The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded

Transforming your advice-and-counsel network is never easy; your current advisers may be close friends, and you may feel comfortable with technical advisers whose domains you know well. But it is essential to step back and recognize where you need to build your networks to compensate for blind spots and gaps in your own expertise or experience

So you must negotiate clear expectations, as soon as you know when you will be transitioning, about what you will do to close things out. This means being specific about the issues or projects that will be dealt with and to what extent—and, critically, what is not going to be done.

Colleagues who have become subordinates may not want their relationships with you to change; this challenge is especially sharp when you’re promoted to lead former peers.

expect early tests of your authority, and plan to meet them by being firm and fair.

expect early tests of your authority, and plan to meet them by being firm and fair. If you don’t establish limits early, you will live to regret it.

Take a few minutes to think hard about your personal vulnerabilities in your new role,

Then think about the external forces, such as commitments to your current boss, that could hold you back. How can you avoid that outcome?

You will have to work constantly to ensure that you’re engaging with the real challenges of your new position and not retreating to your comfort zone.

What has made you successful so far in your career? Can you succeed in your new position by relying solely on those strengths? If not, what are the critical skills you need to develop?

Are there aspects of your new job that are critical to success but that you prefer not to focus on? Why? How will you compensate for your potential blind spots?

Like many new leaders, he failed to focus on learning about his new organization and so made some bad decisions that undercut his credibility.

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. So 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. You can identify potential problems that might erupt and take you offtrack. The faster you climb the learning curve, the earlier you can begin to make good business decisions.

Early in your transition you inevitably feel as if you are drinking from a fire hose. There is so much to absorb that it’s difficult to know where to focus.

Planning to learn means figuring out in advance what the important questions are and how you can best answer them.

A baseline question you always should ask is, “How did we get to this point?”

A baseline question you always should ask is, “How did we get to this point?” Otherwise, you risk tearing down existing structures or processes without knowing why they were put there in the first place.

Effective leaders strike the right balance between doing (making things happen) and being (observing and reflecting).

Remember: simply displaying a genuine desire to learn and understand translates into increased credibility and influence.

So if you habitually find yourself too anxious or too busy to devote time to learning, you may suffer from the action imperative.

If, like Chris, you do not focus on learning, you can easily make poor early decisions that undermine your credibility, alienate potential supporters, and make people less likely to share important information with you.