The First 90 Days | Michael Watkins

"The First 90 Days" was a book that I was planning to read for a long while but I especially postponed it till I become a "manager". Just after learning that I got that title, I directly downloaded the e-book and read it. It includes many tactics for the first 90 days during your onboarding. Here are my highlights from the book:

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.

Transitions into new roles are the most challenging times in the professional lives of leaders.

Success or failure during the first few months is a strong predictor of overall success or failure in the job.

If you’re successful in building credibility and securing early wins, the momentum likely will propel you through the rest of your tenure.

Every successful career is a series of successful assignments, and every successful assignment is launched with a successful transition.

Your goal in every transition is to get as rapidly as possible to the break-even point.

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.

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.

Secure early wins. Early wins build your credibility and create momentum.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No matter how much preparation time you get, start planning what you hope to accomplish by specific milestones. Even a few hours of pre-entry 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.

A promotion marks the result of years of hard work to persuade influential people in the organization that you’re willing and able to move to the next level.

“All the world’s a stage,” as William Shakespeare put it in the play As You Like It, “and all the men and women merely players.”

Business orientation is the most straightforward part of onboarding. The sooner you understand the business environment in which you’re operating, the sooner you can make productive contributions. Getting oriented to the business means learning about the company as a whole and not only your specific parts of the business.

It’s also essential to develop the right relationship wiring as soon as possible. This means identifying key stakeholders and building productive working relationships.

Remember: you don’t want to be meeting your neighbors for the first time in the middle of the night when your house is burning recruiting is like romance, and employment is like marriage.

The bottom line: do whatever it takes to get into the transition state of mind.

To borrow an old saw, preparing yourself is a journey and not a destination. You will have to work constantly to ensure that you’re engaging with the real challenges of your new position and not retreating to your comfort zone.

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. The more efficiently and effectively you learn, the more quickly you will close your window of vulnerability.

The faster you climb the learning curve, the earlier you can begin to make good business decisions.

Remember: simply displaying a genuine desire to learn and understand translates into increased credibility and influence.

To maximize your return on investment in learning, you must effectively and efficiently extract actionable insights from the mass of information available to you. Effective learning calls for figuring out what you need to learn so that you can focus your efforts. Devote some time to defining your learning agenda as early as possible, and return to it periodically to refine and supplement it.

Negotiating success means proactively engaging with your new boss to shape the game so that you have a fighting chance.

How do you build a productive relationship with a new boss? There are some basic do’s and don’ts. Let’s start with the don’ts.

Don’t stay away. If you have a boss who doesn’t reach out to you, or with whom you have uncomfortable interactions, you will have to reach out yourself. Otherwise, you risk potentially crippling communication gaps.

Be sure your boss is aware of the issues you face and that you are aware of her expectations, especially whether and how they’re shifting.

Don’t surprise your boss.

It’s usually best to give your new boss at least a heads-up as soon as you become aware of a developing problem.

Don’t approach your boss only with problems.

“Don’t just bring me problems, bring me plans for how we can begin to address them.”

Don’t run down your checklist. There is a tendency, even for senior leaders, to use meetings with a boss as an opportunity to run through your checklist of what you’ve been doing.

You should assume she wants to focus on the most important things you’re trying to do and how she can help.

Don’t expect your boss to change.

It’s your responsibility to adapt to your boss’s style; you need to adapt your approach to work with your boss’s preferences.

If you don’t manage expectations, they will manage you.

If you deliver more, you will delight your boss. But if you promise too much and fail to deliver, you risk undermining your credibility.

Even if your boss never becomes a close friend or mentor, it’s essential that you understand what it takes to build a productive working relationship.

The golden rule of transitions is to transition others as you would wish to be transitioned yourself

Keep in mind that people watch not only what you do but also how you do it.

As you frame your arguments, keep in mind Aristotle’s rhetorical categories of logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos is about making logical arguments—using data, facts, and reasoned rationales to build your case for change. Ethos is about elevating the principles that should be applied (such as fairness) and the values that must be upheld (such as a culture of teamwork) in making decisions. Pathos is about making powerful emotional connections with your audience—for example, putting forth an inspiring vision of what cooperation could accomplish.

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.

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.

Whenever anybody asks you to do something, say, “Sounds interesting. Let me think about it and get back to you.” Never say yes on the spot.

Keep in mind that people will ask you to make commitments far in advance, knowing that your schedule will look deceptively open.

Work hard at recognizing when you’re at the point of diminishing returns, and take a break of whatever sort refreshes you.

There is no avoiding pain if you decide to move your family. But there is much you can do to minimize it and to accelerate everyone’s transitions.

Critically, leaders need to be offered transition support in digestible blocks. Once they are in their new roles, they are rapidly immersed in the flow of events and can devote only very limited time to learning, reflecting, and planning. If support is not delivered just in time, the new leader is not likely to use it.

In an ideal world, a new leader would be assigned a transition coach who would undertake an independent diagnosis and brief the person on the results before entry. The coach would help the leader engage in self-assessment and identify key transition risk factors. The coach also would help support diagnostic planning and goal setting, assist with team assessment and alignment, gather feedback on how the leader was doing, and, of course, be available to the new leader as needed to talk through specific issues.