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

by Michael D. Watkins

The president of the United States gets 100 days to prove himself; you get 90.

You’re managing under a microscope, subject to a high degree of scrutiny as people around you strive to figure out who you are and what you represent as a leader. Opinions of your effectiveness begin to form surprisingly quickly, and, once formed, they’re very hard to change.

If you’re successful in building credibility and securing early wins, the momentum likely will propel you through the rest of your tenure. But if you dig yourself into a hole early on, you will face an uphill battle from that point forward.

you build a team of competent people whom you trust, you establish goals and metrics to monitor their progress, you translate higher-level goals into specific responsibilities for your direct reports, and you reinforce them through process.

Take control of your calendar, and schedule early meetings with key stakeholders. Be careful to focus on lateral relationships (peers, others) and not only vertical ones (boss, direct reports).

Beyond that, actively search out people in your organization whose skills are sharp in these areas, so that they can serve as a backstop for you and you can learn from them. A network of advisers and counselors can also help you move beyond your comfort zone.

If you were me, what would you focus attention on?

If you are a manager at a lower level, talk to people who deal with your new group as suppliers or customers.

Assess how things are going at key interfaces. You will hear how salespeople, purchasing agents, customer service representatives, and others perceive your organization’s dealings with external constituencies. You will also learn about problems they see that others do not.

By the End of the First Month Gather your team to feed back to them your preliminary findings. You will elicit confirmation and challenges of your assessments and will learn more about the group and its dynamics.

However, to enlist their aid you need to be clear about what you’re trying to do and how they can help. Critically, you need to be willing to ask in the first place and not feel that you should know everything and be in complete control from the moment you walk through the door.

How effective are you at learning about new organizations? Do you sometimes fall prey to the action imperative? To coming in with “the” answer? If so, how will you avoid doing this?

Once you’re a few months into your new role, you can begin to discuss how you’re doing and what your developmental priorities should be. Where are you doing well? In what areas do you need to improve or do things differently? Are there projects or special assignments you could undertake (without sacrificing focus)?

If there is a big inconsistency between how you prefer to be dealt with as a new direct report and how you deal with new direct reports, then you are part of the problem.

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

If you have the scope to alter direction, structure, processes, and skills in your new position, you should begin to analyze the architecture of your organization and assess alignment among these key elements. In the first few months you can’t hope to do much more than conduct a solid diagnosis and perhaps get started on the most pressing alignment issues. But it’s important to get a handle on what needs to be done so that you can focus some of your early-win projects appropriately and lay the foundation for a subsequent, deeper wave of change.

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.

If your group’s core processes are to support its strategic direction, they must also align with the unit’s structure (the way people and work are organized).

but it is more common to keep people longer than is wise. Whether because they’re afflicted with hubris (“These people have not performed well because they lacked a leader like me”) or because they shy away from tough personnel calls, leaders end up with less-than-outstanding teams.

First and foremost, focus only on truly high-priority personnel changes early on. If you can make do for a while with a B-player, then do so.

Finally, keep in mind that restructuring a team is fraught with emotional, legal, and company policy complications. Do not try to undertake this on your own. Find out who can best advise you and help you chart a strategy. The support of a good HR person is indispensable to any effort to restructure a team.

Create an interview template. Ask people the same set of questions, and see how their answers vary. Here are sample questions. – What are the strengths and weaknesses of our existing strategy? – What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing us in the short term? In the medium term? – What resources could we leverage more effectively? – How could we improve the way the team works together? – If you were in my position, what would your priorities be?

If you fail to establish solid boundaries defining what you are willing and not willing to do, the people around you—bosses, peers, and direct reports—will take whatever you have to give. The more you give, the less they will respect you and the more they will ask of you—another vicious cycle. Eventually you will feel angry and resentful that you’re being nibbled to death, but you will have no one to blame but yourself.

Plan to Plan. Do you devote time daily and weekly to a plan-work-evaluate cycle? If not, or if you do so irregularly, you need to be more disciplined about planning. 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. Get into the habit of doing this. Even if you fall behind, you will be more in control.

If you’re having trouble getting the real work done, discipline yourself to set aside a particular time each day, even as little as half an hour, when you will close the door, turn off your phone, ignore e-mail, and focus, focus, focus.