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Inser
t
New
Cove
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The First 90 Days Book Review

by Michael D. Watson
You are about to learn:
How To Avoid The Most Common

Pitfalls New Leaders Encounter
Why You Need The Right Alliances
To Secure Critical Early Wins
Simple Steps New Leaders Must
Do To Manage Their Transitions
2

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Hey friend, Kendall E. Matthews here for Read Everything. I created
Read Everything Book Reviews for Busy People because I wanted to
share great concepts and ideas with my partners, associates, and
employees.
I dont expect them read over 80 books per year or get up at 4:30
a.m., but I do expect them to be the best AND to continue learning.
All credit is being given to the author(s). The majority of content, when
quoted, comes right from the book.
Moving Forward,
@KendallMatthews
P.S. Find more great reviews at
KendallMatthews.com

For More Amazon Reviews

Visit:
http://amzn.to/1kZ45jL

The president of the United

States gets 100 days to prove
himself; you get 90.
The actions you take during your
first few months in a new role will
largely determine whether you
succeed or fail.
Find more great reviews at

Each year about a quarter of the

managers in a typical Fortune
500 company changes jobs. And
each leader transition materially
impacts the performance of
roughly a dozen other people
bosses, peers, direct reports, and
other stakeholders.

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.

Avoid These Transition Traps:

Sticking with what you know
Falling prey to the action imperative
Setting unrealistic expectations

Avoid These Transition Traps:

Attempting to do too much
Coming in with the answer
Engaging in the wrong type of learning

Leadership ultimately is about

influence and leverage. You
are, after all, only one person.
To be successful, you need to
mobilize the energy of many
others in your organization.
10

How To Create Momentum

Prepare yourself
Accelerate your learning
Match your strategy to the
situation
11


Secure early wins
Negotiate success
Achieve alignment
12

Build your team

Create coalitions
Keep your balance
Accelerate everyone
13

In the first few weeks,

you need to identify
opportunities to build
personal credibility.
14

In the first 90 days, you need

to identify ways to create
value and improve
business results that will
help you get to the breakeven point more rapidly.
15

16

Its a mistake to believe

that you will be successful in
your new job by continuing
to do what you did in your
previous job, only more so.
17

To overcome barriers and succeed

in joining a new company, you
should focus on FOUR pillars of
effective onboarding:
18

1.
2.
3.
4.
Business orientation
Stakeholder connection
Alignment of expectations
Cultural adaptation.
19

Getting oriented to the

business means learning
about the company as
a whole and not only
your specific parts of the
business.
20

The most daunting

challenge for leaders joining
new organizations is adapting to
unfamiliar cultures.
21

What is culture?
Its a set of consistent patterns
people follow for communicating,
thinking, and acting, all grounded
in their shared assumptions and
values.
22

Hints For Succeeding
Watch out for your strengths

Relearn how to learn
Rework your network
23

Hints For Succeeding
Watch out for people who want

to hold you back
Get some help
24

Watch out for your strengths.

Your weaknesses can make you
vulnerable, but so can your
strengths.
25

Remember: simply displaying a

genuine desire to learn and
understand translates into
increased credibility and
influence.
26

Effective learning calls for

figuring out what you need to
learn so that you can focus
your efforts.
27

Devote some time to defining

your learning agenda as
early as possible, and return
to it periodically to refine and
supplement it.
28

Your learning agenda defines

what you want to learn. Your
learning plan defines how
you will go about learning it.
29

It translates learning goals into

specific sets of actions
identifying promising sources of
insight and using systematic
methods that accelerate your
learning.
30

Your learning plan is a critical

part of your overall 90-day plan.
In fact, as you will discover later
31

learning should be a primary

focus of your plan for your first 30
days on the job (unless, of course,
there is a disaster in progress).
32

The primary responsibility

for accelerating your
learning rests on YOU.
33

Use the STARS model

STARS
is an acronym for five

common business situations leaders
may find themselves moving into:
Start-up, Turnaround, Accelerated
growth, Realignment, and Sustaining
success.
34

The STARS model outlines the

characteristics and challenges of,
respectively, launching a venture;
getting one back on track; dealing
with rapid expansion;
35

