The First 90 Days

“The president of the United States gets 100 days to prove himself; you get 90. The actions you take during your first few months in a new role will largely determine whether you succeed or fail.” (Page 1)

When starting a new job—whether through internal promotion or external hire—you are looking to get to your “break-even point” as fast as possible. That is, how fast can you get to a point where your value created equals the value you have consumed?

Watkins paints the example that, for the first three months, you are likely consuming value as you learn from others, have introductory meetings, make changes, and so on. Eventually, you start to produce value which, after three more months, will mean your “break-even point” is six months.

He also outlines common traps that transitioning leaders fall into:

• Sticking with the same playbook as the old job
• Acting too fast, thereby making mistakes
• Setting unrealistic expectations
• Biting off more than you can chew
• Having “the” answer / your mind made up on entry
• Poor learning ability, therefore missing key things
• Neglecting to build relationships

“The business situations facing leaders who derail are no tougher than those in which others succeed brilliantly. Transition failures happen because new leaders either misunderstand the essential demands of the situation or lack the skill and flexibility to adapt to them.” (Page 9)

1. Prepare yourself

“At the broadest level, preparing yourself means letting go of the past and embracing the imperatives of the new situation to give yourself a running start. It can be hard work, but it is essential. Often, promising managers fail in new roles because they've failed to prepare themselves by embracing the necessary changes in perspective.” (Page 20)

Watkins outlines different considerations depending on whether you were promoted, or onboarding into a new company.

1A. Getting promoted

• You now have a broader horizon: this requires you to find the right balance between breadth and depth in what you focus on—the high level or the detail—in any given moment.
• Your world is now more complex and ambiguous: this requires delegating more deeply to your team depending on how many of them you are managing.
• You will likely experience tougher politics: this requires building and exerting influence in a different way
• You’re further from the “front lines”: this requires more formal communication and new means of communication and marketing yourself
• You’re under more scrutiny: requires adjusting to a greater degree of visibility and exhibiting the right presence within the company

1B. Onboarding into a new company

“Leaders joining new companies often are making lateral moves: they've been hired to do things that they've been successful doing elsewhere. Their difficulties lie in adjusting to new organizational contexts that have different political structures and cultures.” (Page 24)

This is much harder than a promotion from within because there will be so much you don’t know or understand about the new organization.

• Business orientation:  understand the market, the product, and the operating model
• Stakeholders management: lateral relationships with peers are just as important as vertical ones (boss and direct reports)
• Expectation alignment: these will have been in flux ever since recruitment for your role began. Where are those expectations now, once you’ve joined?
• Cultural adaptation: how do things get done around here? How do people communicate, think, and act?

Watkins suggests identifying cultural norms for the following areas:

1. “Influence: How do people get support for critical initiatives? Is it more important to have the support of a patron within the senior team, or affirmation from your peers and direct reports that your idea is a good one?
2. Meetings: Are meetings filled with dialogue on hard issues, or are they simply forums for publicly ratifying agreements that have been reached in private?
3. Execution: When it comes time to get things done, which matters more—a deep understanding of processes or knowing the right people?
4. Conflict: Can people talk openly about difficult issues without fear of retribution? Or do they avoid conflict-or, even worse, push it to lower levels, where it can wreak havoc?
5. Recognition: Does the company promote stars, rewarding those who visibly and vocally drive business initiatives? Or does it encourage team players, rewarding those who lead authoritatively but quietly and collaboratively?
6. Ends versus means: Are there any restrictions on how you achieve results? Does the organization have a well-defined, well-communicated set of values that is reinforced through positive and negative incentives” (Page 32)

1C. Getting prepared

• Be wary of your strengths: be wary of owning a hammer and seeing everything as a nail. Be warned, then, that your strengths may make you as vulnerable as your weaknesses.
• Activate your learning mode: do not be brittle when presented with new (and surprising) information. You won’t know everything, so be prepared for this mindset shift.
• Begin building a new network: technical, political, and personal advisors are all needed.

2. Accelerate your learning

“The first task in making a successful transition is to accelerate your learning. Effective learning gives you the foundational insights you need as you build your plan for the next 90 days. So it is essential to figure out what you need to know about your new organization and then to learn it as rapidly as you can.” (Page 47)

The people who tend to be best at this, Watkins says, are usually those in HR or who are former management consultants.

