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

by Michael D. Watkins

Consider, for example, the following list of common traps, developed through interviews with experienced leaders and supplemented by responses to questions in the Genesis/HBR/IMD study. As you look at the list, think about your own experience. Sticking with what you know. You believe you will be successful in the new role by doing the same things you did in your previous role, only more so. You fail to see that success in the new role requires you to stop doing some things and to embrace new competencies. Falling prey to the “action imperative.” You feel as if you need to take action, and you try too hard, too early to put your own stamp on the organization. You are too busy to learn, and you make bad decisions and catalyze resistance to your initiatives. Setting unrealistic expectations. You don’t negotiate your mandate or establish clear, achievable objectives. You may perform well but still fail to meet the expectations of your boss and other key stakeholders. Attempting to do too much. You rush off in all directions, launching multiple initiatives in the hope that some will pay off. People become confused, and no critical mass of resources gets focused on key initiatives. Coming in with “the” answer. You come in with your mind made up, or you reach conclusions too quickly about “the” problems and “the” solutions. You alienate people who could help you understand what’s going on, and you squander opportunities to develop support for good solutions. Engaging in the wrong...

your objective is not only to avoid vicious cycles; you need to create virtuous cycles that help you create momentum and establish an upward spiral of increasing effectiveness (see figure I-3). Good initial decisions founded on the right kind of learning, for example, bolster your personal credibility. As people come to trust your judgment, your ability to learn accelerates, and you equip yourself to make sound calls on tougher issues.

Transition failures happen because new leaders either misunderstand the essential demands of the situation or lack the skill and flexibility to adapt to them.

Prepare yourself. This means making a mental break from your old job and preparing to take charge in the new one. Perhaps the biggest pitfall you face is assuming that what has made you successful to this point will continue to do so. The dangers of sticking with what you know, working extremely hard at doing it, and failing miserably are very real. Accelerate your learning. You need to climb the learning curve as fast as you can in your new organization. This means understanding its markets, products, technologies, systems, and structures, as well as its culture and politics. Learning about a new organization can feel like drinking from a fire hose. You must be systematic and focused about deciding what you need to learn and how you will learn it most efficiently. Match your strategy to the situation. Different types of situations require you to make significant adjustments in how you plan for and execute your transition. Start-ups, for instance—of a new product, process, plant, or business—present challenges quite different from those you would face while turning around a product, process, or plant in serious trouble. A clear diagnosis of the situation is an essential prerequisite for developing your action plan. 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 ...

No matter how much preparation time you get, start planning what you hope to accomplish by specific milestones. Even a few hours of preentry planning can go a long way. Begin by thinking about your first day in the new job. What do you want to do by the end of that day? Then move to the first week. Then focus on the end of the first month, the second month, and finally the three-month mark. These plans will be sketchy, but the simple act of beginning to plan will help clear your head.

It’s a mistake to believe that you will be successful in your new job by continuing to do what you did in your previous job, only more so. “They put me in the job because of my skills and accomplishments,” the reasoning goes. “So that must be what they expect me to do here.” This thinking is destructive, because doing what you know how to do (and avoiding what you don’t) can appear to work, at least for a while. You can exist in a state of denial, believing that because you’re being efficient, you’re being effective. You may keep believing this until the moment the walls come crashing down around you.

Decision making becomes more political—less about authority, and more about influence. That isn’t good or bad; it’s simply inevitable. There are two major reasons this is so. First, the issues you’re dealing with become much more complex and ambiguous when you move up a level—and your ability to identify “right” answers based solely on data and analysis declines correspondingly. Decisions are shaped more by others’ expert judgments and who trusts whom, as well as by networks of mutual support. Second, at a higher level of the organization, the other players are more capable and have stronger egos. Remember, you were promoted because you are able and driven; the same is true for everyone around you. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the decision-making game becomes much more bruising and politically charged the higher up you go. It’s critical, then, for you to become more effective at building and sustaining alliances.

