2022 Book Report #10 - The First 90 Days (Michael Watkins)
“Why are transitions critical? When Michael D. Watkins surveyed more than thirteen hundred senior HR leaders, almost 90% agreed that ‘transitions into new roles are the most challenging times in the professional lives of leaders.’”
To be effective in applying The First 90 Days, you need to know what the backbone of *The First 90 Days* actually is.
Prepare Yourself
Accelerate Your Learning
Match Strategy to Situation
Negotiate Success
Secure Early Wins
Achieve Alignment
Build Your Team
Create Alliances
Manage Yourself
Accelerate Everyone
The formula is a powerful one. Basically, you are learning the lay of the land, while creating momentum, and making impact. This sets the stage for your credibility, as well as forces you to build effective relationships within your ecosystem.
New leaders should strive to make a positive first impression on their employees and bosses by learning and understand the organization’s challenges and clearly defining goals, expectations, and visions for success.
Taking this time to listen, learn, and understand the organization and its employees will help the new leader achieve early wins, form a bond of trust with their employees, and build up positive momentum that will set them up for long term success.
Now, diving into each piece of the framework:
Prepare Yourself
No matter where you land, the keys to effective delegation remain much the same: you build a team of competent people whom you trust, you establish goals and metrics to monitor their progress, you translate higher level goals into specific responsibilities for your direct reports and you reinforce them through process
The sooner you understand the business environment in which you’re operating, the sooner you can make productive contributions
It’s essential to 1) develop the right relationship wiring as soon as possible, 2) identify key stakeholders and 3) build productive working relationships
Beneath the surface layer of symbols and language lies a deeper, less visible set of organizational norms and accepted patterns of behavior
Culture norms: Influence, meetings, execution, conflict, recognition, ends versus means
As you move to higher levels, it becomes increasingly important to get good political counsel and personal advice
Accelerate Your Learning
Planning to learn means figuring out in advance what the important questions are and how you can best answer them
Effective leaders strike the right balance between doing and being (observing/reflecting)
Defining your learning agenda
Questions about the PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE:
About the Past
Performance
How has this organization performed in the past? How do people in the org think it has performed?
How were goals set? Were they insufficiently or overly ambitious?
Were internal or external benchmarks used?
What measures were employed? What behaviors did they encourage and discourage?
What happened if goals were not met?
Root Causes
If performance has been good, why has that been the case?
What have been the relative contributions of strategy, structure, systems, talent bases, culture and politics?
If performance has been poor, why has that been the case? Do the primary issues reside in the org’s strategy? Structure, technical capabilities, culture?
History of Change
What efforts have been made to change the org? What happened? Who has been instrument in shaping this organization?
About the Present
Vision and Strategy
What is the stated vision and strategy?
Is the organization really pursuing that strategy? If not, why not? If so, will the strategy take the organization where it needs to go?
People
Who is capable and who is not?
Who is trustworthy and who is not?
Who has influence and why?
Processes
What are they key processes?
Are they performing acceptably in quality, reliability and timeliness? If not, why not?
Land Mines
What lurking surprises could detonate and push you off track?
What potentially damaging cultural or political missteps must you avoid?
Early Wins
In what areas (people, relationships, processes, or products) can you achieve some early wins?
About the Future
Challenges and Opportunities
In what areas is the organization most likely to face stiff challenges in the coming year? What can be done now to prepare for them?
What are the most promising unexploited opportunity? What would need to happen to realize their potential?
Barriers and Resources
What are the most formidable barriers to making needed changes? Are they technical? Cultural? Political?
Are there islands of excellence or other high quality resources that you can leverage?
What new capabilities need to be developed or acquired?
Culture
Which elements of the culture should be preserved?
Which elements need to change?
Your learning “plan” defines how you will go about learning it (your agenda)
Match Strategy to Situation
STARS = Startup, Turnaround, Accelerated growth, Realignment, Sustaining success
There is no one size fits all approach to leading change
Negotiate Success
This means proactively engaging with your new boss to shape the game so that you have a fighting chance of achieving desired goals
Don’t shy away, you have to reach out yourself; get on the boss’s calendar regularly
Don’t run-down a checklist
Focus on solutions and most important issues
Secure Early Wins
Get wins that matter to your boss
Addressing problems that your boss cares about will go a long way toward building credibility and cementing your access to resources
You want people to associate you with attractive capabilities, attitudes and values
Seek 3-4 key areas where you will seek to achieve rapid movement
Identify both the good and bad elements of existing culture
Achieve Alignment
The higher you climb in organizations, the more you take on the role of ‘organizational architect’ - creating and aligning the key elements of the organization system: the strategic direction, structure, core processes, and skill bases that provide the foundation for superior performance
Elements of Organizational Structure
Strategic Direction
Structure
Core Processes
Skill Bases
To align an organization… it’s like preparing for a long sailing trip. 1) You need to be clear on whether your destination (the mission and goals) and your route (the strategy) are the right ones. Then 2) you can figure out which boat you need (the structure), how to to outfit it (the processes) and which mix of crew members is best (the skill bases)
Mission is about what will be achieved
Vision is about why people feel motivated to perform at a high level
Strategy is about how resources should be allocated
Core processes (“systems”) enable your group to transform information, materials, and knowledge into value
Build Your Team
You will inherit A, B and C Players
During your first 30 and 60 Days you need to sort who’s who, what roles they have played and how the group has worked in the past
Evaluative Criteria
Competence
Judgment
Energy
Focus
Relationships
Trust
Create Alliances
Once you know what you want to accomplish, you can drill down and figure out whose support is essential and how you will secure it
You need to map influence networks — who influences whom on the issues of concern to you
Try to identify the sources of power that give particular people influence
Examples:
Expertise
Control of information
Connections to others
Access to resources
Personal loyalty
To identify potential supporters:
People who share your vision for the future
People new to the company
To identify opposition:
Comfort with the status quo
Fear of looking incompetent
Threats to core values
Threats to their power
Negative consequences for their allies
Manage Yourself
It’s common for leaders to go into a valley in 3-6 month view
Three Pillars of Self-Management:
Adoption of the Success Strategies
Creation and Enforcement of Personal Disciplines
Regular routines you enforce on yourself ruthlessly
Plan to plan
Focus on the IMPORTANT
Support systems at work and at home to maintain balance
Includes a personal Board of Directors
Accelerate Everyone
The starting point is to understand how many transitions are occurring in your organization and to focus first on accelerating the most important of them
A Few, Key Insights:
First impressions are vital for long term success
Professional reputations shape careers
Clearly define success along with the company hierarchy
Tailor strategies around an organization’s STARS types
Early Wins are so important
Leaders should listen, learn, and understand before implementing changes
Aligning organizational structure is key to success
Building a successful team is important
