The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels

by Michael D. Watkins

Be sure you understand what your organization does and does not view as a win.

Failing to get wins that matter to your boss. It is essential to get early wins that energize your direct reports and other employees. But your boss’s opinion about your accomplishments is critically important too.

Letting your means undermine your ends. Process matters. If you achieve impressive results in a manner that is seen as manipulative, underhanded, or inconsistent with the culture, you are setting yourself up for trouble.

In planning for your transition and beyond, it can be clarifying to plan to make successive waves of change. Each wave ought to consist of distinct phases: learning, designing the changes, building support, implementing the changes, and observing results.

Unending change is also a surefire recipe for burning out your people.

The goal of the first wave of change is to secure early wins. The new leader tailors early initiatives to build personal credibility, establish key relationships, and identify and harvest low-hanging fruit—the highest-potential opportunities for short-term improvements in organizational performance.

The second wave of change addresses more fundamental issues of strategy, structure, systems, and skills to reshape the organization. This is when the real gains in organizational performance are achieved. But you will not get there if you do not secure early wins in the first wave.

In the first 90 days, a key goal is to build personal credibility and create organizational momentum.

Plan your early wins so they help you build credibility in the short run and lay a foundation for your longer-term goals.

your efforts to secure early wins should (1) be consistent with your A-item business priorities, and (2) introduce the new patterns of behavior you want to instill in the organization.

Your long-term goals should consist of A-item business priorities and desired changes in the behavior of people in your organization. A-item priorities constitute the destination you are striving to reach in terms of measurable business objectives.

A-item priorities should follow naturally from core problems.

A-item priorities should be neither too general nor too specific. They should address several levels of specificity so you can establish measures and milestones along the way.

A-item priorities should offer clear direction yet allow for flexibility while you learn more about your situation.

The process of defining your A-item priorities is iterative.

What behaviors do people in your organization consistently display that undermine the potential for high performance? Take a look at table 4-1, which lists some common but problematic behavior patterns,

Armed with an understanding of your A-item priorities and objectives for behavior change, you can proceed to create detailed plans for how you will secure early wins

In your first few weeks in your new job, you cannot hope to have a measurable impact on performance, but you can score small victories and signal that things are changing. Your objective at this early stage is to build personal credibility.

What messages do you want to get across about who you are and what you represent? What are the best ways to convey those messages? Identify your key audiences—direct reports, other employees, key outside constituencies—and craft a few messages tailored to each.

Think about modes of engagement too. How will you introduce yourself? Should your first meetings with direct reports be one-on-one or in a group?

As you make progress in getting connected, identify and act as quickly as you can to remove minor but persistent irritants in your new organization.

Cut out redundant meetings, shorten excessively long ones, or improve physical-space problems. All this helps you to build personal credibility early on.

Do you have the insight and steadiness to make tough decisions? Do you have values that they relate to, admire, and want to emulate?

Do you have the right kind of energy?

Do you demand high levels of performance from you...

So how do you build personal credibility? In part it is about marketing yourself effectively, much akin to building equity in a brand. You want people to associate you with attractive capabilities, attitudes, and values. There’s no single right answer for how to do this.

leaders are perceived as more credible when they are demanding but able to be satisfied.

accessible but not too familiar.

decisive but judicious.

focused but flexible.

active without causing commotion.

willing to make tough calls but humane.

Early actions often get transformed into stories, which can define you as hero or villain.

Identify two or three key areas, at most, where you will seek to achieve rapid improvement.

But don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Think about risk management: Build a promising portfolio of early-win initiatives so that big successes in one will balance disappointments in others. Then focus relentlessly on getting results.

To set the stage for securing early wins, your learning agenda should specifically address how you will identify promis...

Keep your long-term goals in mind.

Identify a few promising focal points.

Concentrate on the most promising focal points.

Launch pilot projects.

Elevate change agents.

Identify the people in your new unit, at all levels, who have the insight, drive, and incentives to advance your agenda.

Leverage the pilot projects to introduce new behaviors.

For each pilot project you set up to secure early wins, use this checklist to be sure you are setting high standards for the kinds of behavior you want to encourage.

What is the right mix of people, in terms of knowledge, skills, and personal chemistry?

Who has the credibility, the project management skills, and the creativit...

What are achievable “stre...

What are achievable d...

What coaching or framework will...

What other resources are...