One way to pinpoint your vulnerabilities is to assess your problem preferences—the kinds of problems toward which you naturally gravitate. Everyone likes to do some things more than others. Julia’s preference was marketing; for others, it may be finance or operations. Your preferences have probably influenced you to choose jobs where you can do more of what you like to do. As a result, you’ve perfected those skills and feel most competent when you solve problems in those areas, and that reinforces the cycle. This pattern is like exercising your right arm and ignoring your left: the strong arm gets stronger, and the weak one atrophies.

Your weaknesses can make you vulnerable, but so can your strengths. To paraphrase Abraham Maslow, “To a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”3 The qualities that have made you successful so far (it’s worth being clear in your own mind what your hammer is) can prove to be weaknesses in your new role. For example, Julia was highly attentive to detail. Though clearly a strength, her attention to detail had a downside, especially in tandem with a high need for control: the result was a tendency to micromanage people in the areas she knew best. This behavior demoralized people who wanted to make their own contributions without intrusive oversight.

Consciously or not, some individuals may not want you to advance. Your old boss, for example, may not want to let you go. So you must negotiate clear expectations, as soon as you know when you will be transitioning, about what you will do to close things out. This means being specific about the issues or projects that will be dealt with and to what extent—and, critically, what is not going to be done. Take notes, and circulate them back to the boss so that everyone is on the same page. Then hold your boss, and yourself, to the agreement. Be realistic about what you can accomplish. There is always more you could do, so keep in mind that time to learn and plan before you enter a new job is a precious commodity.

The first task in making a successful transition is to accelerate your learning. Effective learning gives you the foundational insights you need as you build your plan for the next 90 days. So it is essential to figure out what you need to know about your new organization and then to learn it as rapidly as you can. The more efficiently and effectively you learn, the more quickly you will close your window of vulnerability. You can identify potential problems that might erupt and take you offtrack. The faster you climb the learning curve, the earlier you can begin to make good business decisions.

A related problem is a failure to plan to learn. Planning to learn means figuring out in advance what the important questions are and how you can best answer them. Few new leaders take the time to think systematically about their learning priorities. Fewer still explicitly create a learning plan when entering a new role.

A baseline question you always should ask is, “How did we get to this point?” Otherwise, you risk tearing down existing structures or processes without knowing why they were put there in the first place.

Remember: simply displaying a genuine desire to learn and understand translates into increased credibility and influence.

Even in situations (such as turnarounds) when you have been brought in explicitly to import new ways of doing things, you still have to learn about the organization’s culture and politics to socialize and customize your approach.

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?

Your learning agenda defines what you want to learn. Your learning plan defines how you will go about learning it. It translates learning goals into specific sets of actions—identifying promising sources of insight and using systematic methods—that accelerate your learning. Your learning plan is a critical part of your overall 90-day plan. In fact, as you will discover later, learning should be a primary focus of your plan for your first 30 days on the job (unless, of course, there is a disaster in progress).

Negotiating success means proactively engaging with your new boss to shape the game so that you have a fighting chance of achieving desired goals. Many new leaders just play the game, reactively taking their situation as given—and failing as a result. The alternative is to shape the game by negotiating with your boss to establish realistic expectations, reach consensus, and secure sufficient resources.

dangerous to say, “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.” Far better is, “Don’t just bring me problems, bring me plans for how we can begin to address them.”)

Take 100 percent responsibility for making the relationship work. This is the flip side of “Don’t stay away.” Don’t expect your boss to reach out or to offer you the time and support you need. It’s best to begin by assuming that it’s on your shoulders to make the relationship work. If your boss meets you partway, it will be a welcome surprise.

Elena succeeded in quickly creating momentum and building personal credibility by securing early wins.1 By the end of the first few months, you want your boss, your peers, and your subordinates to feel that something new, something good, is happening. Early wins excite and energize people and build your personal credibility. Done well, they help you create value for your new organization earlier and reach the break-even point much more quickly.

