The First 90 Days Plan: the most successful path to on-boarding and beyond:
Creating an environment for long term success in your new role.
We have seen significant improvements in the success of new employees when they have worked to craft a ‘First 90 Days Plan’ with their executive team. We have reviewed many books on this subject and the one we have probably enjoyed and leveraged the most is Michael Watkin’s book The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels. For your convenience we have condensed the key ideas of several of these books below. Please understand that these suggestions have significantly improved the performance and success of the individuals we have placed and we hope that you will take advantage of them. Prepare to learn, listen well, set proper expectations, read the culture, build trust, lead by example, set the appropriate direction, and communicate effectively. These ideas are grouped below as 10 steps for building your foundation towards great performance as a new team leader:
1. Prepare yourself During the Countdown / transition period into the new job
2. Align Expectations
3. Shape Your Management Team
4. Craft Your Strategic Agenda
5. Start Transforming Culture
6. Manage Your Board/Boss
7. Communicate
8. Avoid Common Pitfalls
9. Don’t underestimate the importance of advice and counsel
10. Show some empathy for the person you’re succeeding
Primary Challenges
1. Acquire needed knowledge quickly
2. Establish new relationships
3. Juggle organizational and personal transition
4. Manage expectations
5. Manage personal equilibrium
Traps to Avoid
1. Falling behind the learning curve
2. Becoming isolated
Taking Action
1. Plan on taking 2-3 years to make measurable progress
2. On arrival, you should understand the organization’s existing strategy, goals and challenges and should have formed hypotheses about operating priorities.
Building a Foundation For Success
Franklin Delano Roosevelt got 100 days to galvanize the nation into fighting The Great Depression, but your performance acceptance will not likely have even half that many days as a new manager to mobilize your team.
There is something magical about the first 90 days you spend at the new job. Colleagues are open to change in a way they may never be again, there is a unique buzz or excitement in your department and perhaps in the entire company. You represent potential.
“The actions you take during the first three months in a new job will largely determine whether you succeed or fail,” Michael Watkins declares in his book, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels Transitions are periods of opportunity, a chance to start afresh and to make needed changes in an organization. They are also periods of acute vulnerability, because you lack established working relationships and a detailed understanding of your new role. If you fail to build momentum during your transition, you will face an uphill battle from that point forward.
Most senior executives appreciate the value of a strong first 90 days on at least a gut level, but unfortunately performance doesn’t often match that intuition. Many executives get pulled off track, because there is so much going on that it is difficult to really stay focused on what you should accomplish in you first 90 days.
Forget About The Honeymoon
Even those executives who may appreciate the value of a strong start often underestimate it’s importance, they haven’t often crafted a 90-day plan, in part because no one has taught them to do so and in part because many are under the impression that they have a honeymoon period. Performance is so critical and teams are so lean that there is no longer any honeymoon. Because of this lack of honeymoon and more importantly the lack of a first 90 days plan or on –boarding plan, it is estimated that as high as 40% of senior execs are judged failures within their first 12 months. They haven’t delivered the expected impact and or they haven’t found allies or a fit with the culture, etc
Many executives make the mistake of letting themselves get caught up in minutiae and tactics in their first 90 days at the expense of articulating and advancing their broader goals. Avoid this by aligning yourself with your boss and making certain you understand what top three goals she/ he really wants you to achieve in the first 90 days. You will learn perhaps that she/ he has other goals, too, but find out what are the one, two or three make-or-break goals she/ he has in mind. Get feedback from your boss about how she/ he wants to be updated. Some like regularly formalized briefings, where others are more casual. Make it your business in the early part of your first 90 days to find out which approach is best.
Look In All Directions
Don’t focus all your energy and efforts up the organization chart; save some of that effort for your own team. Think about the tone of your leadership that you set with your team. Everything you do will set the tone for what will be to follow in your team and its performance.
Ten Keys To Early Success — And Beyond
In his book, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, author
Michael Watkins clearly states the ten fundamental steps essential to a strong start in your new
job. “If you succeed in meeting these core challenges, you will have a successful transition,”
Watkins says. But “failure to surmount any one of them…is enough to cause potentially crippling
problems,” Watkins says.
1. Promote yourself. This doesn’t mean hiring your own publicist. Instead, you must make the
mental break from your old job while preparing to take charge in your new one. Your biggest
pitfall here could be assuming that what has made you successful up to this point will
continue to do so. The dangers of sticking with what you know, working extremely hard and
doing it, and failing miserably are very real.
2. Accelerate your learning. You need to navigate the organization’s learning curve fast. This
means understanding your new markets, products, technologies, systems and structures, as
well as the new firm’s culture and policies. “Getting acquainted with a new organization can
feel like drinking from a fire hose,” Watkins says. Instead, 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. Do yourself
a favor and diagnose the specific business situation you face. For example, start-ups —
whether it is a new product, process, plant or an entirely new business — hold challenges that
are different from the ones you face when in a turnaround mode. A clear diagnosis of the
situation is an essential prerequisite for developing your action plan.
4. Secure early wins. These build credibility and generate momentum. Early wins create
“virtuous cycles” that harness the energy you are putting into the new job to create a tangible
sense that good things are happening. In the first few weeks on the new job, 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.
