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

by Michael D. Watkins

Assess Implementation Have the mission, vision, and strategy of your organization been pursued energetically? If not, why not? Look at how your group’s strategic direction is being implemented—what people are doing and not what they are saying. This approach will help you pinpoint whether problems stem from inadequacies in formulation or implementation. Ask yourself these kinds of questions: Is our overall pattern of decisions consistent with our defined direction? What goals does the organization actually seem to be pursuing? Are we using the specified performance metrics to make day-to-day decisions? If implementation requires teamwork and cross-functional integration, are people acting as teams and collaborating across functions? If implementation requires the development of new employee skills, is a learning-and-development infrastructure in place to develop those skills? Your answers to these kinds of questions will tell you whether to push for changes in your group’s strategic direction or in its implementation.