A generic 30/60/90 day onboarding plan for a new role, based on the book 'The First 90 Days' by Michael Watkins.
Welcome to your onboarding guide, inspired by highly regarded business book The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins. This book gives clear, practical advice on how to do well quickly in a new job, especially in leadership roles. This plan uses ideas from the book (and quotes of key sections) to help you fit in, get up to speed, and start making a difference in your new role as soon as possible. Note that the focus is primarily on a role that is 'first of its kind' in a larger company (not a role that adopts an existing team, or needs to define itself in a pure startup environment)
(Note: Text in italics is direct quotes from the book)
Do these things well, and you'll be set up for success:
- Prepare yourself. This means making a mental break from your old job and preparing to take charge in the new one
- 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. 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. In the first few weeks, you need to identify opportunities to build personal credibility. In the first 90 days, you need to identify ways to create value and improve business results.
- 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. Ensure you're aligned on your 90 day plan.
- Create coalitions. Supportive alliances, both internal and external, are necessary if you are to achieve your goals. You therefore should start right away to identify those whose support is essential for your success, and to figure out how to line them up on your side.
- Keep your balance. In the personal and professional tumult of a transition, you must work hard to maintain your equilibrium and preserve your ability to make good judgments. The risks of losing perspective, becoming isolated, and making bad calls are ever present during transitions - ensure you have the right advisors.
- Accelerate everyone. Finally, you need to help all those in your organization—direct reports, bosses, and peers—accelerate their own transitions. The fact that you’re in transition means they are too.
No matter how much preparation time you get, start planning what you hope to accomplish by specific milestones.
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. At the broadest level, preparing yourself means letting go of the past and embracing the imperatives of the new situation to give yourself a running start. It can be hard work, but it is essential. Often, promising managers fail in new roles because they’ve failed to prepare themselves by embracing the necessary changes in perspective.
Getting oriented to the business means learning about the company as a whole and not only your specific parts of the business. To adapt successfully, you need to understand what the culture is overall and how it’s manifested in the organization or unit you’re joining
The most important focus for the initial 30 days will be in building relationships and understanding the culture, while also defining a clear learning agenda for the rest of your 90 day onboarding process
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. 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. Amid the torrent of information coming your way, it’s easy to miss important signals. Or you might focus too much on the technical side of the business—products, customers, technologies, and strategies—and miss key elements of the organizational culture. Planning to learn means figuring out in advance what the important questions are and how you can best answer them. Effective learning calls for figuring out what you need to learn so that you can focus your efforts. Remember: simply displaying a genuine desire to learn and understand translates into increased credibility and influence.
Devote some time to defining your learning agenda as early as possible, and return to it periodically to refine and supplement it. Efficient learning means identifying the best available sources of insight and then figuring out how to extract maximum insight with the least possible outlay of time.
The starting point is to begin to define your learning agenda, ideally before you formally enter the organization. A learning agenda crystallizes your learning priorities: what do you most need to learn? It consists of a focused set of questions to guide your inquiry or the hypotheses you want to explore and test, or both. Of course, learning during a transition is iterative: at first, your learning agenda will consist mostly of questions, but as you learn more, you will hypothesize about what is going on and why.
A smart approach is to use a standard set of questions about the business. This approach is powerful, because the responses you get are comparable. You can line them up side by side and analyze what is consistent and inconsistent about the responses.
- What are the biggest challenges the organization is facing (or will face in the near future)? - Why is the organization facing (or going to face) these challenges? - What are the most promising unexploited opportunities for growth? - What would need to happen for the organization to exploit the potential of these opportunities? - If you were me, what would you focus attention on?
- Understand the company and your department (vision/mission, top goals and metrics, products/competitors and business strategy).
- Start building key relationships (your boss and leadership, team mates and key XFN partners).
- Evaluate your area of responsibility (analyze key data, understand the 'history' of your area, identify bright spots and issues to fix)
- Share early findings with your team, define clear plan for 30-60 day sprint, including the focus of the next part of your 'learning agenda'
- Meet with Key Stakeholders: Have meetings with team members, managers, and others you'll work with to know what they expect and what problems they face.
- Learn the Company Culture: Join company and team meetings to see the culture in action, watch key recordings and interviews/meetings with leadership.
- Assess the Situation: Look at the systems, processes, data and teams you'll be dealing with.
- Set Learning Goals: Figure out what you need to learn to do well in your role.
- A list of important people and first impressions (ideally use consistent quetsion as you interview people to give consistant findings both on their opinions of your area of focus and insights on the culture and how to be effective).
- A short report on the company culture.
- An early evaluation of your area, including opportunities and challenges. Understand you will not have it all correct at this stage, but the refined lessons from the initial interviews will define the next stage of your more focused learning agenda
- A review of available data, progress against key goals and existing work in progress.
