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

by Michael D. Watkins

  At the 60-day mark, your review meeting should focus on assessing your progress toward the goals of your plan for the previous 30 days. You should also discuss what you plan to achieve in the next 30 days (that is, by the end of 90 days). Depending on the situation and your level in the organization, your goals at this juncture might include identifying the resources necessary to pursue major initiatives, fleshing out your initial assessments of strategy and structure, and presenting some early assessments of your team.

  Planning the Five Conversations with Your Team

  Finally, you won’t merely have a new boss; you are likely to be a new boss as well. You will almost certainly have new subordinates. Just as you need to develop a productive relationship with your new boss, so, too, will they need to work effectively with you. In the past, have you done a good job of helping subordinates with their transitions? What might you do differently this time?

  Think about how to apply all the advice in this chapter to working with your own direct reports. The golden rule of transitions is to transition others as you would wish to be transitioned yourself (see “The Golden Rule of Transitions”). The same five-conversation framework can help you build productive relationships with the people who report to you. Introduce the framework to them right away, and schedule a first conversation with each of them to talk about the situation and about your expectations. Get them to do some pre-work before the meeting—for example, reading the chapter on matching strategy to situation. See how fast you can accelerate their transitions.

  The Golden Rule of Transitions

  Think about how you would like new bosses to help you transition into new roles. Ideally, what kinds of guidance and support would they give you? Now think about how you deal with new direct reports. What kinds of guidance and support do you give them?

  Now juxtapose these assessments. Do you transition others as you would wish to be transitioned yourself? 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.

  Helping direct reports accelerate their transitions is about more than being a good manager and contributing to others’ development. The faster your direct reports get up to speed, the better able they will be to help you reach your goals.

  Use table 4-3 to keep track of where you stand in having those key conversations with each of your reports.

  Table 4-3

  The five conversations and your team

  List your team members in the first column. Then assess where you stand in having the five conversations with each one. Circle the ones that are your priorities.

  NEGOTIATE SUCCESS—CHECKLIST

  How effectively have you built relationships with new bosses in the past? What have you done well? Where do you need improvement?

  Create a plan for the situational conversation. Based on what you know now, what issues will you raise with your boss in this conversation? What do you want to say up front? In what order do you want to raise issues?

  Create a plan for the expectations conversation. How will you figure out what your new boss expects you to do?

  Create a plan for the style conversation. How will you figure out how best to work with your boss? What mode of communication does he prefer? How often should you interact? How much detail should you provide? What types of issues should you consult with him about before deciding?

  Create a plan for the resource conversation. Given what you need to do, what resources are absolutely needed? With fewer resources, what would you have to forgo? If you had more resources, what would the benefits be? Be sure to build the business case.

  Create a plan for the personal development conversation. What are your strengths, and where do you need improvement? What kinds of assignments or projects might help you develop skills you need?

  How might you use the five conversations framework to accelerate the development of your team? Where are you in terms of having the key conversations with each of your direct reports?

  CHAPTER 5

  Secure Early Wins

  When Elena Lee was promoted to head customer service at a leading retailer, she was tasked with improving slumping customer satisfaction. She also was determined to change the authoritarian leadership culture exemplified by her predecessor. Before her promotion, Elena had been responsible for the highest-performing call center in the same organization, so she knew a lot about the problems other units had been facing with quality of service. Convinced that she could dramatically improve performance through more employee participation, she saw cultural change as a top priority.

  Elena began by communicating her goals to her former peers, now direct reports—the leaders of the company’s call centers across the globe. In a series of team calls and 1:1 meetings, she laid out her quality improvement goals and vision for a more participative, problem-solving culture. These early overtures generated little obvious reaction.

  Next, she initiated weekly meetings with each of the call center managers to review unit performance and discuss how they were working to improve it. Elena stressed that “the punishment culture is a thing of the past” and that she expected managers to coach employees. Cases involving significant disciplinary measures, she said, should be referred (on an interim basis) directly to her for review.

  Over time Elena learned which center managers were getting with the program and which ones were continuing to be punitive. She then conducted formal performance reviews and put two of the worst offenders on performance-improvement plans. One left almost immediately; she replaced him with a high-potential supervisor from the center she had run. Although it took some time, the other manager shaped up acceptably.

