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

by Michael D. Watkins

1. Sticking with what you know 2. Falling prey to the "action imperative" 3. Setting unrealistic expectations 4. Attempting to do too much 5. Coming in with "the" answer 6. Engaging in the wrong type of learning 7. Neglecting horizontal relationships

Leadership ultimately is about influence and leverage. You are, after all, only one person. To be successful, you need to mobilize the energy of many others in your organization.

Essential transition tasks: 1. Prepare yourself 2. Accelerate your learning 3. Match your strategy to the situation 4. Secure early wins 5. Negotiate success 6. Achieve alignment 7. Build your team 8. Create coalitions 9. Keep your balance 10. Accelerate everyone

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.

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.

A baseline question you always should ask is, “How did we get to this point?”

The first question is, What kind of change am I being called upon to lead? Only by answering this question will you know how to match your strategy to the situation. The second question is, What kind of change leader am I? Here the answer has implications for how you should adjust your leadership style.

Start-ups, turnarounds, and accelerated-growth situations involve much resource-intensive construction work;

The biggest challenge often is to create a sense of urgency. There may be a lot of denial; the leader needs to open people’s eyes to the fact that a problem actually exists.

In fact, the key to sustaining success often lies in continuously starting up, accelerating, and realigning parts of the business.

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 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.

The experienced turnaround person facing a realignment is at risk of moving too fast, needlessly causing resistance. The experienced realignment person in a turnaround situation is at risk of moving too slowly and expending energy on cultivating consensus when it is unnecessary to do so, thus squandering precious time.

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.

Whatever your own priorities, figure out what your boss cares about most. What are his priorities and goals, and how do your actions fit into this picture? Once you know, aim for early results in those areas. One good way is to focus on three things that are important to your boss and discuss what you’re doing about them every time you interact.

Whatever your own priorities, pinpoint what your boss cares about most, and aim for early wins in those areas.

One proven strategy is to focus your early conversations on goals and results instead of how you achieve them.

To the greatest extent possible, your early wins should advance longer-term goals.

Each wave should consist of distinct phases: learning, designing the changes, building support, implementing the changes, and observing results.

The goal of the first wave of change is to secure early wins.

The second wave of change typically addresses more fundamental issues of strategy, structure, systems, and skills to reshape the organization;

Because your earliest actions will have a disproportionate influence on how you’re perceived, think through how you will get connected to your new organization in the first few days in your new role.

1

Keep asking yourself, Why should people feel inspired to expend extra effort to achieve the goals we have defined for the organization?

Research on persuasive communication heavily underlines the power of repetition.

Few leaders do a great job of leading team decision making. In part, this is because different types of decisions call for different decision-making processes, but most team leaders stick with one approach.

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.

Armed with a clear understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish, you can drill down and figure out whose support is essential and how you will secure it. Consider creating an alliance-building plan of each of your early-win projects.

2

Take care, too, to observe carefully in meetings and other interactions to see who defers to whom on crucial issues. Notice whom people go to for advice and insight, and who shares what information and news. Who defers to whom when certain topics are being discussed? When an issue is raised, where do people’s eyes track?

Whatever supporters’ reasons for backing you, do not take their support for granted. It’s never enough merely to identify support; you must solidify and nurture it.

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At the end of each day, spend ten minutes evaluating how well you met your goals and then planning for the next day. Do the same thing at the end of each week.