What I Learned from Navigating the First 90 Days at a New Organization

A little over a year ago, I made a major life decision to leave the organization where I had worked for nearly my entire career to accept a new senior leadership role. The first year as a leader in a new organization is a whirlwind. There are new people to meet, working relationships to establish and strategies to develop and execute, all while navigating a new culture, systems and operating rhythms. 

Looking back on it now, I would liken it to taking a trip to a new country: success requires advance planning, a good tour guide, a willingness to engage with the locals, flexibility and a commitment to your chosen adventure even when days get tough. 

Here are some of the lessons I learned in this process that may be helpful as you embark on your own new career journey.   

1. Advance planning is essential to your initial success. 
Most leaders are very familiar with the tenets of the classic The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins, and it is a great guidebook to consult in terms of setting an actionable plan, gaining support and notching early wins.  

However, just as important as the 90-day plan is how you show up on Day One. Be intentional about how you want the first day to go, from who you meet to how you are introduced to your new team. I hired an executive coach to help me think about this in advance. It resulted in me starting with one-on-one calls with each of my new directs with no formal agenda, followed by more in-depth conversations later in the week with questions provided ahead of time for discussion. The coach also helped me craft an introductory email for the entire team to outline what they could expect from me initially. It was helpful to have this mapped ahead of time, allowing me to focus fully on the team during those crucial first few weeks. 

2. Don’t underestimate the benefits of having a good tour guide. 
In this instance, the tour guide I am talking about should be someone within your new organization that will help you navigate the culture, internal politics and any potholes that you might not see as a newbie. For me, this was someone with whom I clicked during the interview process. Your manager, an experienced direct report or even a peer leader can provide this sort of insight, and you should take full advantage of it. 

It is also vital to do your own homework on the corporate culture by gleaning insights from the company website and your interview process. The corporate culture will not change for you early on, so you must flex to it. Like going to a foreign country, most people in your new organization will appreciate that you took time to understand the local customs and learned a few words in the local dialect.  

Like taking a trip to a new country, success requires advance planning

3. Engage with the “locals” as soon as you can.
You cannot talk to too many people in the first 30-45 days, so balance the inevitable formal listening tour with informal discussions over lunch or coffee with people across the organization and at various levels of seniority. Ensure that you are doing two and three level down meetings on a regular basis to genuinely understand the organization.  

As you come out of each discussion, write it all down—thoughts, observations, ideas and any and all feedback. These notes will prove invaluable as you shape your business plans later.  

4. Remember to stay flexible.
The reality is that no matter how prepared you are or how plugged in your corporate sherpa is, you are going to learn things that will shift your initial assessments and alter your longer-term plans. I set aside each Friday afternoon to revisit notes from the week and kept a working draft of my business plan as I refined the roadmap for the future of my group. The executional elements were significantly altered by the feedback, insights and relationships built in those first 90 days.

5. Prepare for unexpected emotions along the way.
There will likely be days when you are lonely—not in a “lonely at the top” way, but rather, from not having an internal network to tap into on a regular basis. Or, you may feel so pulled into someone else’s priorities that you lose sight of why you joined the organization in the first place. When this happened to me, it was very helpful to remind myself of my motivations and longer-term goals with the organization, allowing me to refocus on my 90-day roadmap and initial objectives.