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

by Michael D. Watkins

Assessment of problem preferences Assess your intrinsic interest in solving problems in each of these domains on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means very little interest and 10 means a great deal of interest. Design of appraisal and reward systems __________ Employee morale __________ Equity/fairness __________ Management of financial risk __________ Budgeting __________ Cost-consciousness __________ Product positioning __________ Relationships with customers __________ Organizational customer focus __________ Product or service quality __________ Relationships with distributors and suppliers __________ Continuous improvement __________ Project management systems __________ Relationships among R&D, marketing, and operations __________ Cross-functional cooperation __________ Now transfer your rankings from table 1-2 to the corresponding cells in table 1-3. Then sum the three columns and the five rows. The column totals represent your preferences among technical, political, and cultural problems. Technical problems encompass strategies, markets, technologies, and processes. Political problems concern power and politics in the organization. Cultural problems involve values, norms, and guiding assumptions. If one column total is noticeably lower than the others, it represents a potential blind spot for you. If you score high on technical interests and low on cultural or political interests, for example, you may be at risk of overlooking the human side of the organizational equat...