The First 90 Days (8 page)

1.
Promote yourself.
This doesn’t mean hiring your own publicist. It means making the 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 in your career 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.

2.
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. Getting acquainted with a new organization can feel like drinking from a fire hose. You have to be systematic and focused about deciding what you need to learn and how you will learn it most efficiently.

3.
Match strategy to situation.
There are no universal rules for success in transitions. You need to diagnose the business situation accurately and clarify its challenges and opportunities. Start-ups, for instance—of a new product, process, plant, or a completely new business—share challenges quite different 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.

4.
Secure early wins.
Early wins build your credibility and create momentum. They create virtuous cycles that leverage the energy you are putting 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, improve business results, and get to the breakeven point more rapidly.

5.
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 and manage his or her expectations. This means carefully planning for a series of critical conversations about the situation, expectations, style, resources, and your personal development. Crucially, it means developing and gaining consensus on your 90-day plan.

6.
Achieve alignment.
The higher you rise in an organization, the more you have to play the role of organizational architect. This means figuring out whether the organization’s strategy is sound, bringing its structure into alignment with its strategy, and developing the systems and skill bases necessary to realize strategic intent.

7.
Build your team.
If you are inheriting a team, you will need to evaluate its members and perhaps 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. You will need to be both systematic and strategic in approaching the teambuilding challenge.

8.
Create coalitions.
Your success will depend on your ability to influence people outside your direct line of control. Supportive alliances, both internal and external, will be necessary to achieve your goals. You should therefore 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.

9.
Keep your balance.
In the personal and professional tumult of a transition, you will have to work hard to maintain your equilibrium and preserve your ability to make good judgments. The risks of losing perspective, getting 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 adviceand-counsel network is an indispensable resource.

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10.
Expedite everyone.
Finally, you need to help everyone in your organization—direct reports, bosses, and peers—accelerate their own transitions. The quicker you can get your new direct reports up to speed, the more you will help your own performance. Beyond that, the benefits to the organization of systematically accelerating everyone’s transitions are potentially vast.

If you succeed in meeting these core challenges, you will have a successful transition. Failure to surmount any one of them, however, is enough to cause potentially crippling problems.

The chapters that follow offer actionable guidelines and tools for succeeding in meeting each of these ten challenges.

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.

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. But the specifics of who, what, when, and how and the relative weights of the ten key challenges vary a lot. For more senior people, aligning the architecture of the organization, building the team, and creating coalitions loom large. For less senior people, building a relationship with the new boss and creating a supportive advice and-counsel network will be priorities. Every new leader needs to quickly become familiar with the new organization, to secure early wins, and to 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.

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Chapter 1: Promote Yourself

Overview

After eight years in marketing at a Texas-based consumer electronics company, Julia Gould was promoted to her first project leader position. 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 a high-potential leader and had positioned her on the fast track to more 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.

Julia ran into trouble early on. Her success in marketing was due to her 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 the calls, members of the team initially said nothing. But soon two key members challenged her knowledge and authority. Stung, she focused more on the area she knew best: the marketing aspects of the launch. Her efforts to micromanage the marketing members of the team alienated them. Within a month and a half, Julia was back in marketing and someone else was leading the team.

Julia Gould failed because she was unable to make the leap from being a strong functional performer to taking on a crossfunctional, project management 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, which made her feel confident and in control. The result, of course, was the opposite.

By not letting go of the past and fully embracing her new role, she squandered a big opportunity to rise in the organization.

What might Julia Gould have done differently? She should have focused on mentally promoting herself into the new