Since I have lived most of my life in the Midwest, I typically moderate strong feelings I might have on any topic. In fact, I usually just get so mad that I ALMOST SAY SOMETHING! However, in this case, it’s time someone stood up to The First 90 Days, by Michael Watkins. When I suggest that you throw away the book, what I really mean is that you either read and apply the whole thing, or throw it away. Since my experience tells me that most leaders who try to apply the concepts in the book do so selectively and with disastrous effects, I still think throwing it away is the best course of action. I will leave that to you to decide for yourself.
Let me explain by telling the story of Joe, a new VP of client services at a large advertising communications firm. As he entered this new role, the President of the firm informed Joe that there were productivity problems in the Account Services department, which was accustomed to a “country club” atmosphere. Joe was directed to “kick butt and take names later” as he established himself as the new sheriff in town. So, that’s exactly what he did, wanting to please his new boss and to have a large impact in his first 90 days. He had read the book, you see.
Joe had been applying this strategy for about two weeks when I received a phone call from the VP of Human Resources. She knew that many of the folks in Joe’s department already had their resumes on the street and were looking to bail as quickly as possible. I called Joe and set up a meeting within the next couple of days to discuss the situation.
When we met, Joe basically said he was just doing what he was told to do. He had accepted the President’s assessment of the situation without gathering his own data and had not made any attempt to get to know people before he started criticizing their work and making changes. In his mind, having read the The First 90 Days, he did not have much time to make a huge impact.
Fast forward to earlier this year when Diane, an individual I had coached in the past, accepted a new position at a competitor that offered a two‐level promotion. Before she began her new role, we sat down to discuss how she should approach her team as she came on board, and I suggested this strategy:
- Gather as much information as possible about the team and the situation, the challenges and opportunities. You could do some of this in advance, but the bulk of it by meeting individually with team members and learning about them, establishing rapport.
- Begin to develop relationships with team members and your boss, listen to them and how they perceive things. Learn what they want you to accomplish in the role, what they need from you and hope you can provide.
- Then, work on building interconnections and coalitions with key stakeholders within the organization. Begin to create a vision and strategy, based on what you are hearing, and start to enroll others in the approach you intend to take.
- Finally, after thoroughly listening and using others’ input and perspective to inform your strategy, begin to implement the plan and look for early wins. Continue to work at enrolling and actively involving key stakeholders as you roll it out.
I knew it was a great strategy. I had seen it work impeccably recently at another client organization when a new CEO took the reins, and I shared this success story with Diane. When we parted that day and she headed off to her new role, I was convinced that she would get off to a terrific start. I suggested that she take the first four to six months to work on the first three bullets, and then begin to look for early wins in the implementation.
Unfortunately, she also spent time talking with a few people from her previous employer. Having read The First 90 Days, to a person, they recommended that she dive in quickly, size up the situation in the first week or two, and then begin to implement large‐scale changes. She thought to herself, “Okay, I’ve got to do something big here in the first three months, but I’m not sure what that should be.” The weight of their suggestions obliterated my ideas, and she dove into the deep end—or perhaps, went off the deep end. After about three weeks of this approach, her new boss confronted her and asked pointblank what happened to the person he had seen during the interviewing process. She had so insulted people by ignoring what had been accomplished up to this point and pushing to affect changes with no input that her new boss was now second‐guessing his hiring decision.
In fairness to Watkins, his book does suggest things like “accelerate your learning,” “build your team,” “create coalitions,” and “match strategy to situation,” but these chapters do not focus enough on the importance of simply spending time with people and listening. In the mind of those who have used this book to affect change from a new position, the compelling chapters are those that prod you to “promote yourself,” “expedite everyone,” and “secure early wins.” It seems that most people, like Diane’s well‐intentioned friends and former coworkers, become fixated on the “early wins” chapter. Watkins’s recipe for success quickly becomes a concoction for disaster.
The answer. So, what should effective leaders do in situations where they step into a new role with a group that needs to quickly reach a higher level of performance? First, recognize that no matter how negative the perception is of a team’s functioning, they are trying to be successful and are proud of their accomplishments. The true story in any situation usually includes layers of complexity that you can only discover and appreciate by meeting with people and listening deeply to them. Withhold your judgment, ask insightful questions, and take good notes. Be encouraging as you observe them, keep your mind open, and do not share your early conjectures. Appreciate the obstacles they have overcome to get to their present level of effectiveness. Do not say anything negative about their former bosses or the decisions that led them to where they are.
As much as possible, follow the four bulleted suggestions I gave Diane. If you start telling yourself what a waste of time all this listening is, keep in mind that you will need an engaged team behind you when you roll out your changes. The best way to do that is to ask their perspective, use their ideas in developing the new direction, bring in a healthy dose of your own thoughts to shape the strategy, and give each team member an important role in implementation. Ignore your inner voice, and perhaps your boss’s voice, about driving change quickly.
The good news is that it is never too late to do the right thing. After rough beginnings, both Joe and Diane circled back to their teams, asked good questions, listened deeply to the answers, and used the information to build a new strategy. This time, they had the team on board, and they took the right amount of time, about 180 days, to do it.
I think they both decided to throw away their copy of Watkins’s book.
To suggest that this person got himself into trouble because of reading The First 90 Days is silly. And your entire post is a transparent attempt to set yourself up in reaction to something (my work) that has been very impactful and successful. The very core of my approach is about learning. So to downplay this fact is simply disingenuous.
So you delete comments that challenge your point of view? Pretty low.
There is an approval process for the comments because people try to comment with ads for various treasures like discounted laptops and generic pharmaceuticals. I am not typically in the office to make the approvals from 8:30PM to 8:30AM. My apologies for the delay.
