The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter

by Michael D. Watkins

Secure early wins. Early wins build your credibility and create momentum. They create virtuous cycles that leverage the energy you put into the organization to create a pervasive sense that good things are happening. In the first few weeks, you need to identify opportunities to build personal credibility. In the first 90 days, you need to identify ways to create value and improve business results that will help you get to the break-even point more rapidly.

Onboarding checklists Business orientation checklist As early as possible, get access to publicly available information about financials, products, strategy, and brands. Identify additional sources of information, such as websites and analyst reports. If appropriate for your level, ask the business to assemble a briefing book. If possible, schedule familiarization tours of key facilities before the formal start date. Stakeholder connection checklist Ask your boss to identify and introduce you to the key people you should connect with early on. If possible, meet with some stakeholders before the formal start. Take control of your calendar, and schedule early meetings with key stakeholders.

Be careful to focus on lateral relationships (peers, others) and not only vertical ones (boss, direct reports). Expectations alignment checklist Understand and engage in business planning and performance management. No matter how well you think you understand what you need to do, schedule a conversation with your boss about expectations in your first week. Have explicit conversations about working styles with bosses and direct reports as early as possible. Cultural adaptation checklist During recruiting, ask questions about the organization’s culture. Schedule conversations with your new boss and HR to discuss work culture, and check back with them regularly. Identify people inside the organization who could serve as culture interpreters. After thirty days, conduct an informal 360-degree check-in with your boss and peers to gauge how adaptation is proceeding.

Questions About the Past Performance How has this organization performed in the past? How do people in the organization think it has performed? How were goals set? Were they insufficiently or overly ambitious? Were internal or external benchmarks used? What measures were employed? What behaviors did they encourage and discourage? What happened if goals were not met? Root Causes If performance has been good, why has that been the case?

What have been the relative contributions of strategy, structure, systems, talent bases, culture, and politics? If performance has been poor, why has that been the case? Do the primary issues reside in the organization’s strategy? Its structure? Its technical capabilities? Its culture? Its politics? History of Change What efforts have been made to change the organization? What happened? Who has been instrumental in shaping this organization? Questions About the Present Vision and Strategy What is the stated vision and strategy? Is the organization really pursuing that strategy? If not, why not? If so, will the strategy take the organization where it needs to go?

People Who is capable, and who is not? Who is trustworthy, and who is not? Who has influence, and why? Processes What are the key processes? Are they performing acceptably in quality, reliability, and timeliness? If not, why not? Land Mines What lurking surprises could detonate and push you offtrack? What potentially damaging cultural or political missteps must you avoid? Early ...

Questions About the Future Challenges and Opportunities In what areas is the organization most likely to face stiff challenges in the coming year? What can be done now to prepare for them? What are the most promising unexploited opportunities? What would need to happen to realize their potential? Barriers and Resources What are the most formidable barriers to making needed changes? Are they technical? Cultural? Political? Are there islands of excellence or other high-quality resources that you can leverage? What new capabilities need to be developed or acquired? Culture Which elements of the culture should be preserved?

Which elements need to change? As you work to answer these questions, think, too, about the right mix of technical, interpersonal, cultural, and political learning.

The most valuable external sources of information are likely to be the following: Customers. How do customers—external or internal—perceive your organization? How do your best customers assess your products or services? How about your customer service? If your customers are external, how do they rank your company against your competitors? Suppliers. Suppliers can give you their perspectives on your organization in its role as a customer. You can also learn about the strengths and flaws of your internal systems for managing quality and customer satisfaction. Distributors. From distributors, you can learn about the logistics of product movement, customer service, and competitors’ practices and offerings. You can also get a sense of the distributors’ own capabilities. Outside analysts. Analysts can give you a fairly objective assessment of your company’s strategy and capabilities as well as those of your competitors. Analysts also have a broad overview of the demands of the market and the economic health of the industry.

Ask them essentially the same five questions: What are the biggest challenges the organization is facing (or will face in the near future)? Why is the organization facing (or going to face) these challenges? What are the most promising unexploited opportunities for growth? What would need to happen for the organization to exploit the potential of these opportunities? If you were me, what would you focus attention on?

Learning Plan Template Before Entry Find out whatever you can about the organization’s strategy, structure, performance, and people. Look for external assessments of the performance of the organization. You will learn how knowledgeable, fairly unbiased people view it. If you are a manager at a lower level, talk to people who deal with your new group as suppliers or customers. Find external observers who know the organization well, including former employees, recent retirees, and people who have transacted business with the organization. Ask these people open-ended questions about history, politics, and culture. Talk with your predecessor if possible. Talk to your new boss. As you begin to learn about the organization, write down your first impressions and eventually some hypotheses.