Require people to “do their homework” and come prepared to
discuss/interact versus be fed the information they should have already been familiar with?
Carefully consider your approach in these areas, because whatever you choose, can
get mirrored throughout the organization.
Handling it the wrong way can mean sapping some of the energy from your first 90 days, It’s a subtle point, but has vast repercussions on the values and behaviors within the organization. Too many times, the executive sits back to ‘take in the scenery’ and then loses momentum.
Too often senior managers are looking up and not down, worried too much about impressing
colleagues or those above.
Instead, look all three ways: up, down and sideways. These first 90 days are critical as a
connect time; it is all about leadership and getting people to go the extra mile.
5. Negotiate success. You must figure out how to build a productive working relationship and
manage expectations with your new boss. This requires carefully planning for a series of
critical conversations about the company’s situation in the market, style, resources available,
and your personal development. Crucially, it means developing and gaining consensus on
your 90-day plan.
6. Achieve alignment. As you rise higher in an organization, the more you will be called to play
the role of “organizational architect,” Watkins says. “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 inheriting a team, evaluate each member and be prepared to restructure
the team to better meet the demands of the situation, as you perceive it. “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,” Watkins
says.
8. Create coalitions. Your 90-day success will also depend on your ability to influence people
outside your direct line of control. Supportive alliances, both internal and external, are
required to achieve your goals. From the outset, you should identify those whose support is
essential to your success and determine how to line them up on your side.
9. Keep your balance. There is a personally and professionally unsettling aspect of starting a new
job. “You will have to work hard to maintain your equilibrium and preserve your ability to
make good judgments,” Watkins notes. “The risks of losing perspective, getting isolated and
making bad calls are ever present during transitions.” Tap into your advice-and-counsel
network, he advises.
10. Expedite everyone. Ultimately, you have to help everyone in your organization accelerate
their own transitions to you.
Learn The Unwritten Rules
Executives should also spend the early part of those first 90 days working to identify the other
unwritten rules of your new firm’s culture…the items that are not in the orientation book,
For example, the office hours may end at 5 pm, but the CEO may expect senior folks like you to stick around much longer. Or when presenting a new idea, you may be in the kind of culture that doesn’t like the new guy to come off as too brash or go over people’s heads. Too often, new executives come in with a clear idea about what they want to do with their team, but they don’t reconcile that vision with the entire organization’s goals.
It is usually good to create allies, and individuals who clearly see the benefit of your ideas and approaches,: this is identifying others in the firm who can benefit from your approach and making certain they understand it. They in turn will help talk up you and your ideas.
Leveraging Your Learning Curve
When you start a new job or land a big promotion, it is usually understood that you’ll need some
time to come up to speed on your new responsibilities. But the truth is that the pace of change in
today’s workplace means you’re allowed less and less of that precious commodity to learn what’s
what and demonstrate your worth. More challenging still, you probably have even less time to
learn when you’re confronted with sudden changes on the job, such as new clients, a new boss or
perhaps a new owner as the result of a merger or acquisition.
Learning on the job is, well, your job. You were brought in for your ability to succeed and that
means learning what you need to know fast. You are a knowledge expert; and when it comes to
learning, you are responsible for that. Today, there is great pressure to produce as much as you can with the fewest resources. This includes learning/ coming up to speed as fast as possible and becoming more cross-functional and ultimately more useful, efficient and effective in your job.
Watch The Women
While women are sometimes, and perhaps mistakenly, assumed to be at a disadvantage in many
corporate situations or settings, accelerating the learning curve is one area where it is usually men
who are driving in the ditch. Many men loathe asking for directions. They’ll go to uncanny lengths
to avoid it, believing it is perceived as a sign of weakness, inadequacy and/or insecurity. Asking in a skillful way can be a winner for you on many levels. In addition to getting useful information, you can use the ‘ask’ as a way to connect with team members, peers and others to forge meaningful and productive working relationships.
Tell your team that you are trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible. Pretend you know nothing, and ask to be told everything that is important, that your experience may not be the same as their and that their perspective is very valuable to you. It engages other people in being your allies, it gives them something of a vested interest in your success, and it allows them to share in the credit for helping you figure it out.
Powerful Words
Unless someone really has it out for you, people are incredibly responsive to this can you help me, I don’t know everything approach. I’ve never seen a negative response to the genuine spirit of I don’t know.” Uttered in the right
way, they are perhaps the most powerful words in the English language, because they can absolve
you of the responsibility for arriving with the right answer, and they help you bring in allies.
Another effective learning tactic is to bring together a team to do a post-mortem on an old project.
Pick one that was a runaway failure or success, you’ll learn more from the extremes in this case.
When you discuss the old project with the team members, listen for the internal politics inherent in
the situation, people, issues, differences, assumptions that are made at this company that are
different from your experiences. If you are just a little bit lucky, you may also hear beliefs the
company has adopted that aren’t right. You can immediately identify ways to change that
perception and make a real difference at the company.
Over And Out
Accelerate your learning curve by showing initiative, jumping into a team, and showing what you can add to the team.
Pursue opportunities within the firm to learn about other aspects of the operation,
especially those outside your immediate area of expertise, he advises.
