Your First 90 Days — Roadmap
The first 3 months at your new job will determine your success or your failure, Michael Watkin’s book combine strategies for a speed up transition and to prevent a failure.
The book The First 90 days has 10 chapters to develop the strategies for this first 3 months of work.
I developed a Gantt Diagram very visual to be used as a roadmap, but it also could be used as a framework and choose what strategy to use depending on your transition case.
Anyway, I personally recommend reading the book, because each chapter develops a real case study.
This is the 10 strategies list from Watkin’s book
Promote Yourself:
- Before to start the new job focused on the changes that will be generated
- You have to broke up with the old job and prepare for the new one
- Leave the old mindset, the strategy that you used in the previous job is not necessarily to work in the new one
- In this phase, you have to be clear your strengths and weaknesses
Accelerate your Learning
- Know everything about the new market, products, technology, business structure, culture, values, etc.
- Recognize what to learn and how to do it
- Define a learning agenda in order to know the company’s past, present, and future
- Identify which will be your new knowledge source
- Make a learning plan for the first 30 days
Match Strategy to Situation
- New situations make new ways to create plans
- Depending on the business situation that you will confront (startup, transformation, restructuration, accelerate grow up or sustained success) you have to choose the strategy
- An accurate diagnosis situation could help to determinate the new challenges, opportunities, and resources
Negotiation Success
- Focus on five conversations to negotiate
- Detect the actual business situation
- Expectations for the directory
- Key Resource for the business situation
- Plan a conversation team
Secure Early Wins
- Early wins generate virtual cycles, credibility, value and improve the outcomes. It’s important to arrive faster at the breakeven
- Ensure early wins be coherence with the objectives (business priorities and behavior patrons)
- Adopt basic principles in order to avoid early failures, focus in few opportunities with impact
- Identify your early wins
Phase 1: Develop your personal credibility
Phase 2: Define projects to generate your quick hits
Achieve Alignment
- Evaluate if the business strategy is right inconsistency and suitability
- If the strategy is not aligned with the requirements, you have to propose your own strategy
- Form your work team structure
- Adjust the central process (which generate the business value)
Build your Team
- You could evaluate, adjust and move the members that were assigned you
- Evaluate your team, find out who is who in the team, which activities have played, make a personal and a group evaluation as a team.
- Develop your team, after the first 30 days you must to be able to assign each person to the categories.
- Align your team, each member must to feel responsible to the objectives management, use the tools to generate motivation into the workers.
- Lider your team, how they work before my management, which process you must to change.
Create Coalitions
- Have alliances (interns or extern) could help you achieve the objectives
- Identify key people rapidly and find how it could help to generate a strategy relation
Keep Balance
- Despite all the changes generated is necessary to maintain the ability to make good decisions
- Take stock of your life with the new changes and a stress performance curve
- Know the three self manage pillars:
Adopt the 90 days plan strategy, when the strategy works you will feel safer and motivated
Develop personal disciplines plan and fulfill, postpone with prudence the commitment that you can’t meet
Develop a support system, control your office environment, balance the transition with your family life.
Accelerate your Transition
- Help the new work team to accelerate their transición
- Identify the others prior transitions in the company (which and when are happening)
- Adapt the help to the transition in a leader level like coaching, workshop and self-guided
- Clarify the functions and adjust the incentives
All these strategies are shaped on this colorful Gantt
This book focuses on high position changes and promotions; however, I consider that each strategy could be adapted to middle range position. You could use this summary like a big book roadmap.
