they pick an insider, and why would the insider emphasize his role in shaping the status quo?
I parked, got on the train, googled the new president—Joseph Giulietti—and discovered that he spent the last fifteen years as head of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority. Ahh, so Giulietti was trying to reassure people that he was not a carpetbagging outsider but a guy who knows the ropes—and where the bodies are buried.
I quickly devised the following model. When announcing a new leader, your options for messaging depend on the intersection of organizational track record and your leader's perspective. Thus:
Let's put it like this:
Boiled down to your basic options, the four possibilities are these:
Doesn't fit my paradigm, I see. But the main message is that my train arrived on time without incident.