While finding a mentor is clearly one way to accelerate learning, perhaps a less obvious way is to
become a mentor to someone else, One of the greatest learning experiences out there is to learn by teaching. You will build leadership skills in addition to learning more about the specific company and industry. Many companies have established mentor programs; if yours has not, you might want to start one or investigate your industry trade
association to see if they have such programs.
Mentors can often provide just the jumpstart your career needs. There’s no replacement for a face-to-face connection with a peer who’s been there and done that. Most people want to help, you’ve just got to ask.
Two-Way Mentoring
To help accelerate your learning curve, think about tapping an outside resource. Get a really
competent executive coach or an influential executive outside of the company, who can act as a
mentor. But make certain that person has the credentials you need. For example, if they are experienced more in cost-cutting or turnaround projects and you are in a growth industry, they may not be the best match. Once you find a good coach or mentor, you should bounce your ideas off that person, instead of bouncing the ideas off of your executive team or peers at the executive level. Relying too publicly and too early on insiders at the firm will make you look indecisive, out of the loop, and like you are soliciting ideas without knowing the direction the rest of the group wants to go. This can be deadly to a new executive.
Listen To Your Gut
Finally, don’t neglect your gut feelings when you work to accelerate your learning curve.
Men trust their intuition just as much as women, but they use different terms. Instead of saying they rely on intuition, men will call it a hunch or an instinct, but it comes down to the same tool. Things are changing so fast that you don’t always have the time to sort out all the facts and figures in your due diligence. Instead, accelerate your learning curve by looking hard at what you need to learn. Go beyond hard facts, it may be that what you really need is to use your
intuition to learn about how to work with a new person on your team or a new boss or someone on a new account. Clarity fuels intuitive insight, like any skill it gets better the more you use it.
Securing Early Wins
Everyone knows the old expression that you only get one chance to make a good first impression.
But for an executive that good first impression must be backed up early and often with tangible
achievements in the first 90 days on the job. Meaningful momentum is contingent on your ability
in these first months to demonstrate that you are creating positive change that benefits the
company and the personnel above and below you on the organizational chart.
Most senior executives arrive at the new job with enthusiasm and many fresh ideas to improve the
operation. The challenge is more about how to channel that energy without letting it fly off in too
many directions and dissipate into just another squandered opportunity to thrive in your new job.
Perhaps surprisingly, many otherwise bold executives stumble at the outset by becoming oddly
passive once they start the new job. The new person coming in can get a reputation very quickly
as a whiner and complainer by asking over and over for training. Rather than asking and
waiting for training before jumping in, the winning new executive will seek that same training, but
will also frame it in terms of asking how they can contribute in the meantime.
Jumpstart your first days on the job by asking how you can help those around you. That’s often a
great way to learn how things are done and also sets a tone that you are a roll-your-sleeves-up
manager who values the work being done by your team.
Empowering and valuing your team is a crucial factor contributing to securing early wins on the
job, agrees executive performance coach Howard Goldman. Speak to your people as if they are
already competent and require some framework in which to express their willingness and skill. Invite their full partnership in the success of the office. Most employees are not just working for a salary, and want to be involved in what’s important at the company and to be recognized for that contribution.
Part of that effort should also include giving your team a sense of what has to be accomplished.
But instead of telling them how to do it, encourage them to come up with their own solutions. If
you let them play a big role, they will most likely respond with outstanding performance and full
ownership of what’s required. It is also a good idea to ask team members to clarify
in writing their current accountabilities in reaching the goal.
Goals shared by more than one person have an exponentially better chance of being realized. But
remember also that you need to take the specific business situation into account when you are
crafting your early wins strategy. Nowhere is that more clear than in the area of how you engage
your team. For example, Michael Watkins notes, getting your team to talk openly about the
organization and its challenges is a big accomplishment in a realignment situation, but not so
valuable in a more pressing turnaround environment.
Check The Weather Report
Each morning before you leave home for work, you probably watch local TV news or listen to the
radio to hear the day’s weather report. If it calls for snow and hail, you may wear your boots. Rain
means the umbrella.
Few things block the path to early wins more effectively than failing to get a good read on the
culture you are joining in your new job. Just as walking around with a huge umbrella on a bright
sunny day will get you the wrong kind of attention, blundering around like a grandstander in a
team-oriented office culture is an outstanding way to ensure you won’t realize many early wins on
the job.
Share Victory
One senior executive had been on the job about three days, and was aching to find some showy ways to let everyone
see how smart he was and what a good hire his new company had made. One morning I was sitting in my office
with a legal pad drafting a self-congratulatory e-mail about himself for winning a new client. It was
a big win, but as he was working on it, a lower-level member of the team, very quiet but respected as could be seen already from how others treated her, came in to somewhat meekly tell him about a call she’d just had where she had convinced an irate customer to not only change his mind about canceling, but to buy another of our products he hadn’t heard about. She’d offered him a 5% discount and was asking him if that was okay!
