The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded

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. The result is that you make more bad decisions and enter a vicious cycle

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. The result is that you make more bad decisions and enter a vicious cycle that can irreparably damage your credibility.

It may feel right to enter a new situation and begin acting decisively—and sometimes, as you will see in the next chapter, it is the right thing to do—but you risk being poorly prepared to see the real problems.

what works well in one organization may fail miserably in another.

Leaders who are onboarding into new organizations must therefore focus on learning and adapting to the new culture. Otherwise they risk suffering the organizational equivalent of organ rejection syndrome

An actionable insight is knowledge that enables you to make better decisions earlier and so helps you quickly reach the break-even point in personal value creation.

To maximize your return on investment in learning, you must effectively and efficiently extract actionable insights from the mass of information available to you.

Devote some time to defining your learning agenda as early as possible, and return to it periodically to refine and supplement it.

Efficient learning means identifying the best available sources of insight and then figuring out how to extract maximum insight with the least possible outlay of time.

A learning agenda crystallizes your learning priorities: what do you most need to learn? It consists of a focused set of questions to guide your inquiry or the hypotheses you want to explore and test, or both. Of course, learning during a transition is iterative: at first, your learning agenda will consist mostly of questions, but as you learn more, you will hypothesize about what is going on and why. Increasingly, your learning will shift toward fleshing out and testing those hypotheses.

Why are things done the way they are? Are the reasons something was done (for example, to meet a competitive threat) still valid? Are conditions changing so that something different should be done in the future?

Questions About the Past Performance How has this organization performed in the past? How do people in the organization 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 organization’s strategy? Its structure? Its technical capabilities? Its culture? Its politics? History of Change What efforts have been made to change the organization? What happened? Who has been instrumental in shaping this organization? Questions 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 the 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 offtrack? 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? Questions 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 opportunities? 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?

In the technical domain, you may have to grapple with unfamiliar markets, technologies, processes, and systems. In the interpersonal domain, you need to get to know your boss, peers, and direct reports. In the cultural domain, you must learn about norms, values, and behavioral expectations, which are almost certainly different from those in the organization you came from, even if you’re moving between units in the same company. In the political domain, you must understand the shadow organization—the informal set of processes and alliances that exist in the shadow of the formal structure and strongly influence how work actually gets done.

Keep in mind that you need to listen to key people both inside and outside the organization

Talking to people with different points of view will deepen your insight.

How do customers—external or internal—perceive your organization? How do your best customers assess your products or services? How about your customer service?

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