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

by Michael D. Watkins

Reaching a shared understanding of the business situation you face, and of its associated challenges and opportunities, is your goal in the situational diagnosis conversation.

If you and your boss do not define your new situation in the same way, you will not receive the support you need.

The support you need from your boss will depend on your STARS portfolio—start-up,

Help getting needed resources quickly Clear, measurable goals Guidance at strategic breakpoints Help staying focused

Same as start-up, plus

Help cutting deeply enough, fast enough

Same as start-up, plus

Same as start-up, plus

Help making the case for change, especially if you’re from outside

Same as start-up, plus

You need to agree on short- and medium-term goals and on timing.

If you don’t manage expectations, they will manage you.

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

The most effective approach is to integrate your boss’s goals with your own efforts to get early wins. If this is impossible, look for early wins based solely on your boss’s priorities.

try to deduce what your boss is sensitive about.

One of your immediate tasks is to shape your boss’s perceptions of what you can and should achieve. You may find her expectations unrealistic, or simply at odds with your own beliefs about what needs to be done. If so, you must work hard to make your views converge.

Whether you and your boss agree on expectations, try to bias yourself somewhat toward underpromising achievements and overdelivering results.

Be conservative in what you promise.

Even if you’re sure you know what your boss expects, you should go back regularly to confirm and clarify. Some bosses know what they want but are not good at expressing it.

Above all, don’t let key issues remain ambiguous. Ambiguity about goals and expectations is dangerous.

In realignment situations, you need consistent, public backing to get the organization to confront the need for change. Ideally, your boss will stand shoulder to shoulder with you, helping pierce through denial and complacency.

The first step is to decide what resources—tangible and intangible—you must have to succeed.

It’s best to put as much as possible on the table as early as possible. Try using the menu approach: lay out the costs and benefits of different levels of resource commitment. “If you want my sales to grow seven percent next year, I need investment of X dollars. If you want ten percent growth, I will need Y dollars.”

Clarify your needs in your own mind before you enter these discussions, back them up with as much hard data as you can get, and prepare to explain exactly why you see certain resources as essential. Then stick to your guns.

The first step is to diagnose your new boss’s working style and figure out how it jibes with your own.

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? Does your boss arrive at the office early and work late? Does he expect others to do the same?

Assume that the job of building a positive relationship with your new boss is 100 percent your responsibility.

When serious style differences arise, it’s best to address them directly. Otherwise, you run the risk that your boss will interpret a style difference as disrespect or even incompetence on your part.

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

You may have to remind your boss periodically to focus on the results you’re achieving and not on your methods.

It may also help to judiciously discuss style issues with someone your boss trusts, who can enlighten you about potential issues and solutions before you raise them directly with your boss. If you find the right adviser, he may even help you broach a difficult issue in a nonthreatening manner.

Finally, when your relationship with your boss has matured a bit (roughly the 90-day mark is a good rule of thumb), begin to discuss how you’re doing. This need not be a formal performance review, but it does need to be an open discussion of how things are going. What are you doing well, and what do you need to do differently? What skills do you need to develop to do the job better? Are there shortcomings in your leadership capacities that you need to address?

Your willingness to seek candid feedback on your strengths and weaknesses—and, critically, your ability to act on the feedback—sends a powerful message.

Don’t restrict your focus to hard skills. The higher you rise, the more important the key soft skills of cultural and political diagnosis, negotiation, coalition building, and conflict management will become.

Formal training can help, but developmental assignments—in project teams, in new parts of the organization, in different functions, in different locations—are indispensable in honing these key managerial skills.

You face even more daunting challenges in managing expectations if you have more than one boss (direct or dotted-line). The same principles hold, but the emphasis shifts. If you have multiple bosses, you must be sure to carefully balance perceived wins and losses among them.

pieces. You should complete a version of table 4-1 for each of your bosses, and look closely at where their views of the situations, expectations, and resources converge and where they diverge. Pay attention, too, to differences in their styles, and adapt accordingly.

No matter what situation you’re entering, it can be useful to create a 90-day plan and get buy-in from your boss. Usually, you will be able to devise a plan after a couple of weeks in the new job, when you have begun to connect with the organization and get the lay of the land.

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 hav...

You should typically devote the first block of 30 days to learning and building personal credibility. Like Michael, you should negotiate for this early learning period and then try to hold your boss to that agreement. Then you can proceed to develop a learning agenda and learning plan for yourself. 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...

This plan should address where and how you will begin to seek some early wins. Your review meeting with your boss should focus on the situation and expectations conversations, with an eye to reaching consensus about the situation, clarification of expectations, and buy-in to your plan for...

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.

In the past, have you done a good job of helping subordinates with their transitions? What might you do differently this time?

The golden rule of transitions is to transition others as you would wish to be transitioned yourself

The same five-conversation framework can help you build productive relationships with the people who report to you. Introduce the framework to them right away, and schedule a first conversation with each of them to talk about the situation and about your expectations.

See how fast you can accelerate their transitions.

Given what you need to do, what resources are absolutely needed? With fewer resources, what would you have to forgo? If you had more resources, what would the benefits be? Be sure to build the business case.

What kinds of assignments or projects might help you develop skills you need?

A seminal study of executives in transition found that they plan and implement change in distinct waves, as illustrated in figure 5-1.2 Following an early period of focused learning, these leaders begin an early wave of changes. The pace then slows to allow consolidation and deeper learning about the organization, and to allow people to catch their breath. Armed with more insight, these executives then implement deeper waves of change. A final, less extreme wave focuses on fine-tuning to maximize performance. By this point, most of these leaders are ready to move on.