He decided right then to start an employee of the month program in my department, and the winner got a $50 gift certificate to a local restaurant. So, his first big e-mail wasn’t a bragging thing about the client win; instead it was
to start a new program and recognize an unsung, and popular, hero in the company. The reaction he
got was great, and to this day peers are regularly nominating others for the award. With that move, the new executive was able to galvanize his new team and also send a clear signal that good work would be rewarded and publicized. The importance of that early win was two-fold: short-term it provided a spark to the executive’s team, but long-term it helped to set a tone for a more positive way to conduct business where people are recognized and valued. The
secret about people is they are dying to contribute. Harness that desire to help fuel the early wins in your first 90 days and beyond. That executive didn’t forget, though, to secure early credit for his own client win. Instead, he told
his own boss about it in an e-mail and a casual follow-up visit to his office. The boss bragged about it in a meeting he had with the Board of Directors a day or two later. Then the boss sent his own all-staff e-mail congratulating the new executive on the win. The executive in turn responded to the entire staff thanking his team for their big role in the client win.
Putting the Right Strategy to work
It’s human nature to feel ill at ease outside our comfort zone. We don’t like being disoriented on a
strange street, surprised by an awkward or invasive personal question, or forced into a situation
where we don’t feel competent. But in the corporate world, comfort zones tend to breed
complacency, and your competition will pounce if you give it that kind of opening.
Unfortunately, some executives struggle to move beyond their comfort zone when confronting
challenges at the office. The glib and charming manager may default to a team meeting where he
shines in the short-term, but what if the problem is something more nebulous that can’t be solved
by a snappy meeting? The numbers-crunching manager may focus on cutting costs or conserving
resources, but what if the problem is something that requires more of an inspiring human touch?
Far too many leaders, especially new ones, fail to accurately diagnosis the situation they face and
tailor their strategy accordingly. Getting it wrong can produce dire consequences, both for the
long-term health of the company and the executive’s career path.
Executives often don’t know where to start putting together a strategic plan, they shy away from
it and fall back into their comfort zone. The foundation for crafting the right strategy is to dispassionately determine with a surgeon’s skill what business situation your firm’s faces. Some use the “STaRS” model: Start-up, turnaround, realignment and sustaining success (see chart). Clearly, the different transitional situations broadly outlined in this model require different managerial approaches. For example, if you are succeeding a successful charismatic leader, your challenge will be to take charge and remain true to yourself while preserving what is good about the
organization and not alienating key employees. If you are in a start-up situation, responsibility for
creating the solution may fall more heavily on your shoulders; but if you are in a realignment mode, you’ll have to work much harder on educating your peers and team members about the need for change.
The Past Is (Sometimes) Prologue
At the outset, it is important for a new manager to understand the background of the new
company. Understanding your firm’s product line or service — especially how it stacks up against
the competition and is viewed by customers — is a key element to matching strategy to situation.
But don’t let your history lesson dull your fresh perspective. When you enter a situation that
requires a strategic plan, don’t get buried in the past. Try to step out of the past, unshackle your thinking, and candidly ask if there is a different or better way to accomplish the goal than the company may have tried in the past.
However, having a firm grasp of your firm’s history is important because it helps you plot the right
strategy moving forward. Businesses tend to move predictably from one type of situation to another” Watkins explains. Figuring out where your firm truly is on the lifecycle is a critical component of developing and articulating the vision to take the firm to a better place.
Be Open To New Ideas
However, all the knowledge in the world won’t do the job without willingness from the executive to
boldly go forth with an approach outside his comfort zone, if that’s what the situation requires. If
you feel as an executive that you don’t have a given skill set, it is best to get others involved in
that particular area. For example, if you are at the marketing phase of the strategic
plan and that is not your area of strength, bring in an expert to help you figure out who is the
market target.
Far from being a sign of weakness, acknowledging you don’t know everything is a signal that you
are confident. No one is expected to know it all, and only the most rigid and tyrannical manager types
will profess to be experts in every facet of a company’s operation. “Even if you have had
broad exposure to managerial disciplines (marketing, operations, R&D, finance), your experience
with different types of business situations (start-up, turnaround, realignment and sustaining
success) may still be narrow,” Watkins notes.
There’s another advantage to strategically bringing in additional talent: it increases the buy-in for
your ultimate plan. Few things turn off team members quicker than the feeling that they are there
only to follow orders. But take a page from Machiavelli’s The Prince and ask for input and
assistance in order to help cement the relationship with your team. (Of course, it is also a good
idea to sincerely listen to and value the advice you receive).
Don’t underestimate the power of asking for help. To his dying day, Richard Nixon was convinced
that a big reason he lost the 1960 presidential election to John Kennedy was that, unlike JFK, he
never asked voters for their help. Kennedy did a better job of making voters feel like they were
part of the solution and not a passive audience.
If you find yourself growing too comfortable as a manager, that in itself ought to start making you
just a little bit nervous. Examine why you’ve chosen a particular response to each challenge you
face. If each solution seems to be grounded in your area of strongest comfort, it might be time to
take a hard look at your motives before your competitors beat you to it.
Transition Type:
Start-Up Challenges: Building structures and systems without a clear framework or boundaries. Welding
together a cohesive, high performing team. Making do with limited resources.
Opportunities: You can do things right from the beginning. People are still energized by the
possibilities. There is no preexisting rigidity in peoples’ thinking.
Turnaround Challenges: Reenergizing demoralized employees and other stakeholders. Handling time pressure
and having a quick and decisive impact. Going deep enough with painful cuts and personnel
choices.
