How long to wait until new person makes an impact?

I would give it 4-6 months. 8 weeks is too early even at senior level.

From experience of looking from below, i.e. not senior management but one of the plebs, it becomes apparent quickly enough to underlings if senior managers are spoofers or actually capable.

And I am talking about a couple of months.

The issue in my experience is that the senior management that appointed the said new managers are often unwilling to admit they have fooked up in their appointment. They persevere in the hope that someone finds their feet or things turn around.

Now of course I am speaking as one of the plebs, but n my experience the plebs can most often spot a spoofer a mile off.

Ah come on they didn't do it on After Hours so give them some credit.

Entrepreneur and Business Management forum would be a better place than.

Few posters here have management awareness.

(Though ya, After Hours answers would be good craic ...)

Nothing worse than a new guy that comes in and starts making changes without really understanding the existing company culture and why things are the way they are in the first place.

Seen it a million times, some lad aghast at us doing something, proclaims that they did it differently in his old job and he wants to change it, lots of upheaval and then 6 months later we are back doing it the old way anyway, because there were good reasons for doing it that way in the first place.

A smart manager knows that they need to take stock and learn all the hidden elements before making changes, only an idiot marches in and thinks that he is going to revolutionise the place overnight. Add in the christmas period and I would say 8 weeks is far too early to be seeing any meaningful changes.

If you want to gauge his progress them look for evidence that he understands your business and is starting to contribute to daily operations. Looking for "changes" is the wrong metric at this stage.

How long is a piece of string question really. When you hire someone into a position, you hire them in there for a purpose, which means you should have a clear list of things that you expect of them.

But depending on the role, in the first 8 weeks that could be as little as "get familiar with your department and team and become part of their flow with minimal disruption", or it could be, "Build out the framework of an entirely new function and make your existence known across the organisation".

If you hire a senior manager, I would presume their primary function is people management and delegation of tasks, in which case I would expect that the best thing they can do is look like they've done nothing at all. If they've managed to disrupt or upset the people they're managing, or cause productivity to drop, then that's maybe worth looking at. But if they've managed in 8 weeks to insert themselves into the organisation and keep their staff happy and their workload humming along as good as it was before they joined, then they're doing just fine.