Finding a balance between doing and being is important for getting this part right. Coming in with “the answer” can be deadly; your preconceptions may well be wrong, and may not hit the mark—so you must leave time to figure things out without summarily acting.

So, assemble a “learning agenda” before you even arrive into the new role, to help you learn about the past, the present, and the future of the company.

Questions about the past:

• Performance (marketing, sales, product, etc)
• Root causes (why are things the way they are)
• History of change (what has been tried and failed/succeeded and why)

Questions about the present:

• Vision and strategy (what is it, is it understood equally across all depts and levels)
• People (who’s who)
• Processes (what are they, how do they work, and do they work)
• Land mines (what to be wary of, watchouts)
• Early wins (can anyone identify them)
• Shadow org (is there one, and how does it work)

Questions about the future:

• What are seen as the key challenges and opportunities of the company?
• What are any current barriers?
• What resources are currently available?
• What is the culture like? (Explicitly and implicitly)

Be structured: as the same questions so you can compare the differences between the answers people give. Watkins recommends these 5 questions as a starting point (Page 59):

1. “What are the biggest challenges the organization is facing (or will face in the near future)?
2. Why is the organization facing (or going to face) these challenges?
3. What are the most promising unexploited opportunities for growth?
4. What would need to happen for the organization to exploit the potential of these opportunities?
5. If you were me, what would you focus attention on?”

Look for different sources of information, both internally and externally:

• Internal sources: execs, salespeople, historians, integrators, builders
• External sources: customers, distributors, allies, suppliers, analysts

Learning plan template:

• Before joining: learn what you can from whatever sources you can find. Talk to your boss. Build hypotheses. Compile an initial set of questions
• Soon after joining: review as much data as you can get. Test strategic alignment (does everyone give similar answers when asked what the strategy is). Test awareness of challenges and opportunities.
• By end of month 1: will have looked at processes, external interfaces, integrators and historians, and gotten insight and feedback.

3. Match strategy to the situation

What situation are you really in? Use the STARS model to figure this out:

• Startup: building and assembling, a chance to get things right from the beginning
• Turnaround: saving a business in trouble, re-energizing a team or teams, boosting morale, making decisions under pressure, making difficult decisions w/r/t people. But a little success can go a long way.
• Accelerated growth: structures and systems to sustain growth, integrating new employees
• Realignment: boosting a once successful company where problems are now creeping in. Careful convincing, change, and (re)structuring are necessary.
• Sustaining success: preserving what’s working, stepping into shoes that may be hard to fill, working with already motivated people. Solid foundation, but perhaps less “low-hanging fruit” to take advantage of.

“Because of internal complacency, erosion of key capabilities, or external challenges, successful businesses tend to drift toward trouble. In a realignment, your challenge is to revitalize a unit, product, process, or project that has been drifting into danger. The clouds are gathering on the horizon, but the storm has not yet broken and many people may not even see the clouds. The biggest challenge often is to create a sense of urgency.” (Page 74)

There is no pure fit here. It could be a combination of multiple of these, with differences between different BUs, departments, and so on. Which parts of the business are in what condition when you arrive?

“Because of their differing imperatives, it is easy for heroes to stumble in realignment and sustaining-success situations and for stewards to struggle in start-ups and turnarounds. The experienced turnaround person facing a realignment is at risk of moving too fast, needlessly causing resistance. The experienced realignment person in a turnaround situation is at risk of moving too slowly and expending energy on cultivating consensus when it is unnecessary to do so, thus squandering precious time.” (Page 82)

Your experience and predisposition matters here, as does your ability to be self-aware and exercise personal discipline.

4. Negotiating success

“Negotiating success means proactively engaging with your new boss to shape the game so that you have a fighting chance of achieving desired goals. Many new leaders just play the game, reactively taking their situation as given—and failing as a result. The alternative is to shape the game by negotiating with your boss to establish realistic expectations, reach consensus, and secure sufficient resources.” (Page 88)

Get the fundamentals right. Watkins provides a list of things not to do:

• Don’t stay away from your boss, make sure you’re getting time with them
• Don’t surprise them with bad news, make sure you tell them first
• Don’t come with only problems, come with a plan for what to do about it
• Don’t just run through a checklist in your meetings, focus on priorities
• Don’t expect them to change; it’s your responsibility to work with their style

And on the other hand, here’s a list of things to do:

• Do clarify expectations early and often
• Do take 100% of the responsibility for making the relationship work
• Do negotiate time with them for diagnosis of the situation, and planning
• Do aim for early wins in areas important to your boss
• Do get good marks from others who matter to your boss

Watkins also identifies five conversations you need to have with your boss (not necessarily separately, in fact probably heavily intertwined):

Situational diagnosis: “This shared understanding is the foundation for everything you will do. If you and your boss do not define your new situation in the same way, you will not receive the support you need.” (Page 96)

Expectations: “What will constitute success, for your boss and for you?  When does your boss expect to see results? How will you measure success? Over what time frame? If you succeed, what is next? If you don't manage expectations, they will manage you.” (Page 98)

Resources: “Identify the resources already available to you, such as experienced people or new products ready to be launched. Then identify the resources you will need help in obtaining.” (Page 101)

Working style: “People's stylistic preferences affect how they learn, communicate, influence others, and make decisions … your agenda is to determine how you and your boss can best work together on a continuing basis.” (Page 103)

Personal development: “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” (Page 106)

When working remotely there is a greater onus on you to get things right. So, schedule time, put meetings in, and work face-to-face when you can.

Finally, make a 90-day plan with your boss. Could be only bullets, but share with them to get buy-in. Generally, though, he breaks it out like this:

• 30 days: learn and build credibility
• 60 days: assess progress and make a plan for the next 30 days
• 90 days: full review of the first 90 days

5. Securing early wins

“By the end of the first few months, you want your boss, your peers, and your subordinates to feel that something new, something good, is happening. Early wins excite and energize people and build your personal credibility. Done well, they help you create value for your new organization earlier and reach the break-even point much more quickly.” (Page 116)

A leader transitioning into a new role usually begins making changes after the first month of learning and getting their feet under the table. Watkins presents a line graph with peaks that track changes in the following “waves” of how things typically look:

• 1st wave: small, early
• Then: slow down to let folks catch up
• 2nd wave: larger, deeper change
• Then: second chance to let folks catch their breath again
• 3rd wave: further but smaller changes to maximize performance

This entire process usually takes 18-24 months. By the end of this, the leader is usually ready for their next challenge and to move on.

“In planning for your transition (and beyond), focus on making successive waves of change. Each wave should consist of distinct phases: learning, designing the changes, building support, implementing the changes, and observing results. Thinking in this way can release you to spend time up front to learn and prepare, and afterward to consolidate and get ready for the next wave. If you keep changing things, it is impossible to figure out what is working and what is not. Unending change is also a surefire recipe for burning out your people.” (Page 118)

Don’t just go for the low-hanging fruit. Your work has to build momentum and move towards you and your team’s longer-term goals. 

Therefore, focus on business priorities and reducing unwanted behaviors (e.g. lack of focus, discipline, innovation, teamwork, sense of urgency, etc.) Main principles here:

• Focus on a few promising opportunities
• Get wins that matter to your boss
• Do it in the right way (i.e. no Machiavellianism)
• Adjust for culture (i.e. go for individual glory? Or team wins?)

Understand you will have a reputation on arrival, having preceded you in some way without your control (even if it’s just your interviewers talking about you). In this time, it’s important to take any required rites of passage, to establish your authority without over- or under-asserting yourself, and to focus on what’s good for the business.

Establishing credibility (Page 125):

“Your credibility, or lack of it, will depend on how people would answer the following questions about you:

• 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 yourself and others?”

Ideally, you want to have the following attributes:

• Demanding, but able to be satisfied
• Accessible, but not too familiar
• Decisive, but judicious
• Focused, but flexible
• Active, but creating no commotion
• Makes tough calls, but is humane

[Page 129 contains an assessment matrix for selecting early wins. Useful.]

For early wins, select 3 or 4 areas at most where you know you can make an impact. And while you can plan and implement change, it depends on your context:

• How aware are people of the need to change?
• Are you clear on the diagnosis of what should be changed and why?
• Are you able to put together a solid plan?
• Do you have the right alliances formed to get things done?

Again, context is important and can be assessed with the STARS model.