Opportunities: Everyone recognizes that change is necessary. Affected constituencies (such as
suppliers who want the company to stay in business) may offer significant external support. A little
success goes a long way.
Realignment Challenges: Dealing with deeply ingrained cultural norms that no longer contribute to high
performance. Convincing employees that change is necessary. Restructuring the top team and
refocusing the organization.
Opportunities: The organization has significant pockets of strength. People want to continue to
see themselves as successful.
Sustaining success Challenges: Playing good defense by avoiding decisions that cause problems. Living in the
shadow of a revered leader and dealing with the team he or she created. Finding ways to take the
business to the next level.
Opportunities: A strong team may already be in place. People are motivated to succeed.
Foundations for continued success (such as the product pipeline) may be in place.
Source: The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
Ready, Aim, Fire: not the reverse
Senior executives, as they climb the corporate ladder, increasingly come to resemble architects called upon to help design the organizational structure that will house both the people and the ideas that can propel a business and career forward. Just as the old saying advises us to “measure twice and cut once” during any building project,
so too should a new manager take extra time and care to survey the terrain upon which he will
help to build the right organizational structure in alignment with the company goals, culture and
resources available to get the job done. Fight the temptation to come charging in to show
everyone how smart and accomplished you are. Instead, find out first about the expectations of your manager, how the company culture functions (or doesn’t, as the case may be), and get a handle on the expectations and
abilities of your direct reports.
Start With The Boss
In the very early days of your new job, sit down and ask your manager how they will define your
success. Get them to talk in specifics as much as possible, and then zero in on how they’ll view
you at defined time milestones: 90 days, six months, one year. Sometimes the answer will really
floor you. Failure to understand what the CEO or boss expects of you can create other problems. For many
confident executives, the tendency is to boldly move forward in a direction that worked for them
before. But “cloning” those experiences and bringing them to your new firm might backfire by
breeding resentment among the team below you and frustration from your boss.
New Manager, New Culture
After you are clear about what your boss expects of you, turn your attention to the broader
company culture around you, Cuddy advises. Watch how decisions are made. Is it team-oriented,
do you see enthusiastic brainstorming, or are ideas presented more formally? How does the
organization communicate? You should spend a lot of your first 90 days asking everyone around
you what they think has been effective in your current function and what needs to be changed. A good way to start that discussion is to ask those around you how your function can best serve their function.
Spend time walking around and observing the office in action. What is the sense you get? Is it a
tense office? Busy and professional? Casual and confident? Sloppy with low morale? You can pick up
a strong sense of a corporate culture by literally walking around and paying attention, he advises.
Another bellwether is how the firm handles change. Do some detective work. Many organizations
talk a good game when it comes to change, then back off when it comes to implementation. You
should have especially big ears for listening and eyes for watching if you are coming into your new
job from a different industry. If you are coming from within your own industry and
the firm is approximately the same size as your previous shop, the culture is likely to be pretty
close. But you are more likely to be in for a culture clash if you are coming from a firm
of vastly different size or industry, he stressed.
Organ Rejection
Just as the human body can sometimes reject a perfectly good organ transplant, so too can an
organization “reject” your approach and style if you don’t do the work necessary to understand
how the firm works and thinks. Your first days on the job should be about building alliances and
trust. And that usually means you adapting more to the organization’s style as opposed to the
other way around.
For example, even if you have been brought in to be a major change agent, be certain that your
team and those around you know it. The CEO may have told you that, but he may not have told
anyone else. Getting ahead of the knowledge-and-understanding curve with your
peers may end up aggravating them and turning them against your ideas.
And don’t make matters worse by talking about how successful “X” approach was at your last firm.
Instead, tell your team that you’ve heard or seen about a certain approach and you would like to
hear from them about how that idea might work in this shop. Creating a little distance between
you and the idea can help others begin to embrace your philosophy.
Another pillar of achieving alignment is assessing and educating your direct reports. Talk to each
early on about how you can facilitate their work, how you can help them, and actively seek their
input and ideas, Cuddy advises. As they are giving you their thoughts, you should also be
assessing them: How do they think? Are they committed to the job? Frustrated? Do they have
ideas? Are they engaged and seeking direction, or are they bored and passive? To help get the
conversation kicked off, ask them how they would rate your competitors. You’ll have a much
clearer idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your team after you ask how you can help them.
And just as you asked your boss how he would define your success, ask your team members how
they would define their own success at given intervals.
Be Clear With Peers
Relating to your new peers is also an important part of achieving alignment. You should try to
establish team player relationships with them, too. Ask them how you can help them. Find out
what they considered the strengths and weaknesses of your predecessor, and ask for their input on
what you should emphasize in the new job.
They can also be a big help to you in better understanding how to work with your shared boss.
There’s no magic shortcut for achieving this kind of trust with your boss, your peers and your
direct reports. The secret is committing to a frequency of contact in order to build
that trust. With your boss and peers, he advises at least weekly chats, while it should be daily for
your direct reports.
Try also to assess yourself before you walk in the door on Day One. If you know you have a
tendency to come on too strong, or to show off when you are nervous, be ready to check that
behavior at its first appearance. Take a gentle approach in these early days, because you don’t
have the infrastructure in place yet to support your ideas or your approach, Cuddy warns. Too
often, executives who brashly dive in find out only after the fact that they have damaged
important relationships with peers and others in the firm.
