The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded_Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter

by Michael D. Watkins

  FIGURE I-1

  The break-even point

  When more than two hundred company CEOs and presidents were asked for their best estimates of the time it takes a typical midlevel leader who has been promoted or hired from the outside to reach the break-even point, the average of their responses was 6.2 months.5 Of course, there can be a great deal of variation in the time it takes to reach the break-even point. If you have inherited a disaster—the classic burning platform—you may be creating value from the moment your appointment is announced. If you have been hired from the outside into a very successful organization, it may take a year or more for you to be a net value contributor. However, even though the time varies (and I explore in depth the challenges of different types of transitions), the goal is the same: to get there as quickly and effectively as possible.

  This book provides a blueprint for dramatically condensing the time it takes you to reach the break-even point, regardless of your level in your organization. In fact, independent research has shown that you can reduce the time by as much as 40 percent through rigorous application of the principles described in this book.6

  Avoiding Transition Traps

  Like most leaders, you’ve probably learned to make transitions in the school of hard knocks—trying things, making mistakes, and ultimately winning through. In the process, you’ve developed approaches that have worked for you… at least until now. But what works well in some situations doesn’t work in others, and you may not figure that out until it’s too late. That’s why it is crucial to follow a comprehensive framework for making transitions, one that distills the experience of many leaders facing a diverse range of situations.

  Consider, for example, the following list of common traps, developed through interviews with experienced leaders and supplemented by responses to questions in the Genesis/HBR/IMD study. As you look at the list, think about your own experience.

  Sticking with what you know. You believe you will be successful in the new role by doing the same things you did in your previous role, only more so. You fail to see that success in the new role requires you to stop doing some things and to embrace new competencies.

  Falling prey to the “action imperative.” You feel as if you need to take action, and you try too hard, too early to put your own stamp on the organization. You are too busy to learn, and you make bad decisions and catalyze resistance to your initiatives.

  Setting unrealistic expectations. You don’t negotiate your mandate or establish clear, achievable objectives. You may perform well but still fail to meet the expectations of your boss and other key stakeholders.

  Attempting to do too much. You rush off in all directions, launching multiple initiatives in the hope that some will pay off. People become confused, and no critical mass of resources gets focused on key initiatives.

  Coming in with “the” answer. You come in with your mind made up, or you reach conclusions too quickly about “the” problems and “the” solutions. You alienate people who could help you understand what’s going on, and you squander opportunities to develop support for good solutions.

  Engaging in the wrong type of learning. You spend too much time focused on learning about the technical part of the business and not enough about the cultural and political dimensions of your new role. You don’t build the cultural insight, relationships, and information conduits you need if you’re to understand what is really going on.

  Neglecting horizontal relationships. You spend too much time focused on vertical relationships—up to the boss and down to direct reports—and not enough on peers and other stakeholders. You don’t fully understand what it will take to succeed, and you miss early opportunities to build supportive alliances.

  Have you fallen into any of these traps in the past? Have you seen others do so? Now think about your new role. Are you in danger of making any of these mistakes? To help avoid derailment and get to the break-even point faster, keep these in mind as you take on your new role.

  Creating Momentum

  Each of these traps enmeshes its victims in a vicious cycle (see figure I-2). By failing to learn the right things in the right ways at the outset, for example, you can make bad initial decisions that damage your credibility. Then, because people don’t trust your judgment, it can become still more difficult to learn what you need to know. You consume energy compensating for early miscalculations, and the downward spiral takes hold.

  But your objective is not only to avoid vicious cycles; you need to create virtuous cycles that help you create momentum and establish an upward spiral of increasing effectiveness (see figure I-3). Good initial decisions founded on the right kind of learning, for example, bolster your personal credibility. As people come to trust your judgment, your ability to learn accelerates, and you equip yourself to make sound calls on tougher issues.

  FIGURE I-2

  The vicious cycle of transitions

  FIGURE I-3

  The virtuous cycle of transitions

  Your overriding goal in getting up to speed and taking charge is to generate momentum by creating virtuous cycles, and to avoid getting caught in vicious cycles that damage your credibility. Leadership ultimately is about influence and leverage. You are, after all, only one person. To be successful, you need to mobilize the energy of many others in your organization. If you do the right things, then your vision, your expertise, and your drive can propel you forward and serve as seed crystals. If you don’t, you can end up caught in negative feedback loops from which it may be difficult or impossible to escape.

