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October 14 - December 12, 2020
Even if you’re sure you know what your boss expects, you should go back regularly to confirm and clarify.
How does your boss like to communicate? How often? What kinds of decisions does he want to be involved in, and when can you make calls on your own?
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.
You should typically devote the first block of 30 days to learning and building personal credibility.
Set weekly goals for yourself, and establish a personal discipline of weekly evaluation and planning.
Your key outputs at the end of the first 30 days will be a diagnosis of the situation, an identification of key priorities, and a plan for how you will spend the next 30 days.
At the 60-day mark, your review meeting should focus on assessing your progress toward the goals of your plan for the previous 30 days. You should also discuss what you plan to achieve in the next 30 days (that is, by the end of 90 days). Depending on the situation and your level in the organization, your goals at this juncture might include identifying the resources necessary to pursue major initiatives, fleshing out your initial assessments of strategy and structure, and presenting some early assessments of your team.
The same five-conversation framework can help you build productive relationships with the people who report to you.
be careful not to fall into the low-hanging fruit trap.
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.
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.
assess alignment among these key elements.
Making changes for change’s sake.
Not adjusting for the STARS situation.
Trying to restructure your way out of deeper problems.
Specifically all four elements of organizational architecture need be aligned to work together.1 Strategic direction. The organization’s mission, vision, and strategy Structure. How people are organized in units and how their work is coordinated, measured, and incentivized Core processes. The systems used to add value through the processing of information and materials Skill bases. The capabilities of key groups of people in the organization
Aligning an organization is like preparing for a long sailing trip. First, you need to be clear on whether your destination (the mission and goals) and your route (the strategy) are the right ones. Then you can figure out which boat you need (the structure), how to outfit it (the processes), and which mix of crew members is best (the skill bases). Throughout the journey, you keep an eye out for reefs that are not on the charts.
Strategic direction encompasses mission, vision, and strategy. Mission is about what will be achieved, vision is about why people should feel motivated to perform at a high level, and strategy is about how resources should be allocated and decisions made to accomplish the mission. If you keep in mind the what, the why, and the how, you won’t get lost in debates about what a mission is, what a vision is, and what a strategy is.
look at the logic behind the strategy to ensure that it makes sense overall.
Start by looking at documents that describe your group’s mission, vision, and strategy.
disassemble them into their components: markets, products, technologies, functional plans, and goals.
Is the defined direction sufficient for what your unit needs to do in the next two or three years?
SWOT—an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—was
A good general rule is that decisions should be made by the people who have the most relevant knowledge, as long as their incentives encourage them to do what is best for the organization.
The best predictor of what people will do is what they are incentivized to do.
Reporting relationships help you observe and control the workings of your group, clarify responsibility, and encourage accountability.
Core processes (often referred to as “systems”) enable your group to transform information, materials, and knowledge into value in the form of commercially viable products or services, new knowledge or ideas, productive relationships, or anything else the larger organization considers essential.
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?
When processes and structure mesh with each other, the good results are clear to see.
Process analysis stimulates collective learning. It helps the entire group understand exactly who does what, within and between units or groups, to carry out a particular process.
The most important decisions you make in your first 90 days will probably be about people.
Criticizing the previous leadership. There is nothing to be gained by criticizing the people who led the organization before you arrived.
Keeping the existing team too long.
Not balancing stability and change.
The key is to find the right balance between stability and change.
Not working on organizational alignment and team development in parallel.
Not holding on to the good people.
you should look for ways to signal to the top performers that you recognize their capabilities.
Undertaking team building before the core is in place.
avoid explicit team-building activities until the team you want is largely in place.
Making implementation-dependent decisions too early.
you should judiciously defer making decisions until the core members are in place.
Trying to do it all yourself.
“Five Ways to Bungle a Job Change,” Harvard Business Review,