- Develop a clear plan for the focus of the next 30 days: what will you focus on learning? what quick wins could you focus on delivering as you learn? Which relationships are the most important ro nurture?
For the next 30 days (30-60 days in your role) you'll be succeeding if you can strengthen key relationships and your cultural understanding, align closely with your boss and begin setting clear goals, and accelerate your focused learning (ideally while delivering some quick wins aligned with the learning agenda)
How did the organization reach this point? What factors—both soft and hard—make this situation a challenge? What resources within the organization can you draw on? Your view may differ from your boss’s, but it is essential to grasp how she sees the situation.
Clarify expectations early and often. Begin managing expectations from the moment you consider taking a new role. Focus on expectations during the interview process.
Aim for early wins in areas important to the boss. Whatever your own priorities, figure out what your boss cares about most. What are his priorities and goals, and how do your actions fit into this picture? One good way is to focus on three things that are important to your boss and discuss what you’re doing about them every time you interact. In that way, your boss will feel ownership of your success.
The expectations conversation: Your goal in this conversation is to understand and negotiate expectations. What does your new boss need you to do in the short term and in the medium term? What will constitute success? Critically, how will your performance be measured? When?
Once you’re a few months into your new role, you can begin to discuss how you’re doing and what your developmental priorities should be. Where are you doing well? In what areas do you need to improve or do things differently?
The style conversation: This conversation is about how you and your new boss can best interact on an ongoing basis. What forms of communication does she prefer, and for what? Face-to-face? Voice, electronic? How often? What kinds of decisions does she want to be consulted on, and when can you make the call on your own? How do your styles differ, and what are the implications for the ways you should interact?
The resource conversation: This conversation is essentially a negotiation for critical resources. What do you need to be successful? What do you need your boss to do? The resources need not be limited to funding or personnel. Key here is to focus your boss on the benefits and costs of what you can accomplish with different amounts of resources.
Your early conversations should focus on situational diagnosis, expectations, and style. As you learn more, you will be ready to negotiate for resources, revisiting your diagnosis of the situation and resetting expectations as necessary.
Take time to plan for each conversation, and signal clearly to your boss what you hope to accomplish in each exchange.
Reaching a shared understanding of the business situation you face, and of its associated challenges and opportunities, is your goal in the situational diagnosis conversations.
This shared understanding is the foundation for everything you will do. If you and your boss do not define your new situation in the same way, you will not receive the support you need. Think carefully about the role you need your new boss to play and the kinds of support you will ask for.
- Strengthen relationships (especially with your boss and core team).
- Achieve some quick wins (aligning these wins with learning opportunities - can they give you data to make larger strategic bets?).
- Start making a long-term plan for your role (including early thoughts on key goals, metrics and opportunities).
- Feedback Sessions: Talk again with key people to get their thoughts on your ideas and planned quick wins.
- Implement Quick Wins: Work on small, impactful projects that can be done quickly to show your value and get things moving (important here to focus on quick wins that will accelerate your learning, and ideally contribute to larger efforts to come).
- Strategic Planning: Begin creating a vision for your role, with goals for the next few months and the year.
- Feedback summary and action plan.
- A report on quick wins and their impact.
- A draft plan for your role.
- Start working on your big plan.
- Keep getting feedback.
- Really become part of the team and company.
- Strategic Execution: Put your main plans into action.
- Regular Check-ins: Set times to talk with your boss and key people to update them and adjust plans as needed.
- Build Your Network: Keep meeting people in the company to find chances to work together.
- An update on your big projects.
- A schedule for feedback and check-ins.
- Next steps and plans for ongoing growth in your role.
There are some common potholes new hires can fall into, so be wary for:
Sticking with what you know. You believe you will be successful in the new role by doing the same things you did in your previous role.
Setting unrealistic expectations. You don’t negotiate your mandate or establish clear, achievable objectives.
Attempting to do too much. You rush off in all directions, launching multiple initiatives in the hope that some will pay off.
Coming in with “the” answer. You come in with your mind made up, or you reach conclusions too quickly about “the” problems and “the” solutions. You alienate people who could help you understand
Falling prey to the 'action imperitive' - you try to do too much, too fast.
Perhaps the biggest pitfall you face is assuming that what has made you successful to this point will continue to do so. The dangers of sticking with what you know, working extremely hard at doing it, and failing miserably are very real.
The first 90 days are crucial for setting yourself up for success. By focusing on understanding the culture, making connections, getting some early wins, and planning for the future, you can become effective quickly and make a lasting impact. Remember, this plan is just a starting point. Feel free to adjust it as you learn more about your job, the company, and what works best for you.