Compile an initial set of questions to guide your structured inquiry after you arrive. Soon After Entry Review detailed operating plans, performance data, and personnel data. Meet one-on-one with your direct reports and ask them the questions you compiled. You will learn about convergent and divergent views and about your reports as people. Assess how things are going at key interfaces. You will hear how salespeople, purchasing agents, customer service representatives, and others perceive your organization’s dealings with external constituencies. You will also learn about problems they see that others do not. Test strategic alignment from the top down. Ask people at the top what the company’s vision and strategy are. Then see how far down into the organizational hierarchy those beliefs penetrate. You will learn how well the previous leader drove vision and strategy down through the organization. Test awareness of challenges and opportunities from the bottom up. Start by asking frontline people how they view the company’s challenges and opportunities.

Then work your way up. You will learn how well the people at the top check the pulse of the organization. Update your questions and hypotheses. Meet with your boss to discuss your hypotheses and findings. By the End of the First Month Gather your team to feed back to them your preliminary findings. You will elicit confirmation and challenges of your assessments and will learn more about the group and its dynamics. Now analyze key interfaces from the outside in. You will learn how people on the outside (suppliers, customers, distributors, and others) perceive your organization and its strengths and weaknesses. Analyze a couple of key processes. Convene representatives of the responsible groups to map out and evaluate the processes you selected. You will learn about productivity, qua...

They can fill you in on the history, culture, and politics of the organization, and they are also potential allies and influencers. Update your questions and hypotheses. Meet wi...

The STARS model Start-Up Turnaround Accelerated growth Realignment Sustaining success Assembling the capabilities (people, financing, and technology) to get a new business or initiative off the ground Saving a business or initiative widely acknowledged to be in serious trouble Managing a rapidly expanding business Reenergizing a previously successful organization that now faces problems Preserving the vitality of a successful organization and taking it to the next level Challenges Building the strategy, structures, and systems from scratch without a clear framework or boundaries Recruiting and welding together a high-performing team Making do with limited resources Reenergizing demoralized employees and other stakeholders Making effective decisions under time pressure Going deep enough with painful cuts and difficult personnel choices Putting in place structures and systems to permit scaling Integrating many new employees Convincing employees that change is necessary Carefully restructuring the top team and refocusing the organization Living in the shadow of the former leader and managing the team he or she created Playing good defense before embarking on too many new initiatives Finding ways to take the business to the next level Opportunities You can do things right from the beginning. People are energized by the possibilities. There are no rigid preconceptions. Everyone recognizes that change is necessary. Affected constituencies offer significant external support. A li...

Leading change in turnarounds versus realignments Turnarounds Realignments 1. Organize to learn Figure out what you most need to learn, from whom, and how you can best learn it. Focus on technical learning (strategy, markets, technologies, and so on). Prepare to act quickly. Focus on cultural and political learning. Prepare to act deliberately. 2. Define strategic intent Develop and communicate a compelling vision for what the organization will become. Outline a clear strategy for achieving that vision. Prune noncore businesses. Hone and leverage existing capabilities. Stimulate innovation. 3. Establish A-item priorities Identify a few vital goals and pursue them relentlessly. Think about what you need to have accomplished by the end of year 1 in the new position. Make faster, bolder moves. Focus on strategy and structure. Make slower, more deliberate moves. Focus on systems, skills, and culture.

4. Build the leadership team Evaluate the team you inherited. Move deftly to make the necessary changes; find the optimal balance between bringing in outside talent and elevating high potentials within the organization. Clean house at the top. Recruit external talent. Make a few important changes. Promote high potentials from within. 5. Secure early wins Think through how you plan to “arrive” in the new organization. Find ways to build personal credibility and energize the ranks. Shift the organizational mind-set from despair to hope. Shift the organizational mind-set from denial to awareness. 6. Create supporting alliances Identify how the organization really works and who has influence. Create key coalitions in support of your initiatives. Gain support from bosses and other stakeholders to invest the required resources. Build alliances sideways and down

to ensure better e...

Planning for Five Conversations Your relationship with your new boss will be built through an ongoing dialogue. Your discussions will begin before you accept the new position and continue into your transition and beyond. Several fundamental subjects belong at the center of this dialogue. In fact, it’s valuable to include plans for five specific conversations with your new boss about transition-related subjects in your 90-day plan. These are not subjects to be dealt with in separate meetings but are intertwined threads of dialogue. The situational diagnosis conversation. In this conversation, you seek to understand how your new boss sees the STARS portfolio you have inherited. Are there elements of start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success? How did the organization reach this point? What factors—both soft and hard—make this situation a challenge? What resources within the organization can you draw on? Your view may differ from your boss’s, but it is essential to grasp how she sees the situation.

