The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter

Accelerate everyone. Finally, you need to help all those in your organization—direct reports, bosses, and peers—accelerate their own transitions. The fact that you’re in transition means they are too. The quicker you can get your new direct reports up to speed, the more you will help your own performance. Beyond that, the potential…

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Begin by thinking about your first day in the new job. What do you want to do by the end of that day? Then move to the first week. Then focus on the end of the first month, the second month, and finally the three-month mark.

The risks of losing perspective, becoming isolated, and making bad calls are ever present during transitions. There is much you can do to accelerate your personal transition and to…

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Your goal in every transition is to get as rapidly as possible to the break-even point. This is the point at which you have contributed as much value to your new organization as you have consumed from it.

Negotiate success. Because no other single relationship is more important, you need to figure out how to build a productive working relationship with your new boss (or bosses) and manage her expectations. This means carefully planning for a series of critical conversations about the situation, expectations, working style, resources, and your…

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Build your team. If you are inheriting a team, you need to evaluate, align, and mobilize its members. You likely also need to restructure it to better meet the demands of the situation. Your willingness to make tough early personnel calls and your capacity to select the right people for the right positions are among the most important drivers of su

Transition failures happen because new leaders either misunderstand the essential demands of the situation or lack the skill and flexibility to adapt to them.

Achieve alignment. The higher you rise in an organization, the more you must play the role of organizational architect. This means figuring out whether the organization’s strategic direction is sound, bringing its structure into alignment with its strategy, and developing the…

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If you have inherited a disaster—the classic burning platform—you may be creating value from the moment your appointment is announced. If you have been hired from the outside into a very successful organization, it may take a year or more for you to be a net value contributor.