Your First 90 Days in a Leadership Role

Have you recently started as a leader in a role? The first 90 days are critical for you feeling confident and like this is going to work out. In this video, I cover what you should focus on in the first 90 days, so that this role is exactly what you wanted it to be.

The Challenge

When you started a new role as a leader, everyone’s looking at you. They’re thinking is this person like the last person? Why have they hired this person? What difference are they going to make? So it’s really important that you be aware that from that stakeholder point of view, the eyes are upon you. Now, for those of you where this works is you use that as an opportunity, and for those of you where it doesn’t is you get all anxious and kind of self conscious.

The 90 Day Plan

Let’s have a proactive positive plan for that first 90 days. Here’s the two fundamental things:

1. Who is important
2. What is Important

Who in the organisation is important? So I would literally map out, if you’re in an organisation, the board or steering committee or whatever it is, from bottom to top. All the people who are stakeholders to your role. And one of the most important things you can do with them, and you would have done this as part of the interview process, but when you start is to meet with them and you could get up to 30 minutes with each person to do two things.

One is you want to build trust with them, but you also want them to know that you can be of value. I would recommend that the focus is on how you can be of value first, and then if the relationship comes later, fantastic. But it’s really engaging with those stakeholders.

The second thing is work out what’s important. Three ideas here that are critical. The first one is I would have a specific 90 day plan, for what results you want to create within the first 90 days. And that should be agreed by the board or whoever it is, whoever’s hired you. When you meet with your stakeholders, understand what I call the broader commission. What is that? What’s the mandate of your role? So two things here is what is the big problem or problems that they really brought you on to solve? Why are you here? Why did they select you and not someone else? Then what’s the big opportunity?

Now to give you an example like that. You might be a digital person. This business had never gone digital before, and you might be the digital person. So for you that’s the focus of your role. It’s keeping things running, but it’s really implementing that within the organisation. And if you can understand that in the first 90 days it really gets you off to the right foot.

And then the third is by the end of that time, start to develop some idea of focus areas for the role.And I talk about focus areas on the front end with clients. And then what are some of the back of house focus areas? So I talk about an organisation being like a theatre. Is your focus going to be front of house with clients, earning money? Or back of house, improving the client experience from beginning to end? And what are those focus areas for you?

Summary

So when you start in a role it can be daunting, but it’s really important to have a plan and feel confident. Two areas, first of all, spend time with who’s important so you can map out, build relationships with them, and trust, and value. And the second is focus on what’s important. Have a plan and start to work out what your focus areas are going to be.

Leave me a Comment or Get in Touch 

If you or others are starting your role, and you want to talk about how a plan can specifically work for you, we can just have a chat. Work out what the right strategy is for you. And if you want implementation of it or ongoing help, we can talk about how that might work in your team, in your organisation. If you’re starting a new role, good luck. Use my strategies. I’ll see you next time on The Reason & The Road.