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

by Michael D. Watkins

you’re putting in the structures, processes, and systems necessary to rapidly expand the business (or project, product, or relationship).

need to hire and onboard a lot of people while making sure they becom...

Because of internal complacency, erosion of key capabilities, or external challenges, successful businesses tend to drift toward trouble. In a realignment, your challenge is to revitalize a unit, product, process, or project that has been drifting into danger.

The biggest challenge often is to create a sense of urgency.

success in transitioning depends, in no small measure, on your ability to transform the prevailing organizational psychology in predictable ways. In start-ups, the prevailing mood is often one of excited confusion, and your job is to channel that energy into productive directions, in part by deciding what not to do. In turnarounds, you may be dealing with a group of people who are close to despair; it is your job to provide them with a concrete plan for moving forward and confidence that it will improve the situation. In accelerated-growth situations, you need to help people understand that the organization needs to be more disciplined and get them to work within defined processes and systems. In realignments, you will likely have to pierce the veil of denial that is preventing people from confronting the need to reinvent the business. Finally, in sustaining-success situations, you must invent the challenge by finding ways to keep people motivated, combat complacency, and find new direction for growth—both organizational and personal.

You cannot figure out where to take a new organization if you do not understand where it has been and how it got where it is.

Diagnosing Your STARS Portfolio

as soon as you drill down, you will almost certainly discover that you’re managing a portfolio—of products, projects, processes, plants, or people—that represents a mix of STARS situations.

Diagnosing your STARS portfolio

First, identify which elements (projects, processes, products, perhaps even complete businesses) in your new responsibilities fall into the various STARS situations in the first column; list those elements in the second column.

Then use the third column to estimate the percentage of your effort that should be allocated to each category in the next 90 days, making sure it adds up to 100%.

think about which of these situations you most prefer to do.

Armed with insight into your STARS portfolio and the key challenges and opportunities, you will adopt the right strategies for leading change.

Specifically, you must establish priorities, define strategic intent, identify where you can secure early wins, build the right leadership team, and create supporting alliances.

Leading change in turnarounds versus realignments

1. Organize to learn Figure out what you most need to learn, from whom, and how you can best learn it.

2. Define strategic intent Develop and communicate a compelling vision for what the organization will become. Outline a clear strategy for achieving that vision.

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.

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.

Secure early wins Think through how you plan to “arrive” in the new organization. Find ways to build personal credibility and energize the ranks.

Create supporting alliances Identify how the organization really works and who has influence. Create key coalitions in support of your initiatives.

Managing Yourself

adjustments you’ll need to make to manage yourself.

In turnarounds, leaders are often dealing with people who are hungry for hope, vision, and direction, and that necessitates a heroic style of leadership—charging

premium is on rapid diagnosis of the business situation (markets, technologies, products, strategies) and then aggressive moves to cut back the organization to a defensible core.

Realignments, in contrast, demand from leaders something more akin to stewardship or servant leadership—a more diplomatic and less ego-driven approach that entails building consensus for the need for change.

skilled stewards have deep understandings of the culture and politics of their organizations.

Stewards are more patient and systematic than heroes in deciding which people, processes, and other resources t...

cultivate awareness of the need for change by promoting shared diagnosis, influencing opinion leaders,...

Good leaders can succeed in all five of the STARS situations, although no one is equally good at all of them. It is essential to make a hardheaded assessment of which of your skills and inclinations will serve you well in your particular situation and which are likely to get you into trouble.

leadership is a team sport.

First, he needed to stock his team with some natural stewards to whom he could turn for wise counsel (lest he go off half-cocked) and to whom he could delegate some of the necessary outreach. Second, he had to identify where it actually made sense to focus some of his heroic energies.

Third, Karl needed to take into consideration STARS preferences and abilities as he hired, promoted, and assigned people to key projects.

Rewarding Success

The STARS framework has implications for how you should evaluate the people who work for you, and for t...

The most challenging situation was assessed to be realignment, followed by sustaining success and turnaround.

It is not the case that people are drawn to the easy situations. Rather, they are drawn to situations that are (1) more fun and (2) get more recognition.

A successful start-up is a visible and easily measurable individual accomplishment, as is a successful turnaround.

performance must be evaluated and rewarded differently in the different STARS situations.

Plan to return to this chapter periodically to reassess your diagnosis of your organization, and think about the implications for what needs to be done and who needs to do it.

MATCH STRATEGY TO SITUATION—CHECKLIST What portfolio of STARS situations have you inherited? Which portions of your responsibilities are in start-up, turnaround, accelerated-growth, realignment, and sustaining-success modes? What are the implications for the challenges and opportunities you are likely to confront, and for the way you should approach accelerating your transition? What are the implications for your learning agenda? Do you need to understand only the technical side of the business, or is it critical that you understand culture and politics as well? What is the prevailing climate in your organization? What psychological transformations do you need to make, and how will you bring them about? How can you best lead change given the situations you face? Which of your skills and strengths are likely to be most valuable in your new situation, and which have the potential to get you into trouble? What are the implications for the team you need to build?

It’s well worth investing time in this critical relationship up front, because your new boss sets your benchmarks, interprets your actions for other key players, and controls access to resources you need.

Negotiating success means proactively engaging with your new boss to shape the game so that you have a fighting chance of achieving desired goals.

What you need from a boss also varies among the STARS business situations. In start-ups, you need resources and perhaps protection from higher-level interference. In turnarounds, you may need to be pushed to cut back the business quickly to the defensible core. When you’re accelerating growth, the key may be securing appropriate levels of investment. If you’re in a realignment, you may need your boss to help you make the case for change. In a sustaining-success situation, you may need help to learn about the business and avoid early mistakes that threaten the core assets.

In start-ups, you need resources and perhaps protection from higher-level interference.

When you’re accelerating growth, the key may be securing appropriate levels of investment.

Focusing on the Fundamentals

Don’t stay away. If you have a boss who doesn’t reach out to you, or with whom you have uncomfortable interactions, you will have to reach out yourself.

Don’t surprise your boss.

It’s usually best to give your new boss at least a heads-up as soon as you become aware of a developing problem.