Even a genius like Frank Lloyd Wright wouldn’t try to build a lasting structure without doing his
homework. Senior executives who want to build the same kind of innovative and successful
projects can benefit from his lasting example.
Getting the keys to the Executive Club
Though the most common visual image in the race to attaining corporate success is one of
climbing a ladder, the reality is probably closer to finding scarcer elbowroom and allies inside a
pyramid that grows more competitive and cutthroat as it narrows.
Get inside the executive club or clique and you can reach the organizational chart’s peak; but what
can you do if you feel like you are on the outside looking in?
First, go into your new job assuming there are cliques and that you are going to have to earn your
way inside. Assume your peers will put hurdles in front of you at the beginning to see how you handle them.
Nothing Personal
But never let a clique — or the perception of one — become personal, make it about the work,. If you are feeling frozen out by colleagues, go to clique members individually and focus on individual
personalities rather than viewing them as a unified clique.
Keep conversations on a frank and pragmatic business level when you approach an individual in a
clique. You can go to somebody and say, ‘we don’t have to be best buddies on the weekends, but
the organization is depending on us to work well together on this project. Make it
about the work, never the person. Most people will respond to that. It is hard for
someone to say they don’t want to work with you toward a common goal.
As you near the top of the organization — especially when you seek to make the jump from
director or VP to a Senior VP or officer slot — sheer ability is not enough,
It is hard to cross that line between director and VP, from salaried employee to officer without a mentor. Get a mentor and work on the basis that you are the odd one out. The good news is that most potential mentors are inclined to help you, in part because doing so makes them feel good about themselves.
Avoid Risky Mentors
When looking for a mentor to help you gain access to the power clique at the office, searc for someone talented but not a big risk-taker. You will rise and crash with a gambler or swashbuckler. Instead, look for someone if possible who is a big wheel in finance or legal rather than sales and marketing at your company.
Look for a sponsor or mentor who is listened to by the organization. Keep a special
eye out for a person who is frequently mentioned or brought into meetings even if their job title
doesn’t sound like they belong there. They often have hidden influence with the CEO and
other key senior officials.
A director at a trade group when going to interview with the president of an organization, the president brought along a man with the title of Director of Special Projects.
“I thought it was odd because this guy was way down on the organizational chart,” the job
applicant recalls. But he did some digging after the meeting and discovered that the special
projects director had worked with the CEO at several jobs and each time had emerged as a senior
VP and right-hand to the CEO.
But cultivating a strong mentor or sponsor is not the complete solution. Sheer talent and hard
work without the ability to play politics will only get you so far.
If you aren’t willing to play the political game, don’t go for the top tier. This can be a particular challenge for women, who tend to find this kind of politicking more distasteful than their male counterparts. But that attitude will hold them back. This “politics gap” between men and women may be narrowing.
Patronage Is Currency
Effective politicking to get you inside the clique often comes down to using your patronage in the
organization as leverage with your colleagues. Patronage is currency, know what you have and how to use it to get into the club. Everyone at the upper levels of the company has patronage, he notes. You will have something at some point that members of that clique will want. They may want your support at a meeting or for one of their protégés to become involved in a project in your area. Learn to trade for access.
Finally, the presence of cliques at an office is just the kind of thing a good executive recruiter and
networking group should be able to alert you of in advance, experts said. Network and position
yourself to know how to define the corporate culture. A good recruiter should be aware of those cliques, too, but networking helps. His meetings help executives learn about the corporate culture and personality of organizations directly from people at them. You find out at these networking meetings whether the company has a clique of
Ivy League graduates or WASPs.
Working to get your way into the clique is easier with a good mentor, effective favor trading and
strategic politicking; but if you find yourself at a job where you are blindsided by stiff cliques, the
best plan in the world won’t always solve the problem. Sometimes you have to admit you made a
huge mistake, and it is time to start looking for another job.
Starting Off On The Right Foot
Clearly, you can’t count on large amounts of time to establish a good relationship with your Boss, your most
important connection at the office. If you are the new guy coming in to the company, you’ve
probably had a few interviews with your new boss that total a few hours tops. And if you are the
guy waiting for a new boss to arrive, you’ve probably spent even less time together.
How then can you get off on the right foot with your new boss?
It starts with doing as much advance legwork and research as possible. Yes, research. Treat your
boss like a topic from graduate school or pretend you are an ace investigative reporter and dig to
see what you can learn. You’ll be surprised at the potentially valuable nuggets you can uncover.
Be A Cyber Sleuth…
You can also harness the power of the Internet, advises Patti Hathaway, business advisor and
author (www.thechangeagent.com/index.html). Her clients have had tremendous success
conducting targeted searches on web search engines, such as Google (see box, Tools For The
Cyber Sleuth, page 24).
It is simply amazing how much information you can get. You’ll pick up information about your new boss from their past speeches, items about boards or civic projects they are involved with, alumni bulletins and many other sources. And with the automatic alert service, you’ll get instant updates each time your new boss appears in any item.
You’ll frequently know before they do that they’re being mentioned somewhere.
That will give you a leg up, because none of your colleagues is thinking to do the same thing.