The implication: when you’re deciding where to seek early wins, you may have to forgo some of the low-hanging fruit and reach higher in the tree. As you strive to create momentum, therefore, keep in mind that your early wins must do double duty: they must help you build momentum in the short term and lay a foundation for achieving your longer-term business goals. So be sure that your plans for securing early wins, to the greatest extent possible, (1) are consistent with your agreed-to goals—what your bosses and key stakeholders expect you to achieve—and (2) help you introduce the new patterns of behavior you need to achieve those goals.

Problematic behavior patterns Lack of… Symptoms Focus The group can’t clearly define its priorities, or it has too many priorities. Resources are spread too thin, leading to frequent crises and firefighting. People are rewarded for their ability to put out fires, not for devising enduring solutions. Discipline People exhibit great variation in their levels of performance. Employees don’t understand the negative consequences of inconsistency. People make excuses when they fail to meet commitments. Innovation The group uses internal benchmarks to measure performance. Improvements in products and processes unfold slowly and incrementally. Employees are rewarded for maintaining stable performance, not for pushing the envelope. Teamwork Team members compete with one another and protect turf rather than work together to achieve collective goals. People are rewarded for creating fiefdoms. Sense of urgency Team members ignore the needs of external and internal customers. Complacency reigns, revealed in beliefs such as, “We’re the best and always have been” and “It doesn’t matter if we respond immediately; it won’t make any difference.”

Focus on a few promising opportunities. It’s easy to take on too much during a transition, and the results can be ruinous. You cannot hope to achieve results in more than a couple of areas during your transition. Thus, it’s essential to identify the most promising opportunities and then focus relentlessly on translating them into wins. Think of it as risk management: pursue enough focal points to have a good shot at getting a significant success, but not so many that your efforts get diffused.

Get wins that matter to your boss. It’s essential to get early wins that energize your direct reports and other employees. But your boss’s opinion about your accomplishments is crucial too. Even if you do not fully endorse her priorities, you must make them central in thinking through which early wins you will aim for. Addressing problems that your boss cares about will go a long way toward building credibility and cementing your access to resources.

Get wins in the right ways. If you achieve impressive results in a manner that is seen as manipulative, underhanded, or inconsistent with the culture, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. If Elena had gotten her key wins by being punitive, it would have undercut the larger objective she was trying to achieve. An early win that is accomplished in a wa...

Adjust for the culture. In some organizations, a win must be a visible individual accomplishment. In others, individual pursuit of glory, even if it achieves good results, is viewed as grandstanding and destructive of teamwork. In team-oriented organizations, early wins could come in the form of leading a team in the development of a new product idea or being viewed as a solid contributor and team player in a broader initiative. Be sure you understand what is and is not viewed as a win, especially if you’re onboarding into the organization.

Think about risk management: build a promising portfolio of early-win initiatives so that big successes in one will balance disappointments in others. Then focus relentlessly on getting results.

The higher you climb in organizations, the more you take on the role of organizational architect, creating and aligning the key elements of the organizational system: the strategic direction, structure, core processes, and skill bases that provide the foundation for superior performance. No matter how charismatic you are as a leader, you cannot hope to do much if your organization is fundamentally out of alignment. You will feel as if you’re pushing a boulder uphill every day.

Even if, like Hannah, you lack the authority to unilaterally alter the architecture of your new organization, you should focus on assessing organizational alignment. Look at how your piece of the puzzle fits (or doesn’t fit) into the bigger picture. Think about whether you need to convince influential people—your boss or your peers—that serious misalignments are a key impediment to achieving superior performance. Also, keep in mind that a thorough understanding of organizational systems can help you build credibility with people higher in the organization—and demonstrate your potential for more-senior positions.

Misalignments between strategic direction and skill bases. Suppose you head an R&D group and your goal is to increase the number of new product ideas your team generates and tests. However, your staff is not up to speed on the latest techniques that would let you run more experiments faster than before. In this case, your group’s skills do not support its mission.