The expectations conversation. Your goal in this conversation is to understand and negotiate expectations. What does your new boss need you to do in the short term and in the medium term? What will constitute success? Critically, how will your performance be measured? When? You might conclude that your boss’s expectations are unrealistic and that you need to work to reset them. Also, as part of your broader campaign to secure early wins, discussed in the next chapter, keep in mind that it’s better to underpromise and overdeliver. The resource conversation. This conversation is essentially a negotiation for critical resources. What do you need to be successful? What do you need your boss to do? The resources need not be limited to funding or personnel. In a realignment, for example, you may need help from your boss to persuade the organization to confront the need for change. Key here is to focus your boss on the benefits and costs of what you can accomplish with different amounts of resources. The style conversation. This conversation is about how you and your new boss can best interact on an ongoing basis. What forms of communication does he prefer, and for what? Face-to-face? Voice, electronic? How often? What kinds of decisions does he want to be consulted on, and when can you make the call on your own? How do your styles differ, and what are the implications for the ways you should interact? The personal development conversation. Once you’re a few months into your new ...

Your 90-day plan should be written, even if it consists only of bullet points. It should specify priorities and goals as well as milestones. Critically, you should share it with your boss and seek buy-in for it. It should serve as a “contract” between the two of you about how you’re going to spend your time, spelling out both what you will do and what you will not do. To begin to sketch out your plan, divide the 90 days into three blocks of 30 days. At the end of each block, you will have a review meeting with your boss. (Naturally, you’re likely to interact more often than that.) You should typically devote the first block of 30 days to learning and building personal credibility.

FOGLAMP project checklist FOGLAMP is an acronym for focus, oversight, goals, leadership, abilities, means, and process. This tool can help you cut through the haze and plan your critical projects. Complete the table for each early-win project you set up. Project: __________________________ Question Answer Focus: What is the focus for this project? For example, what goal or early win do you want to achieve? Oversight: How will you oversee this project? Who else should participate in oversight to help you get buy-in for implementing results? Goals: What are the goals and the intermediate milestones, and time frames for achieving them?

Leadership: Who will lead the project? What training, if any, do they need in order to be successful? Abilities: What mix of skills and representation needs to be included? Who needs to be included because of their skills? Because they represent key constituencies? Means: What additional resources, such as facilitation, does the team need to be successful? Process: Are there change models or structured processes you want the team to use? If so, how will they become familiar with the approach?

The best predictor of what people will do is what they are incentivized to do.

To evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of each core process, you should examine four aspects: Productivity. Does the process efficiently transform knowledge, materials, and labor into value? Timeliness. Does the process deliver the desired value in a timely manner? Reliability. Is the process sufficiently reliable, or does it break down too often? Quality. Does the process deliver value in a way that consistently meets required quality standards?

The starting point is to be conscious of the criteria you will explicitly or implicitly use to evaluate people who report to you. Consider these six criteria: Competence. Does this person have the technical competence and experience to do the job effectively? Judgment. Does this person exercise good judgment, especially under pressure or when faced with making sacrifices for the greater good? Energy. Does this team member bring the right kind of energy to the job, or is she burned out or disengaged? Focus. Is this person capable of setting priorities and sticking to them, or prone to riding off in all directions? Relationships. Does this individual get along with others on the team and support collective decision making, or is he difficult to work with? Trust. Can you trust this person to keep her word and follow through on commitments?

Create an interview template. Ask people the same set of questions, and see how their answers vary. Here are sample questions. – What are the strengths and weaknesses of our existing strategy? – What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing us in the short term? In the medium term? – What resources could we leverage more effectively? – How could we improve the way the team works together?

If you were in my position, what would your priorities be?

What topics elicit strong emotional responses? These hot buttons provide clues to what motivates the individual and what kinds of changes she would be energized by.

By the end of roughly the first 30 days, you should be able to provisionally assign people to one of the following categories: Keep in place. The person is performing well in her current job. Keep and develop. The individual needs development, and you have the time and energy to do it. Move to another position. The person is a strong performer but is not in a position that makes the most of his skills or personal qualities. Replace (low priority). The person should be replaced, but the situation is not urgent. Replace (high priority). The person should be replaced as soon as possible.

Observe for a while. This person is still a question mark, and you need to learn more before you can make a definitive judgment about them.

As you learn more, try to identify the sources of power that give particular people influence in the organization. Here are examples: Expertise Control of information Connections to others Access to resources, such as budgets and rewards Personal loyalty

Use the following categories and questions to identify the types of arguments you need to make to convince people. Logos—data and reasoned arguments What data or analysis might they find persuasive? What logic(s) might appeal to them? Are there biases to which they are falling prey and, if so, how might you demonstrate this? Ethos—principles, policies, and other “rules” Are there principles or policies that they could be convinced should operate here? If you are asking them to act counter to a principle or policy, can you help them justify making an exception? Pathos—emotions and meaning Are there emotional “triggers,” for example loyalty or contribution to the common good, to which you could appeal?

Can you help them create a sense of meaning by supporting or opposing a cause? If they are reacting too emotionally, can you help them step back and get perspective?