Negotiating success with a new boss is very much about doing the right kind of prep work before
you start. The first 90 days is really your best — and perhaps only — chance to prove you are the right hire. Your boss is going to want to see from the start that you are ready to execute and work with new people.
Be A ‘Doer’
The unspoken understanding is that the hiring process is the “romance” time in the relationship. Even after you start the new job, no one — least of all your boss — is sure yet that you are the right hire. Few realize how common it is for executives to fail in their first year on the job. In fact, recruiters estimate 18 percent of executives do not survive the first year on a new job, according to a recent survey of search industry professionals. To demonstrate to your boss that you are the right hire, get together with your team quickly to learn more about what motivates them. As they tell you, be sure to acknowledge that you understand it, then set clear performance metrics based as much as possible on their feedback. Be prepared to be decisive on tough issues, too. For example, as the new person, you may have to
deal with non-performers on your team that your predecessor couldn’t or wouldn’t confront. Your new boss will be watching closely to see how you handle this tough situation, a situation that may have been too much for the person you replaced. What better way to show your new boss that you are the right hire than to skillfully handle a situation that overmatched your predecessor?
Look For Clues
Even after a few days, you’ll have a number of clues to tell you how well you are negotiating with
your new boss. While some of it is to be found at the gut level, you should also look in the early
weeks to see if you are being included in high-level decision-making meetings. Are you being given
more projects and authority? If yes, you’re doing fine. If not, you may be headed for trouble.
Don’t forget the real estate issue, too. In some companies, the location of your office is important.
Washington,D.C.political reporters (not to mention lobbyists) have been known to keep wall
charts tracking the changing location of staff offices at the White House. When an under assistant
secretary of the Commerce Department is moved four offices further away from the Secretary, the
perception is often that that person is on the downhill slide. Certainly in some companies, having a
physical proximity to the head person is key. Otherwise, you may find that work literally flows
around you.
Review Yourself
To keep yourself in the center of the action, prepare a written record of your performance on
the job. If the boss is coming to your organization, don’t make the mistake of assuming your previous
performance evaluations — even if they are outstanding — will do that much for you with the new
boss. They are often discounted by the boss coming in to a new situation.
Among other issues, the new boss doesn’t always know the context in which the performance
review was written. New bosses also often assume the reviews lean toward the positive/polite end
of the spectrum. Another weakness of many performance reviews is the lack of clear goals listed. A new boss is only going to rely on your performance reviews in a relatively minor way, if at all. Instead, be armed with your own proactive performance review and send it to your boss in a memo. Develop a summary of your recent accomplishments of the past year…or go back 18 months if that makes sense based on your achievements. Be clear about current projects
you are involved with, too, including their status today and their ultimate goal. At this level, bosses love numbers and statistics, so use them liberally in your personal performance review. If you reduce costs, show how. If you hiked sales, show the numbers. Statistics are a quick way to show your new boss what kind of impact you’ve had already.
But keep an eye on the future, too. In your performance review memo to the boss, talk about your strengths and interests down the road. Talk about what you think you can contribute to the future direction of the division and the company. You should also consider providing the new boss with a questionnaire designed to help you both hit
the ground running together (see below).
Tools For The Cyber Sleuth…
The Internet presents a fantastic and almost mind-boggling opportunity to easily learn key
details about your new boss. One of the best tools is Google.
Here’s how the Google News Alert works:
http://www.google.com — Go to “News” on the task bar of Google’s homepage. On the left-hand
column of the News page, click on “News Alerts” and complete the information requested (make
sure you use parentheses around a name to only receive what you are looking for, i.e. “John R.
Smith”). Google will send you an e-mail alert every time the name you requested appears
online.
To search a subject in Google, go to:www.news.google.com/
To set up a Google news alert, go to http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en
Networking: Key to Your Long Term Success
You just started an exciting new job. Why is networking important now? After all, you’ve got
enough to do just learning your way around the office. No one likes to plan for disappointment,
but remember the time may come when you want to leave this company. Or, you may really need
some help from the outside. Certainly you need to identify prospective team members. Networking
should be part of your approach to work from Day One.
Become a regular networker. If you are someone who regularly attends breakfast meetings to hear
industry speakers, or reaches out to cast a wide net with lunch and coffee dates, you’ll find that
few will notice if/when your networking focus shifts to finding a solution to a problem you can’t
address with in-house peers or landing your next job.
Networking while you have a job is certainly a fantastic way to learn about best practices in your
industry, maintain current about what skills are in demand, and generally keep your finger on the
pulse. As a 24/7 networker, you’ll be among the first to hear about new opportunities at other firms and even your
job networking won’t raise alarm bells, because people are used to seeing you out and about.
Networking Skills Can Grow the Business
Life is full of paradoxes. Here’s another one to consider: The best time to network is when you are
least likely to feel the need. The landed executive is sitting in the networker’s catbird seat, Networking is arguably of more obvious importance to the in-transition executive, but it’s human nature to ease up on your networking activities once you’ve landed a job. However, just as the company you work for likely has a 5-year strategic
business plan, so should you the landed executive have a plan for where you want your career to
be in five years and beyond. Whether that next step is a promotion within your new company or a
new job elsewhere, networking now can help you get there later.