The correct approach is to start with the environment and then analyze the organization. The first step is to assess the organization’s external environment, looking for emerging threats and potential opportunities. Naturally this assessment must be conducted by people who are grounded in the reality of the organization and knowledgeable about its environment. Having identified potential threats and opportunities, the group should next evaluate them with reference to organizational capabilities. Does the organization have weaknesses that make it particularly vulnerable to specific threats? Does the organization have strengths that would permit it to pursue specific opportunities? The final step is to translate these assessments into a set of strategic priorities, blunting critical threats and pursuing high-potential opportunities. These are then the inputs to a more extensive strategic planning process. The confusion that has flowed from naming the method SWOT is so pervasive that a name change is probably in order. The alternative? Call it TOWS, so that people get the right cues about the best order for conducting the process.

The organization has silos of excellence. When you group people with similar experience and capabilities, they can accumulate deep wells of expertise. But they can also become isolated and compartmentalized. The implication is that you need to pay attention to how integration happens. This includes looking at who is responsible for bridging the chasms between functions, as well as identifying whether the right integration mechanisms, such as cross-functional teams and group performance incentives, are in place.

Employees have incentives to do the wrong things. The best predictor of what people will do is what they are incentivized to do. Effective leaders seek to align the interests of individual decision makers with the interests of the group as a whole. This is why placing more emphasis on group incentives is effective in some organizations: they focus everyone’s attention on the ability to work together. Problems arise when measurement and compensation schemes fail to reward employees for either their individual or their collective efforts. Problems also arise when rewards advance employees’ individual interests at the expense of the group’s broader goals—for example, when multiple employees who could serve the same set of customers lack incentives to cooperate. This was the problem confronting Hannah in the story at the beginning of the chapter.

Reporting relationships lead to compartmentalization or diffusion of accountability. Reporting relationships help you observe and control the workings of your group, clarify responsibility, and encourage accountability. Hierarchical reporting relationships make these tasks easier but can lead to compartmentalization and poor information sharing. Complex reporting arrangements, such as matrix structures, broaden information sharing and reduce compartmentalization but can diffuse accountability.

How do you actually improve a core process? Start by making a process (or work-flow) map—a straightforward diagram of exactly how the tasks in a particular process flow through the individuals and groups who handle them. figure 6-2 shows a simplified process map for order fulfillment. Ask the individuals responsible for each stage of the process to chart the process flow from beginning to end. Then ask the team to look for bottlenecks and problem interfaces between individuals responsible for adjacent sets of tasks. For example, errors or delays may occur when someone in customer relations communicates to the fulfillment group the need for special handling of an order. Process failures are commonplace during hand-offs of this kind. Work with the team to identify opportunities for high-leverage improvements.

Keep in mind that culture is not something you can change directly. It is powerfully influenced by the four elements of organizational architecture, as well as by leadership behaviors. The implication is that to change the culture, you need to change the architecture as well as reinforce what you’re trying to do with the right leadership. One example is changing the metrics by which you judge success and then aligning employees’ objectives and incentives with those new measures. For instance, consider changing the balance between individual and group incentives. Does success require people to work closely and coordinate with one another—for example, in a new-product development team? If so, then put more weight on group incentives.

Building a team you’ve inherited is like repairing a leaky ship in mid-ocean. You will not reach your destination if you ignore the necessary repairs, but you do not want to try to change too much too fast and sink the ship. The key is to find the right balance between stability and change. First and foremost, focus only on truly high-priority personnel changes early on. If you can make do for a while with a B-player, then do so.

Probe group dynamics. Observe how the team interacts in your early meetings. Do you detect any alliances? Particular attitudes? Leadership roles? Who defers to whom on a given topic? When one person is speaking, do others roll their eyes or otherwise express disagreement or frustration? Pay attention to these signs to test your early insights and detect coalitions and conflicts.