  Understanding the Fundamental Principles

  The root causes of transition failure always lie in a pernicious interaction between the new role, with its opportunities and pitfalls, and the individual, with his strengths and vulnerabilities. Failure is never only about the flaws of the new leader. Indeed, all the failed leaders I studied had achieved significant successes in the past. Nor is it only about a no-win situation in which not even a superhuman leader could have carried the day. 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.

  The good news is that there are systematic methods you can employ to both lessen the likelihood of failure and reach the break-even point faster. The specific business situations that confront transitioning leaders vary. But specific types of transition situations, such as start-ups and turnarounds, share certain features and imperatives. Further, there are fundamental principles—for example, securing early wins—that underpin success in all transitions at all levels. The key, then, is to match your strategy to the situation.

  More than a decade’s worth of research and practice has shown that you can dramatically accelerate your transition into your new role. Do the right things—the essential transition tasks listed next—and you will rapidly create momentum that will propel you to even greater successes.

  Prepare yourself. This means making a mental break from your old job and preparing to take charge in the new one. Perhaps the biggest pitfall you face is assuming that what has made you successful to this point will continue to do so. The dangers of sticking with what you know, working extremely hard at doing it, and failing miserably are very real.

  Accelerate your learning. You need to climb the learning curve as fast as you can in your new organization. This means understanding its markets, products, technologies, systems, and structures, as well as its culture and politics. Learning about a new organization can feel like drinking from a fire hose. You must be systematic and focused about deciding what you need to learn and how you will learn it most efficiently.

  Match your strategy to the situation. Different types of situations require you to make significant adjustments in how you plan for and execute your transition. Start-ups, for instance—of a new product, process, plant, or business—present challenges quite differ
ent from those you would face while turning around a product, process, or plant in serious trouble. A clear diagnosis of the situation is an essential prerequisite for developing your action plan.

  Secure early wins. Early wins build your credibility and create momentum. They create virtuous cycles that leverage the energy you put into the organization to create a pervasive sense that good things are happening. In the first few weeks, you need to identify opportunities to build personal credibility. In the first 90 days, you need to identify ways to create value and improve business results that will help you get to the break-even point more rapidly.

  Negotiate success. Because no other single relationship is more important, you need to figure out how to build a productive working relationship with your new boss (or bosses) and manage her expectations. This means carefully planning for a series of critical conversations about the situation, expectations, working style, resources, and your personal development. Crucially, it means developing and gaining consensus on your 90-day plan.

  Achieve alignment. The higher you rise in an organization, the more you must play the role of organizational architect. This means figuring out whether the organization’s strategic direction is sound, bringing its structure into alignment with its strategy, and developing the processes and skill bases necessary to realize your strategic intent.

  Build your team. If you are inheriting a team, you need to evaluate, align, and mobilize its members. You likely also need to restructure it to better meet the demands of the situation. Your willingness to make tough early personnel calls and your capacity to select the right people for the right positions are among the most important drivers of success during your transition and beyond. You need to be both systematic and strategic in approaching the team-building challenge.

  Create coalitions. Your success depends on your ability to influence people outside your direct line of control. Supportive alliances, both internal and external, are necessary if you are to achieve your goals. You therefore should start right away to identify those whose support is essential for your success, and to figure out how to line them up on your side.

  Keep your balance. In the personal and professional tumult of a transition, you must work hard to maintain your equilibrium and preserve your ability to make good judgments. The risks of losing perspective, becoming isolated, and making bad calls are ever present during transitions. There is much you can do to accelerate your personal transition and to gain more control over your work environment. The right advice-and-counsel network is an indispensable resource.

  Accelerate everyone. Finally, you need to help all those in your organization—direct reports, bosses, and peers—accelerate their own transitions. The fact that you’re in transition means they are too. The quicker you can get your new direct reports up to speed, the more you will help your own performance. Beyond that, the potential benefits to the organization of systematically accelerating everyone’s transitions are vast.

  The chapters that follow offer instructive stories and actionable guidelines and tools for succeeding in each of these ten tasks. You will learn how to diagnose your situation and create action plans tailored to your needs, regardless of your level in the organization or the business situation you face. In the process you will build a 90-day plan that will accelerate you into your new role.

  Assessing Transition Risk

  The first step is to diagnose the types of transitions you’re going through. Whether you’re preparing to interview for a new position or have taken a new role, this is the starting point for applying the fundamental principles. Promotion and onboarding into new companies are the most frequent shifts.