  Meanwhile, Elena focused on a critical aspect of the business: evaluation of customer satisfaction and improvement in quality of service. She appointed her best unit leader to lead a team of promising frontline managers and tasked them with producing a plan to introduce new metrics and supporting performance feedback and improvement processes. She also engaged a consultant to advise the managers on how to pursue this project, and she regularly reviewed their progress. When the team presented recommendations, she promptly implemented them on a pilot basis in the unit previously overseen by the departed supervisor.

  By the end of her first year, Elena had extended the new approach throughout the organization. Customer service had improved substantially, and climate surveys revealed striking improvements in morale and employee satisfaction.

  Elena succeeded in quickly creating momentum and building personal credibility by securing early wins.1 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.

  Making Waves

  A seminal study of executives in transition found that they plan and implement change in distinct waves, as illustrated in figure 5-1.2 Following an early period of focused learning, these leaders begin an early wave of changes. The pace then slows to allow consolidation and deeper learning about the organization, and to allow people to catch their breath. Armed with more insight, these executives then implement deeper waves of change. A final, less extreme wave focuses on fine-tuning to maximize performance. By this point, most of these leaders are ready to move on.

  This research has direct implications for how you should manage your transition. It suggests that you should keep your ends clearly in mind when you devise your plan to secure early wins. The transition lasts only a few months, but you typically will remain in the same job for two to four years before moving on to a new position. To the greatest extent possible, your early wins should advance longer-term goals.

  FIGURE 5-1

  Waves of change

  Plan Your Waves

  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.

  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. Done well, this strategy helps the new leader build momentum and deepen his own learning.

  The second wave of change typically addresses more fundamental issues of strategy, structure, systems, and skills to reshape the organization; deeper gains in organizational performance are achieved. But you will not get there if you don’t secure early wins in the first wave.

  Starting with the Goal

  Leaders in transition understandably are eager to get things moving. Thus, they naturally tend to focus on the problems that are easiest to fix quickly. This tactic is fine, up to a point. But be careful not to fall into the low-hanging fruit trap. This trap catches leaders when they expend most of their energy seeking early wins that don’t contribute to achieving their longer-term business objectives. It’s like trying to launch a rocket into orbit with nothing except a very big first stage; the risk is great that you’ll fall back to earth once the initial momentum fades. The implication: when you’re deciding where to seek early wins, you may have to forgo some of the low-hanging fruit and reach higher in the tree.

  As you strive to create momentum, therefore, keep in mind that your early wins must do double duty: they must help you build momentum in the short term and lay a foundation for achieving your longer-term business goals. So be sure that your plans for securing early wins, to the greatest extent possible, (1) are consistent with your agreed-to goals—what your bosses and key stakeholders expect you to achieve—and (2) help you introduce the new patterns of behavior you need to achieve those goals.

  Focus on Business Priorities

  The goals you have agreed to with your boss and other key stakeholders are the destination you’re striving to reach in measurable business objectives. Examples are double-digit annual profit growth; a dramatic cut in defects and rework; or completion of a key project by an agreed-to deadline. For Elena, her number 1 priority was to make significant improvements in customer satisfaction. The point is to define your goals so that you can lead with a distinct end point in mind.

  Identify and Support Behavioral Changes

  Your agreed-to goals are the destination, but the behavior of people in your organization is a key part of how you do (or don’t) get there. Put another way, if you are to achieve your goals in the allotted time, you may have to change dysfunctional patterns of behavior.

  Start by identifying the unwanted behaviors; for example, Elena wanted to reduce the fear and disempowerment in her organization. Then work out, as Elena did, a clear vision of how you would like people to behave by the end of your tenure in the job, and plan how your actions in pursuit of early wins will advance the process. What behaviors do people consistently display that undermine the potential for high performance? Take a look at table 5-1, which lists some problematic behavior patterns, and then summarize your thoughts about the behaviors you would like to change.

  TABLE 5-1

  Problematic behavior patterns

  Adopting Basic Principles

  It’s crucial to get early wins, but it’s also important to secure them in the right way. Above all, of course, you want to avoid early losses, because it’s tough to recover once the tide is running against you. Here are some basic principles to consider.

