The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded

it’s beneficial to learn about the brands and products you will be supporting, whether or not you’re directly involved in sales and marketing. Focus, too, on understanding the operating model, planning and performance evaluation systems, and talent management systems, because they often powerfully influence how you can most effectively have an impact.

It’s also essential to develop the right relationship wiring as soon as possible. This means identifying key stakeholders and building productive working relationships.

is a natural but dangerous tendency for new leaders to focus on building vertical relationships early in their transitions—up to their bosses and down to their teams. Often, insufficient time is devoted to lateral relationship building with peers and key constituencies outside the new leader’s immediate organization. Remember: you don’t want to be meeting your neighbors for the first time in the middle of the night when your house is burning down.

No matter how well you think you understand what you’re expected to do, be sure to check and recheck expectations once you formally join your new organization.

recruiting is like romance, and employment is like marriage.

What is culture? It’s a set of consistent patterns people follow for communicating, thinking, and acting, all grounded in their shared assumptions and values.

Identifying Cultural Norms The following domains are areas in which cultural norms may vary significantly from company to company. Transitioning leaders should use this checklist to help them figure out how things really work in the organizations they’re joining. Influence. How do people get support for critical initiatives? Is it more important to have the support of a patron within the senior team, or affirmation from your peers and direct reports that your idea is a good one? Meetings. Are meetings filled with dialogue on hard issues, or are they simply forums for publicly ratifying agreements that have been reached in private? Execution. When it comes time to get things done, which matters more—a deep understanding of processes or knowing the right people? Conflict. Can people talk openly about difficult issues without fear of retribution? Or do they avoid conflict—or, even worse, push it to lower levels, where it can wreak havoc? Recognition. Does the company promote stars, rewarding those who visibly and vocally drive business initiatives? Or does it encourage team players, rewarding those who lead authoritatively but quietly and collaboratively? Ends versus means. Are there any restrictions on how you achieve results? Does the organization have a well-defined, well-communicated set of values that is reinforced through positive and negative incentives?

Be careful to focus on lateral relationships (peers, others) and not only vertical ones (boss, direct reports).

No matter how well you think you understand what you need to do, schedule a conversation with your boss about expectations in your first week.

Identify people inside the organization who could serve as culture interpreters.

You rarely get much notice before being thrust into a new job. If you’re lucky, you get a couple of weeks, but more often the move is measured in days. You get caught up in a scramble to finish your old job even as you try to wrap your arms around the new one. Even worse, you may be pressured to perform both jobs until your previous position is filled, making the line of demarcation even fuzzier.

it is essential to discipline yourself to make the transition mentally. Pick a specific time, such as a weekend, and use it to imagine yourself making the shift. Consciously think of letting go of the old job and embracing the new one. Think hard about the differences between the two, and consider how you must now think and act differently.

You need to discipline yourself to devote time to critical activities that you do not enjoy and that may not come naturally. Beyond that, actively search out people in your organization whose skills are sharp in these areas, so that they can serve as a backstop for you and you can learn from them.

Your weaknesses can make you vulnerable, but so can your strengths. To paraphrase Abraham Maslow, “To a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”3 The qualities that have made you successful so far (it’s worth being clear in your own mind what your hammer is) can prove to be weaknesses in your new role.

Having to start learning again can evoke long-buried and unnerving feelings of incompetence or vulnerability, especially if you suffer early setbacks. You may find yourself mentally revisiting a juncture in your career when you had less confidence.

Having to start learning again can evoke long-buried and unnerving feelings of incompetence or vulnerability, especially if you suffer early setbacks. You may find yourself mentally revisiting a juncture in your career when you had less confidence. Perhaps you will make some early missteps and experience failure for the first time in ages.

Having to start learning again can evoke long-buried and unnerving feelings of incompetence or vulnerability, especially if you suffer early setbacks. You may find yourself mentally revisiting a juncture in your career when you had less confidence. Perhaps you will make some early missteps and experience failure for the first time in ages. So you unconsciously begin to gravitate toward areas where you feel competent and toward people who reinforce your feelings of self-worth.

you can decide to learn and adapt, or you can become brittle and fail.

Relearning how to learn can be stressful. So if you find yourself waking up in a cold sweat, take comfort. Most new leaders experience the same feelings. And if you embrace the need to learn, you can surmount them.

As you advance in your career, the advice you need changes. Preparing yourself for a new role calls for proactively restructuring your advice-and-counsel network.