The First 90 Days

Essay text:

The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels Author: Watkins, Michael Conceptual concept: ? Promote yourself - to this point in your career will continue to do so. ? Accelerate your learning - be systematic and focused about deciding what you need to learn and how you will learn it most efficiently. ? Match strategy to situation ? Secure early wins - builds personal credibility, creates value, and proves results. ? Negotiate success ? Achieve alignment - The higher you go in an organization the more you must bring structure into alignment with strategy. ? Build your team ? Create coalitions ? Keep your balance ? Expedite everyone STaRS Model ? Start up - Psychology - excitement and confusion - Challenges ? Building structures and systems from scratch ? Welding together a cohesive high performing team ? Making do with limited resources - Opportunities ? Can do things right from the beginning ? People are energized ? No pre-existing rigid thinking - Support needed ? Help getting needed resources quickly ? Clear, measurable goals ? Guidance at strategic breakpoints ? Help staying focused - Decision making ? Consult-and-decide ? Turnaround - Psychology ? despair - Challenges ? Re-energizing demoralized stakeholders ? Handling time pressure, need for decisive impact ? Going deep enough with difficult choices - Opportunities ? Everyone recognizes that changes necessary ? Acted constituencies may offer external support ? A little success goes a long way - Support needed ? Same as start-up, plus ? Support for making and implementing tough calls ? Support for changing or correcting external image of the organization ? Help cutting deeply an early enough - Decision making ? Consult-and-decide ? Realignment - Psychology ? denial - Challenges ? Dealing with deeply ingrained cultural norms that no longer contribute to high performance ? Convincing employees that change is necessary ? Restructuring the top team in refocusing the organization - Opportunities ? The organization has significant pockets of strength ? People want to continue to see themselves as successful - Support needed ? Same as start-ups, plus ? Help making the case for change - Decision making ? build consensus ? Sustaining success - Psychology ? complacency - Challenges ? Playing good defense by avoiding decisions that cause problems ? Living in the shadow of a revered leader ? Finding ways to take the business to the next level - Opportunities ? A strong team ? People are motivated to succeed ? Foundations for continued success may be in place - Support needed ? Constant reality testing (sustaining-success versus realignment) ? Support for playing good defense and avoiding mistakes ? Help finding ways to take the business to a new level - Decision making ? build consensus Focus your energy: More Offense More Defense More Learning Realignment Sustaining Success More Doing Start up Turnaround Building credibility: ? Demanding that able to be satisfied ? Accessible but not too familiar ? Decisive but judicious ? Focus but flexible ? Active without causing commotion ? Willing to make tough calls but humane Quote: "The higher you climb in an organization, the more you take on the role of the organizational architect, creating the context within which others can achieve superior performance...