  Focus on a few promising opportunities. It’s easy to take on too much during a transition, and the results can be ruinous. You cannot hope to achieve results in more than a couple of areas during your transition. Thus, it’s essential to identify the most promising opportunities and then focus relentlessly on translating them into wins. Think of it as risk management: pursue enough focal points to have a good shot at getting a significant success, but not so many that your efforts get diffused.

  Get wins that matter to your boss. It’s essential to get early wins that energize your direct reports and other employees. But your boss’s opinion about your accomplishments is crucial too. Even if you do not fully endorse her priorities, you must make them central in thinking through which early wins you will aim for. Addressing problems that your boss cares about will go a long way toward building credibility and cementing your access to resources.

  Get wins in the right ways. If you achieve impressive results in a manner that is seen as manipulative, underhanded, or inconsistent with the culture, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. If Elena had gotten her key wins by being punitive, it would have undercut the larger objective she was trying to achieve. An early win that is accomplished in a way that exemplifies the behavior you hope to instill in your new organization is a double win.

  Take your STARS portfolio into account. What constitutes an early win differs dramatically from one STARS business situation to another. Simply getting people to talk about the organization and its challenges can be a big accomplishment in a realignment, but it’s a waste of time in a turnaround. So think hard about what will build momentum best in each part of your portfolio. Will it be a demonstrated willingness to listen and learn? Will it be rapid, decisive calls on pressing business issues?

  Adjust for the culture. In some organizations, a win must be a visible individual accomplishment. In others, individual pursuit of glory, even if it achieves good results, is viewed as grandstanding and destructive of teamwork. In team-oriented organizations, early wins could come in the form of leading a team in the development of a new product idea or being viewed as a solid contributor and team player in a broader initiative. Be sure you understand what is and is not viewed as a win, especially if you’re onboarding into the organization.

  Identifying Your Early Wins

  Armed with (and guided by) an understanding of your goals and objectives for behavior change, you can identify where you will seek early wins. You should think about what you need to do in two phases: building personal credibility in roughly the first 30 days, and deciding which projects you will launch to achieve early performance improvements beyond that. (The actual time frames will of course depend on the situation.)

  Understand Your Reputation

  When you arrive, people will rapidly begin to assess you and your capabilities. In part, this evaluation will be based on what people think they already “know” about you. You can be sure people have talked to people who have talked to people who have worked with you in the past. So like it or not, you will start your role with a reputation, deserved or not. The risk, of course, is that your reputation will become reality, because people tend to focus on information that confirms their beliefs and screen out information that doesn’t—the so-called confirmation bias.3 The implication is that you need to figure out what role people are expecting you to play and then make an explicit decision about whether you will reinforce these expectations or confound them.

  Elena’s situation—leading former peers—is a special case in which people in the organization knew her, but in a different, more junior role. The risk for her was that they would expect her to be the same in her new role. So her job was to figure out ways to change how people perceived her. The broader challenges of leading former peers are summarized in the box “Leading Former Peers.”

  Leading Former Peers

  To meet the classic challenges of moving from peer to boss, you should adopt the following principles:

  Accept the fact that relationships must change. An unfortunate price of pro
motion is that personal relationships with former peers must become less so. Close personal relationships are rarely compatible with effective supervisory ones.

  Focus early on rites of passage. The first days are about symbolism more than substance. So focus on rites of passage can help establish you in your new role—for example, having your new boss introduce you to your team and pass the baton.

  Reenlist your (good) former peers. For every leader who gets promoted, there are other ambitious souls who wanted the job but didn’t get it. So recognize that disappointed competitors will go through stages of adjustment. Focus on figuring out who can work for you and who can’t.

  Establish your authority deftly. You must walk the knife’s edge between over- and underasserting yourself. It can be effective to adopt a consult-and-decide approach when dealing with critical issues until former peers get used to making the calls, as long as you don’t make uninformed decisions.

  Focus on what’s good for the business. From the moment your appointment is announced, some former peers will be straining to discern whether you will play favorites or will seek to advance political agendas at their expense. One antidote is to adopt a relentless, principled focus on doing what is right for the business.

  Build Credibility

  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. Think of this as an effort to secure early, early wins by building your personal credibility.