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Managerial Success:
The First 90 Days
The most important decisions you make in your first 90 days will
probably be about the people on your team. If you succeed in creating a
high-performance team, you can exert tremendous leverage in value
creation. If not, you will face severe difficulties, for no leader can
hope to achieve much alone.
— Michael Watkins, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for
New Leaders at All Levels, Harvard Business School Press, 2003.
Assessing
a team—deciding who should stay and who should go—is one of the most
critical tasks an executive faces when transitioning into a new
position. It can create or destroy leverage—and leadership is
ultimately about leverage.
Each year, about 25 percent of
managers in typical Fortune 500 companies change jobs. Most spend an
average of four years in a given position. High-potential leaders in
mid-senior ranks move more frequently: every 2.5 to 3 years. These
statistics demonstrate why leaders must build strong teams, composed of
the right people in the right jobs, as quickly as possible.
The first weeks are crucial
for learning and evaluating. Leaders must maintain the right balance of
confidence and humility, while asking probing questions and actively
listening. During this time, leaders are most vulnerable. Without a
firm support network in place, they must learn everything they can
about the organization, its strategies, customers and team members in
the shortest possible timeframe.
Leaders must dedicate a large
percentage of learning time to getting to know existing team members.
If you are promoted to a new position from within the organization, you
are likely acquainted with some of its key people. Transition from the
outside, and you face the task of identifying and placing the right
people into the right positions—a much greater challenge. Either way,
you must choose wisely, without disrupting short-term performance.
How do you assess your
existing team as quickly as possible? How do you reduce your learning
curve and jumpstart your team’s performance in the first 90 days? What
are the most common mistakes leaders in a new position make?
The full article covers the following concepts:
How to Assess an Existing Team
Probing Questions
Testing for Judgment
Assessing the Team
Restructuring a Team
Alternatives to Termination
7 Common Mistakes
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