Right Seat / Left Seat
Taking a page out of the Army handbook
My brother John is a retired Army Colonel, and over the years he and I have spent a lot of time sharing leadership pro-tips from our respective jobs. He told me several times about the Right Seat and Left Seat Ride Program that he participated in on each change of command. Right Seat refers to the role of passenger. Left Seat refers to the role of driver.
Here are the relevant excerpts from USAREC Regulation 350-1, Training and Leader Development1:
“The Right Seat and Left Seat Ride Program gives new leaders an opportunity to accompany departing leaders through their operational area prior to the change of command or transfer of authority/responsibility. The program provides an excellent opportunity for training and mentoring incoming leaders.”
“The Right Seat and Left Seat Ride Program ensures continuity and the passage of knowledge between outgoing and incoming leaders. The program is normally 10 days in duration, which consists of 5 days riding in the right seat and 5 days riding in the left seat.”
“The program is flexible and represents the normal day-to-day activities of a company commander. The departing commander is the trainer for the Right Seat and Left Seat Ride Program. During the first 5 days, the outgoing commander will conduct normal operations with the new commander observing from the right seat. During the last 5 days, the new commander will take the left seat with the outgoing commander serving as an observer and mentor. The outgoing leader will provide their expertise and guidance.”
When John walked me through this, I loved the sound of it and thought about how smooth of a transition this would provide versus the normal role transitions I experienced at Microsoft: (a) leader leaves, (b) there is an interim leader, (c) we hire a replacement leader. I have experienced so much disruption in this latter approach that I was in search of the opportunity to apply this Right Seat / Left Seat procedure.
That opportunity came with my transition into the Director of Learning and Development role I created2. Being an entirely new role, there was no time pressure to get me into the new job immediately. My role had been Software Engineering Manager overseeing a team of 60 people. My team had been purring along, and I wanted to keep it that way.
I talked to Neil, my replacement, about this and he was on board. Then I shared this process with my team in the form of a blog post before the transition started. For the first week, Neil shadowed me to every meeting and stood over my shoulder while I worked through my mail, repo tracking, and OKR tracking processes. The second week I shadowed Neil and stood over his shoulder. It worked beautifully, with Neil saying he felt more prepared than he ever had for a new role.