  However, most leaders taking new roles experience multiple transitions in parallel—for example, joining a new company and moving to a new location, or being promoted and moving from a functional to a cross-functional role. In fact, participants in the executive programs we studied reported on average experiencing 2.2 major shifts (such as getting a promotion, joining a new company, moving between business units, moving geographically) the last time they took new roles.7

  This complexity adds to the transition challenge—and the risk of derailing—and it means it is critical for you to understand the types of transitions you’re experiencing and to identify which shifts you are finding most challenging. A simple way to do this is to complete the Transition Risk Assessment in table I-1.

  Mapping Out Your First 90 Days

  Your transition begins the moment you learn you are being considered for a new job (see figure I-4 for key transition milestones). When it ends depends very much on the situation you face. No matter what kind of transition you’re making, by roughly the three-month mark key people in the organization—your bosses, peers, and direct reports—typically expect you to be getting some traction.

  Thus, you should use the 90-day period as a planning horizon. Doing so will help you confront the need to operate in a compressed time frame. If you’re lucky, you may get some lead time between learning you’re being considered and actually sitting in the chair. Use that time to begin educating yourself about your organization.

  No matter how much preparation time you get, start planning what you hope to accomplish by specific milestones. Even a few hours of preentry planning can go a long way. Begin by thinking about your first day in the new job. What do you want to do by the end of that day? Then move to the first week. Then focus on the end of the first month, the second month, and finally the three-month mark. These plans will be sketchy, but the simple act of beginning to plan will help clear your head.

  TABLE I-1

  Transition Risk Assessment

  To transition effectively, first identify the risks you face as you move into your new role using the Transition Risk Assessment. Start by checking off the types of transitions you are experiencing using the middle column. Then, for each item you checked, assess how challenging you are finding that particular shift on a 1–10 scale, where 1 means very easy and 10 means very difficult. Total the numbers in the right-hand column to get your Transition Risk Index (up to 100). The index gives you a sense of the magnitude of the challenge and the specific dimensions of your overall transition on which you most need to focus.

  FIGURE I-4

  Key transition milestones

  Hitting the Ground Running

  This book is for new leaders at all levels, from first-time managers to CEOs. The fundamental principles of effective transition acceleration hold up well across all levels. Every new leader needs to quickly become familiar with the new organization, secure early wins, and build supportive coalitions. That’s why this book provides guidelines for translating principles into plans tailored to your own situation. As you continue through it, you should read actively, making notes about the applicability of specific points to your situation, as well as thinking about how the advice should be customized to your situation.

  Acceleration Checklist and the First 90 Days App

  Lists like this one appear at the end of each chapter to help you crystallize the key lessons and apply them to your situation—both to prepare for interviews when you’re being considered for a new role and to speed your transition once you are in it.

  More detailed guidance and suggestions are provided in the First 90 Days App, which is available in the Apple and Android app store. The app provides day-by-day tips and tools for accelerating your transition.

  What will it take for you to reach the break-even point more quickly?

  What are some traps you might encounter, and how can you avoid them?

  What can you do to create virtuous cycles and build momentum in your new role?

  What types of transitions are you experiencing? Which are you finding most challenging, and why?

  What are the key elements and milestones in your 90-day plan?

  CHAPTER 1

  Prepare Yourself

  After eight years in marketing at a leading consumer electronics company, Julia Gould was promoted to lead a m
ajor new product development project. Up to that point, her track record had been stellar. Her intelligence, focus, and determination had won her recognition and early promotion to increasingly senior positions. The company had designated her as a high-potential and had positioned her on the fast track to senior leadership.

  Julia was assigned to be the launch manager for one of the company’s hottest new products. It was her responsibility to coordinate the work of a cross-functional team drawn from marketing, sales, R&D, and manufacturing. The goal: to seamlessly move the product from R&D to production, oversee a rapid ramp-up, and streamline the market introduction.

  Unfortunately, Julia ran into trouble early on. Her earlier success in marketing was the result of extraordinary attention to detail. Accustomed to managing with authority and making the calls, she had a high need for control and a tendency to micromanage. When she tried to continue making decisions, members of the team initially said nothing. But soon two key members challenged her knowledge and authority. Stung, she focused on the area she knew best: the marketing aspects of the launch. Her efforts to micromanage the members of the marketing team alienated them. Within a month and a half, Julia was back in marketing, and someone else was leading the team.

  Julia failed because she did not make the leap from being a strong functional performer to taking on a cross-functional, project-leadership role. She failed to grasp that the strengths that had made her successful in marketing could be liabilities in a role that required her to lead without direct authority or superior expertise. She kept doing what she knew how to do, making her feel confident and in control. The result, of course, was the opposite. By not letting go of the past and not fully embracing her new role, she squandered a big opportunity to rise in the organization.