“To change your organization, you will likely have to change its culture. This is a difficult undertaking. Your organization may have well-ingrained bad habits that you want to break. But we know how difficult it is for one person to change habitual patterns in any significant way, never mind a mutually reinforcing collection of people” (Page 135)

6. Achieve alignment

“The higher you climb in organizations, the more you take the role of organizational architect, creating and aligning the key elements of the organizational system: the strategic direction, structure, core processes, and skill bases that provide the foundation for superior performance. No matter how charismatic are as a leader, you cannot hope to do much if your organization is fundamentally out of alignment. You will feel as if you're pushing a boulder uphill every day.” (Page 140)

Typically, misalignments happen between the four core elements of organizational architecture:

• Between strategic direction and skillsets/skill bases
• Between strategic direction and core processes
• Between structure and core processes
• Between structure and skillsets/skill bases

However, there is no perfect structure and no perfect strategy. Think in terms of your primary goal and go from there.

7. Build your team

“The most important decisions you make in your first 90 days will probably be about people. If you succeed in creating a high-performance team, you can exert tremendous leverage in value creation. If not, you will face severe difficulties, for no leader can hope to achieve much alone. Bad early personnel choices will almost certainly haunt you.” (Page 166)

Common traps here:

• Blaming/criticizing previous leadership
• Keeping people too long when they are not right/underperforming
• Not balancing stability and change
• Losing the good people
• Team bonding before things are stable and settled
• Making implementation decisions before the person who needs to shape them/input into them is in place
• Working without support (i.e. HR, legal, etc)

Watkins recommends evaluating existing team members with six criteria:

1. Competence
2. Judgment
3. Energy
4. Focus
5. Relationships
6. Trust

“Some very bright people have lousy business judgment, and some people of average competence have extraordinary judgment. It is essential to be clear about the mix of knowledge and judgment you need from key people.” (Page 177)

Then, once your team is formed, define your goals, align your incentives, and articulate your vision to them.

After all of the above, an off-site can be useful to achieve no more than 1-2 of the following goals (Page 188):

• “To gain a shared understanding of the business (diagnostic focus)
• To define the vision and create a strategy (strategy focus)
• To change the way the team works together (team-process focus)
• To build or alter relationships in the group (relationship focus)
• To develop a plan and commit to achieving it (planning focus)
• To address conflicts and negotiate agreements (conflict-resolution focus)”

Decision-making: must be approached in different ways depending on the type of decision being taken. Ranges in the extreme between unilateral and unanimous. Neither are particularly good, but there are alternatives between these two:

• Unilateral
• Consult-and-decide
• Build consensus
• Unanimous

Watkins recommends a combination of the middle two, depending on the scenario you find yourself in. He also suggests you be as fair as possible in your decision-making and communicate how any decision was made.

Even if people do not agree with the decision, they will support it if they feel they’ve been taken seriously and there is a plausible rationale for the decision.

8. Create alliances

“To succeed in your new role, you will need the support of people over whom you have no direct authority. You may have little or no relationship capital at the outset, especially if you're onboarding into a new organization. So you will need to invest energy in building new networks.” (Page 201)

• Who is in your “influence landscape”? What do you want them to do, and by when?
• Who are your “winning alliances” (needed for a collective “yes”) and your “blocking alliances” (needed to avoid a collective “no”)
• What are the “influence networks” in the business? (Watkins recommends drawing these as diagrams)
• Identify supports, opponents, and “persuadables”

9. Manage yourself

Basically, take care of yourself:

• Define boundaries clearly, otherwise everyone will take, take, take
• Avoid “brittleness,” and be flexible in changing situations so that you don’t paint yourself into a corner
• Avoid isolation by making and maintaining the right connections
• Don’t use work to avoid things: grab the bull by the horns

Watkins identifies three main pillars

1) Adopt 90-day strategies in this book

2) Develop personal discipline

• Plan to plan
• Focus on important tasks first
• Judiciously defer commitment (see below quote)
• Go to the balcony (i.e. step back and look at the big picture occasionally)
• Check in with yourself often. Jot down thoughts and impressions to see how you feel etc.
• Know when to “quit” (i.e. rest and relax so you don’t burn out)

3) Build support systems

• Assert control locally with team and office routines
• Stabilize the home front (e.g. family moving to a new city)
• Build advice and counsel networks: technical, cultural, political

“Begin with no; it's easy to say yes later. It's difficult (and damaging to your reputation) to say yes and then change your mind. Keep in mind that people will ask you to make commitments far in advance, knowing that your schedule will look deceptively open.” (Page 230)

10. Accelerate everyone

Watkins ends with advice for handling transitions across entire organizations. This is more of an HR/People and Culture focus, rather than as an individual.