On the push side, establishing—and sticking to—clear and explicit performance metrics is the best way to encourage accountability. Select performance measures that will let you know as clearly as possible whether a team member has achieved her goals. Avoid ambiguously defined goals, such as “Improve sales” or “Decrease product development time.” Instead, define goals in terms that can be quantified. Examples include “Increase sales of product X by 15 to 30 percent over the fourth quarter of this year,” or “Decrease development time on product line Y from twelve months to six months within the next two years.”

It is equally important to decide whether to base rewards more on individual or collective performance. This decision is linked to your assessment of whether you need true teamwork. If so, put more emphasis on collective rewards. If it is sufficient to have a high-performing group, then place more emphasis on individual performance.

When should you choose one process over the other? The answer is emphatically not “If I am under time pressure, I will use consult-and-decide.” Why? Because even though you may reach a decision more quickly by the consult-and-decide route, you won’t necessarily reach the desired outcome faster. In fact, you may end up consuming a lot of time trying to sell the decision after the fact, or finding out that people are not energetically implementing it and having to pressure them. Those who suffer from the action imperative are most at risk of this; they want to reach closure by making the call but may jeopardize their end goals in the process.

To avoid confusion, consider explaining to your direct reports what process you’re using and why. More importantly, strive to run a fair process.4 Even if people do not agree with the final decision, they often will support it if they feel (1) that their views and interests have been heard and taken seriously and (2) that you have given them a plausible rationale for why you made the call you did. The corollary? Don’t engage in a charade of consensus building—an effort to build support for a decision already made. This rarely fools anyone, and it creates cynicism and undercuts implementation.

Don’t forget to celebrate success. It’s easy for members of a virtual team to feel disconnected, especially if most of the team is co-located and only a few are working remotely. Although it’s always important to pause occasionally to recognize and celebrate accomplishments, it’s essential in virtual teams.

To succeed in your new role, you will need the support of people over whom you have no direct authority. You may have little or no relationship capital at the outset, especially if you’re onboarding into a new organization. So you will need to invest energy in building new networks. Start early. Discipline yourself to invest in building up “relationship bank accounts” with people you anticipate needing to work with later. Think hard about whether there are people you haven’t met who are likely to be critical to your success.

To secure such an agreement, Alexia needed to build supportive alliances within both sides. It was unlikely she’d be able to achieve complete unanimity, because some people would have too much invested in the status quo. So she should have focused instead on winning a critical mass of support for agreement in both the corporate and the regional organizations. Had Alexia understood this from the start, she might have focused her initial efforts differently—not only on diagnosing problems and proposing rational solutions but also on understanding how her agenda fit into the broader political landscape on both sides of the Atlantic. She would not have assumed that the strength of her business case would carry the day, nor would she have felt compelled to win over every single stakeholder.

Instead, she should have identified the specific alliances she needed to build and then figured out how to exert the necessary influence in the organization. This process of mapping the influence landscape also might have helped her identify potential blockers: what or who might stand in the way of getting support for her direction? How could she get those in opposition to finally say yes?

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 Over time, the patterns of influence will become clearer, and you’ll be able to identify those vital individuals—the opinion leaders—who exert disproportionate influence because of their informal authority, expertise, or sheer force of personality. If you convince them, broader acceptance of your ideas is likely to follow. You will also begin to recognize the power coalitions: groups of people who explicitly or implicitly cooperate over the long term to pursue certain goals or protect certain privileges.

As you look for support, be sure to identify people with whom you could build alliances of convenience. There will be individuals with whom you disagree in many areas, but with whom you align on the specific issue of concern. If this is the case, think hard about how to educate and enlist them.

Action-forcing events get people to stop deferring decisions, delaying, and avoiding commitment of scarce resources. When your success requires the coordinated action of many people, delay by a single individual can have a cascade effect, giving others an excuse not to proceed. You must therefore eliminate inaction as an option. You do this by setting up action-forcing events—events that induce people to make commitments or take actions. Meetings, review sessions, teleconferences, and deadlines can all help create and sustain momentum: regular meetings to review progress, and tough questioning of those who fail to reach agreed-to goals, increase the psychological pressure to follow through.