The First 90 Days
Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter
by Michael D. Watkins
“This book is an invaluable resource for anyone taking on a new leadership role. Michael Watkins provides a clear and practical guide for navigating the critical first 90 days, and lays out the strategies and tactics needed for success.”
The 90-Day Danger Zone: Your Guide to Surviving and Thriving in a New Role
You just landed the new job. The offer is signed, the start date is set, and you’re filled with a potent cocktail of excitement and sheer terror. The pressure is immense. You have to learn a new culture, build new relationships, impress a new boss, and deliver results—all while trying to figure out where the coffee machine is. It’s a period of intense vulnerability, and what you do in these first few months can define your entire trajectory at a new organization.
Many new leaders fall into predictable traps. Some, wanting to prove their worth, charge in with a "ready, fire, aim" approach, trying to change everything at once. Others are too timid, keeping their heads down for so long that they are perceived as ineffective. In his definitive guide, The First 90 Days, leadership transition expert Michael D. Watkins argues that this critical period is a make-or-break opportunity. He provides a proven, systematic playbook for getting up to speed faster and smarter, avoiding the common pitfalls, and setting yourself up for long-term success.
What You'll Learn
Why the first three months in any new role are a critical window for your career.
How to diagnose your new situation and tailor your strategy accordingly.
A framework for securing "early wins" to build crucial momentum and credibility.
How to have the five most important conversations with your new boss.
The common traps that new leaders fall into and how to sidestep them.
Diagnose Before You Prescribe
The single most important principle of the book is that you cannot create a successful plan until you have accurately diagnosed the business situation. A doctor who prescribes medication before examining the patient is committing malpractice. A leader who implements a strategy before understanding the context is doing the same.
A new VP of Sales I knew was hired from a fast-growing startup to lead a division at a large, stable corporation. He immediately tried to implement the aggressive, "break things" culture that had worked so well in his last role. It was a disaster. He alienated his veteran team, clashed with other departments, and was gone within a year. His mistake? He failed to realize he was in a "Sustaining Success" situation, but he applied a "Turnaround" playbook. To avoid this fate, Watkins created the STARS model, a powerful framework for diagnosing your new reality.
What's Your Situation? The STARS Model
Your strategy must match your situation. According to Watkins, every leader finds themselves in one of five common business situations. Identifying yours is your first priority.
S - Start-up: You are building a business, a team, or a project from scratch. You need to assemble a team, marshal resources, and create a vision where nothing existed before.
T - Turnaround: You are saving a business or project that is in deep trouble. The situation requires rapid, decisive action to stop the bleeding and make tough choices about people and strategy.
A - Accelerated Growth: You are scaling a successful business or project quickly. The challenge is to maintain momentum while building systems and processes that can handle the increased scale without breaking.
R - Realignment: You are tasked with revitalizing a complacent or underperforming unit. The underlying business is sound, but it has lost its edge. Your job is to re-energize the team and challenge the status quo.
S - Sustaining Success: You are taking over a successful organization from a successful predecessor. The challenge is to preserve the vitality of what works while finding smart ways to take it to the next level, all without disrupting the core of its success.
Your Strategic Roadmap for the First 90 Days
With your STARS diagnosis in hand, you can now follow a proven process for navigating the transition.
Month 1 (Days 1-30): Learn Relentlessly
Your primary goal in the first month is not to take action, but to learn. This requires a conscious mental shift Watkins calls "Promoting Yourself." You must let go of what made you successful in your last job and embrace the new challenges. Your old playbook may not apply here.
Your learning should be structured. Don't just absorb information passively. Actively seek it out by asking key questions to everyone you meet—your team, your peers, your boss, and other stakeholders:
"What are the biggest challenges this organization faces?"
"What are our greatest strengths and opportunities?"
"If you were in my shoes, what would you focus on?"
"How did we get to this point?"
This structured listening tour allows you to build relationships while gathering the critical information you need to form a credible plan.
Month 2 (Days 31-60): Align Expectations and Secure Early Wins
Now that you have a better understanding of the landscape, it’s time to align with your new boss and start building momentum.
Watkins outlines five crucial conversations to have with your boss: the situational diagnosis conversation, the expectations conversation, the resource conversation, the style conversation, and the personal development conversation. The most important of these is clarifying expectations. You need to know, in no uncertain terms, what a successful 90 days would look like to them.
With this knowledge, you can identify and deliver a few "early wins." An early win is not just any accomplishment. It’s a tangible victory that:
Matters to your boss and other key stakeholders.
Builds your credibility and shows you can deliver.
Allows you to learn more about how the organization works.
Doesn't require deep political capital to achieve.
Securing a small but highly visible win by Day 60 is a powerful way to build the momentum you'll need for bigger challenges ahead.
Month 3 (Days 61-90): Build Your Team and Your Alliances
In the final month of this critical period, your focus shifts to the long term. This involves making key decisions about your team and building the political capital needed to drive your agenda.
You should have a good sense by now of your team’s strengths and weaknesses. It's time to make decisions about structure, roles, and personnel to ensure you have the right people in the right seats for the journey ahead.
Simultaneously, you must expand your focus beyond your direct reports and solidify your key alliances. Identify the influential people in other departments whose support you will need to succeed. By investing in these relationships early, you are building the foundation for effective cross-functional collaboration down the road.
Your First 90-Day Action Plan
Days 1-10 (Diagnose): Your only job is to learn. Schedule meetings with your team, your boss, your peers, and other stakeholders. Listen more than you talk. Use the STARS model to identify your situation.
Days 11-30 (Focus): Have the crucial expectations conversation with your new boss. Based on this, identify 2-3 potential "early wins" that are both feasible and highly visible.
Days 31-60 (Build Momentum): Deliver on at least one of those early wins. Make a key decision about your team structure or roles. Start to solidify your plan for the rest of the year.
Days 61-90 (Solidify Vision): Present your "State of the Business" assessment and your forward-looking plan to your boss and team. Secure the resources you need and solidify the key alliances that will help you execute.
Final Reflections
The First 90 Days is the indispensable guide for any professional in transition. It transforms a period of high anxiety and risk into one of structured opportunity. Michael Watkins’s framework provides a clear, repeatable process that replaces guesswork with a systematic approach to learning, planning, and acting. By following this roadmap, you can dramatically accelerate your learning curve, avoid common new-leader traps, and build the foundation for lasting success, ensuring that your first 90 days are not an ending, but a powerful beginning.
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