Re-energizing a once-leading
business thats now facing serious
problems; and inheriting an
organization that is performing well
and then taking it to the next level.
36

In all five of the STARS situations,

the eventual GOAL is the same: a
successful and growing business.
37

The STARS state of your

[business] also has implications
for the adjustments youll need
to make to manage yourself.
38

This is particularly true when it

comes to determining leadership
styles and figuring out whether
you are reflexively a hero or a
steward.
39

In your first few weeks in your

new job, you cannot hope to have
a measurable impact on
performance, but you can score
small victories and signal that
things are changing.
40

Think of this as an effort to secure

early, early wins by building your
personal credibility.
41

Your credibility, or lack of

it, will depend on how people
would answer the following
questions about you:
42

1.) Do you have the insight

and steadiness to make
tough decisions?
43

2.) Do you have values that

they relate to, admire, and
want to emulate?
44

3.) Do you have the right

kind of energy?
45

4.) Do you demand high

levels of performance from
yourself and others?
46

In general, though, new leaders are

perceived as more credible when
they display these characteristics:
47

Demanding but able

to be satisfied
48

Accessible but not too familiar
49

Decisive but judicious
50

Focused but flexible
51

Active without causing commotion
52

Willing to make tough

calls but humane
53

The incentive equation
54

Total reward = nonmonetary

reward + monetary reward
Monetary reward = fixed
compensation + performancebased compensation
55

Performance-based compensation
individual performance-based
compensation
group performance-based
compensation
56

The relative sizes of non-monetary

and monetary rewards depend on:
(1) the availability of nonmonetary
rewards such as advancement and
recognition and
(2) their perceived importance to the
people involved.
57

Checklist To
Build Your Team
58

1.) What are your criteria for assessing the

performance of members of your team?
How are relative weightings affected by
functions, the extent of required
teamwork, the STARS portfolio, and the
criticality of the positions?
59

2.) How will you go about assessing

your team?
60

3.) What personnel changes do you

need to make? Which changes are
urgent, and which can wait? How will
you create backups and options?
61

4.) How will you make highpriority changes? What can you
do to preserve the dignity of
the people affected? What help
will you need with the team in
the restructuring process, and
where are you going to find it?
62

5.) How will you align the team?

What mix of push (goals,
incentives) and pull (shared
vision) will you use?
63

6.) How do you want your new

team to operate? What roles do
you want people to play? Do you
need to shrink the core team or
expand it? How do you plan to
manage decision making?
64

Checklist To
Create Alliances
65

1.) What are the critical

alliances you need to build
both within your organization
and externally to advance
your agenda?
66

2.) What agendas are other key

players pursuing? Where
might they align with yours,
and where might they come
into conflict?
67

3.) Are there opportunities to

build long-term, broad-based
alliances with others? Where
might you be able to leverage
shorter-term agreements to
pursue specific objectives?
68

4.) How does influence work

in the organization? Who
defers to whom on key
issues of concern?
69

5.) Who is likely to support

your agenda? Who is likely
to oppose you? Who is
persuadable?
70

6.) What are the motivations

of pivotal people, the
situational pressures acting
on them, and their
perceptions of their choices?
71

7.) What are the elements of an

effective influence strategy? How
should you frame your arguments?
Might influence tools such as
incrementalism, sequencing, and
action-forcing events help?
72

The 3 PILLARS of
Self-management
Pillar 1: Adopt 90-Day strategies
Pillar 2: Develop personal disciplines
Pillar 3: Build your support systems
73

Core Challenge
Assessment
74

1.) Prepare yourself: Are you

adopting the right mind-set for
your new job and letting go of
the past?
75

2.) Accelerate your learning:

Are you figuring out what you
need to learn, whom to learn it
from, and how to speed up the
learning process?
76

3.) Match your strategy to the

situation: Are you diagnosing
the type of transition you face
and the implications for what to
do and what not to do?
77

4.) Negotiate success: Are you

building your relationship with
your new boss, managing
expectations, and marshaling the
resources you need?
78

5.) Secure early wins: Are you

focusing on the vital priorities
that will advance your long-term
goals and build your short-term
momentum?
79

6.) Achieve alignment: Are you

identifying and fixing frustrating
misalignments of strategy,
structure, systems, and skills?
80