Michael—thanks for your email response. My Leadersynth post was, in fact, a bit tongue-in-cheek, though I think “silly” is too strong a word. Clearly, you are a highly successful author, and this book is a part of that success. If you carefully read the entire post, I think you will recognize my main point. That is, to apply only parts of your book—mainly the ones on making a large impact early on—creates a caricature approach that does not work in the first 90 days.
I accurately described two situations in which this occurred with executives I coached, and I don’t think there was anything “disingenuous” in my portrayal of what happened. It is about learning, which I emphasized in the suggestions I made to both of these individuals. My apologies if it appeared that I did not give you and your book enough credit for this core of your approach.
And, I must admit that I still have my copy of your book…
If you like, I can send you my most recent book, Fearless Leadership, and you can critique it in a blog posting.
Bruce
I very much appreciate the clarification Bruce. Best wishes,
Michael
Ben
I’ve supported leaders in transition at two global corporations to follow a methodical and thoughtful approach during what can be a vulnerable time. The First 90 Days has been an invaluable guide for them. From my sizeable sample group, there are far more problems and early derailments etc in leaders who choose to “play it by ear” and merely hope that they will be successful. These tend to be the people that over-react to a largely self-imposed pressure to act quickly or try to impose “plug and play” solutions from their previous organization. Invariably, this outcome comes from an insufficient diagnosis of the situation, insensitivity to the politics and a lack of awareness of unspoken agendas at play. This is exactly what a thoughtful application of “The First 90 Days” can avoid.
First, thanks Michael for your gracious response. The title of the blog posting was meant to be provocative, and, apparently, it was.
Arvinder, your comments support the primary point of my original posting, which is that a thoughtful, measured approach works best when transitioning into a new role or organization. I agree that people who over-react to self-imposed pressure to create a large win right away, or those who simply bring a solution from their previous company, tend to have problems and sometimes early derailment.
Ironically, I facilitated a training session from our Good Managers to Great LeadersTM workshop series yesterday afternoon, after Michael’s response to my posting. The two main topics for the day happened to be focused on over-reacting due to underlying fears and faulty beliefs (taken from my 2006 book, Fearless Leadership), as well as effectively leading change. A portion of this latter topic was, in fact, my Maximum Impact model outlined in bullets in the original posting. The participants shared multiple stories of leaders who came in “with guns blazing” in an attempt to create a major, visible impact right away, or those who were recruited from a larger organization and believed they had captured there the “holy grail” that could be applied anywhere.
Even though we seem to have found a great deal of common ground in these responses, I still have a small voice in my head that whispers, “but, is it realistic to have an impact in 90 days, and doesn’t the title of the book alone suggest that the success clock is ticking?”
I welcome other thoughts on this topic.
Bruce
A bombastic title that is clearly written to draw eyes to the article and the site. The last sentence should have been “They reread the book with the intent to follow it through this time around.”
This article missrepresents the book and its lessons, when it is clear that Joe and Diane simply lack the ability to follow direction and make sound judgements. A VP who fires staff without a clear understanding of why, should not be in that position. You don’t need a book to tell you to evaluate the situation before making decisions that affect people’s lives. It’s just common sense.
Gjergj–thanks for your comments on this blog posting. I agree with some of what you wrote, and disagree with other parts. First, your idea for a last sentence would have been a good one to use. In my coaching with Joe and Diane, we applied concepts from the First 90 Days book, plus my own ideas of how to do damage control and address the problems they had created. However, I take issue with several other statements you make. First, if you read my post carefully, you will note that Joe did not actually fire these people or threaten them with termination; they were simply looking desperately to get out of his department. Second, you may not need a book to tell you what is simply commonsense, nor, for that matter, you may not need a blog posting from someone to tell you what to do in situations that affect people’s lives, but two large industries would be out of business if people did NOT turn to these sources regularly! Third, a thorough reading of my post will also indicate to most readers that I was, in fact, quite fair with the Watkins book and made it clear that it must be read and applied in its entirety, or not at all. Finally, I disagree with your depiction of my posting as “bombastic,” which means pompous, verbose, or overbearing. As you point out, however, it was written to get people’s attention–people like you.
I thought your first paragraph spelled out quite succinctly the tone to be taken by the rest of the post. I enjoyed reading it, and agree with the “All or Nothing” approach.
I personally reread Mr. Watkins’ book each time I have the opportunity to take on a new set of challenges. It serves as a reminder of how I can be an effective contributor from day one. However, I can easily see how picking and choosing bits and pieces of the methodology could lead to less than successful results.
I frequently run into prejudgment when taking on a new role, primarily because I DO take the time to interview, discuss and get the “lay of the land” prior to taking any life-altering action. I’ve always considered change for change’s sake a waste of time and energy.
Even after the first 30 days, I know that some folks have questioned their decision to bring me on, but rarely have they expressed the same concern after 90 days. A quick win need not be immediate to be effective. A measured, thoughtful approach making use of key resources may not give instantaneous results, but it can still be used to develop a “relatively” quick win.
I think it was pretty clear that you weren’t suggesting people don’t buy the book but rather that they need to apply it all else apply nothing, otherwise it won’t work. By the way since Mr Watkins reads this, I notice there is a link on the web to a First 90 Days App but it doesn’t seem to exist any more in Google Play.
I found/find the book to be an a great resource to onboarding of our new employees and for myself. As is with anything in life, You get out of it what put into it, or in the case of books, I guess its “you get out of it what you take out of it”
Cheers
Nice share Roselle. Am hitting a new job button on Monday so grateful for reading from both schools of thought…