Networking is also invaluable to the landed executive to help them shine in their job
A Questionnaire For The New Boss
While your new boss has probably scheduled a meeting with you in the early days of his or your
arrival on the job, the agenda may be vague, advises career expert and executive coach Patti
Hathaway. Executives who offer their new bosses something up front to help focus the meeting will
learn a lot about how their boss likes to function and are likely to impress the boss with their
initiative. Tell the boss you are looking forward to the meeting, and that a primary goal of yours is
to learn how best to help your boss achieve his goals. Then you can give the boss the
questionnaire in advance. Some may fill it all out, others may read it and refer to it as a guide at
your meeting. But either way it will help you to better understand how to negotiate success with
your new boss.
Here, Hathaway offers up a suggested new boss questionnaire script:
I want to really understand your working style and organizational priorities so that we can get our
relationship off to a good start. It would be really helpful to me if you would complete this
questionnaire. I’d like to meet with you then, so we can discuss your answers and come to an
agreement about your priorities and our working styles.
About You
1. Do you prefer to receive information through:
a. Memos
b. Formal meetings
c. Phone calls
d. Informal meetings
e. E-mail
f. Other (specify)
2. What is your preferred style of working?
a. Organized and highly structured
b. Moderately organized and moderately structured
c. Little organization or structure
d. Other (specify)
3. What are your top three organizational priorities?
a.
b.
c.
4. If you are willing to share, what are your top three personal priorities?
a.
b.
c.
5. What is your attitude toward conflict?
a. Thrive on it
b. Try to minimize it
c. Other (specify)
6. If there is a problem in my direct report’s area of responsibility, I prefer:
a. To know about it right away and I will provide some ideas.
b. You tell me about the problem and how you plan to deal with it.
c. You deal with it and then let me know what you did.
d. You tell me these kinds of things only on a “need to know” basis.
e. You don’t tell me about problems unless it’s an emergency.
f. Other (specify)
7. What do you see as your three outstanding strengths (so I can learn from you)?
a.
b.
c.
8. What do you anticipate being your greatest pressure in this position?
9. What do you see as the top three priorities that will be most important for my position?
1.
2.
3.
10. What else should I know about you that would help us have an effective work relationship?
How can I help you be successful in your position?
Source: Adapted from Managing Upward: Strategies for Succeeding with Your Boss by Patti
Hathaway and Susan Schubert, 1992.
A Crib Sheet For Your First 90 Days On The Job
The first days and weeks in your new job offer some of the most exciting and largest challenges of your career. You have one chance to make a great first impression. Below is the tip sheet.
First 90 Days: Crib Sheet
* Become a culture vulture: what is the culture of your organization?
* Learn open hierarchy and communication styles and work with them.
* Expectations: align yours and theirs.
* Decide what you want to represent: panic or potential.
* Understand that since you are new you will be seen as a change to status quo.
* With change, people tend to become more territorial and uncertain; meet that with awareness
and move at Goldilocks’ speed: not too fast, not too slow, just right.
* Build trust and credibility.
* Facilitate acceptance by all. Find the early “champions” and align with them.
* Go for the quick and visible wins early to set the tone and expectation of success.
* Know what your job is and how you will be evaluated by superior(s).
* Assess the situation from all sides, carefully.
* Learn how to build consensus.
* Make your boss look good by appropriate care and feeding. What are his or her preferences for
contact, updates, meetings? Does your boss like e-mails or voicemail? What does he or she
want to see in the first 90 days?
* Offer solutions to your boss. Offer your team a chance to solve problems.
* Always highlight the team’s successes.
* Praise in public, give critiques in private.
* Be sure your vision and plans align with corporate goals and vision.
* Velcro all around; keep connected to your boss, your peers, your direct reports.
* Ask your team of direct reports, preferably one-on-one, what they need from you and how
each person likes best to be managed.
* Be clear about what you need from your team and how you will evaluate them.
* Establish best practices and keep people accountable and responsible.
* Understand and manage the implicit challenges of managing people whose styles are different
from yours.
* Show your willingness to learn and to support all efforts by team and peers.
* Understand that there will be mishaps and mistakes in the beginning.
* When you first are hired, the tendency is to fear asking questions. Don’t be afraid to do so,
since the mistake later, based on a lack of knowledge, can cost more than the potential bruise
to your pride that initially keeps you from asking.
* Come in firm and fair, since it’s harder to become more strict than it is to ease up later.
* Let people continually know that you are committed to their success and success for the
department/organization.
* Everyone is always tuned into the same radio station: WII.FM. “What’s In It For Me?” Develop
a place and a plan where people can truly commit to the vision.
* There is no reality without a deadline, make them and keep them.
* Remember that you were hired because your supervisor saw your value.
* Don’t squash others but support them.
* Avoid getting stuck in the muck and the mire of how things didn’t work out before.
* Show understanding of other’s concerns by reflecting back, paraphrasing their thoughts.
* Ask or tell: understand the relationship
* Build relationships before doing tasks; in the end tasks will be better done. Let your team
know, one on one and in group meetings, what your vision is for the team.
* Model what you want from others: walk the talk and vice versa.
* Know how your boss will evaluate you after 90 days. Perhaps you asked that in the interview
but now’s the time to ask again.
* Remember, you are the conductor, not the orchestra!
bayelliott 