7.) Build your team: Are you

assessing, restructuring, and
aligning your team to leverage
what youre trying to accomplish?
81

8.) Create alliances: Are you

building a base of internal and
external support for your
initiatives so that youre not
pushing rocks uphill?
82

Plan to Plan: Do you devote

time daily and weekly to a planwork-evaluate cycle?
If not, or if you do so irregularly,
you need to be more disciplined
about planning.
83

At the end of each day, spend ten

minutes evaluating how well you
met your goals and then planning
for the next day.
84

Do the same thing at the

end of each week: get into
the habit of doing this. Even if
you fall behind, you will be
more in control.
85

Focus on the
important: Do you devote
time each day to the most
important work that needs to
be done? Its easy for the
urgent to crowd out the
important.
86

You get caught up in the flow of

transactions phone calls,
meetings, email and never find
time to focus on the medium
term, let alone the long term.
87

If youre having trouble getting

the real work done, discipline
yourself to set aside a
particular time each day
88

even as little as half an hour,

when you will close the door, turn
off your phone, ignore e-mail, and
focus, focus, focus.
89

Go to the Balcony: Do you find

yourself getting too caught up in
emotional escalation in difficult
situations?
90

If you do, discipline yourself to

stand back, take stock from fifty
thousand feet, and then make
productive interventions.
91

Leading authorities in the fields

of leadership and negotiation
have long praised the value of
going to the balcony in this
way.
92

It can be tough to do this,

especially when the stakes are
high and youre emotionally
involved.
93

But with discipline and practice,

it is a skill that can be cultivated.
94

Check in with yourself: Are you

as aware as you need to be of your
reactions to events during your
transition?
95

If not, discipline yourself to

engage in structured reflection
about your situation.
96

For some new leaders,

structured self-assessment
means jotting down a few
thoughts, impressions, and
questions at the end of
each day.
97

For others, it means setting aside

time each week to assess how
things are going.
98

Find an approach that suits your

style, and discipline yourself to use
it regularly. Work to translate the
resulting insights into action.
99

Checklist To
Manage Yourself
100

1.) What are your greatest

vulnerabilities in your new
role? How do you plan to
compensate for them?
101

2.) What personal

disciplines do you most
need to develop or
enhance? How will you do
that? What will success
look like?
102

3.) What can you do to

gain more control over
your local environment?
103

4.) What can you do to ease

your familys transition? What
support relationships will
you have to build? Which are
your highest priorities?
104

5.) What are your priorities

for strengthening your adviceand-counsel network? To what
extent do you need to focus
on your internal network? Your
external network?
105

In which domain do you most

need additional support
technical, cultural, political, or
personal?
106

You will have to fight to

manage yourself every single
day. Ultimately, your success or
failure will flow from all the small
choices you make along the way.
107

These choices can create

momentum for the organization
and for you or they can result in
vicious cycles that undermine
your effectiveness.
108

Your day-to-day actions

during your transition establish
the pattern for all that follows, not
only for the organization but also
for your personal efficacy and
ultimately your well-being.
109

Find More Great Reviews

at:
KendallMatthews .
com
110

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Inser

The First 90 Days Book Review

You are about to learn:

How To Avoid The Most Common

The First 90 Days Book Review

The First 90 Days Book Review

For More Amazon Reviews

The First 90 Days Book Review

The president of the United

The First 90 Days Book Review

Each year about a quarter of the

The First 90 Days Book Review

Your goal in every transition is

The First 90 Days Book Review

Avoid These Transition Traps:

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

Avoid These Transition Traps:

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

Leadership ultimately is about

The First 90 Days Book Review

How To Create Momentum

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

How To Create Momentum

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

How To Create Momentum

Build your team

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

In the first few weeks,

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The First 90 Days Book Review

In the first 90 days, you need

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The First 90 Days Book Review

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

Its a mistake to believe

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

To overcome barriers and succeed

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

Getting oriented to the

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

The most daunting

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

The First 90 Days Book Review

Hints For Succeeding

Watch out for your strengths

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review

Hints For Succeeding

Watch out for people who want

Find more great reviews at

The First 90 Days Book Review