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First 90 days

Lara Hogan’s advice

  • https://larahogan.me/blog/first-30-days-new-role/

  • First 30 days: sponge mode. Keep in mind: you’re not changing anything yet, just listening

    1. Hold one-on-ones with everybody
    2. Identify 1-2 overarching themes you’ve heard
    3. Convey what you’ve absorbed
    4. State how people can communicate with you going forward

  • 30-60 days: experiment with two ideas for change! Keep in mind: you’re not changing anything yet, just experimenting

    1. Craft two experiments
    2. Develop your communication plan
    3. Implement your experiments
    4. Prepare to share the results

Lethain’s advice

Alex Kroman’s advice

First 7 days

  • Learn how the business is measured. Get access to all metrics and reporting tools
  • Use the product. Use the product, go to demo meetings with customers.
  • Meet with every team member. Have at least an hour meeting with each of your key leaders
  • Meet with every stakeholders. Have at least an hour meeting with each of your key stakeholders
  • Send survey to company. Something basic to help you get up to speed - what’s working, not working, links I should read. Some people will share much more in writing than when you meet with them later. Don’t make this anonymous so you can follow up in Slack and begin engaging people.
  • Read everything. Read everything everyone sends you. Create a doc that has a timeline of key things. Create another doc that points to docs you think you’ll refer to often.

First 30 days

  • Figure out your purpose - Most people have a definition of what they think they are good at but you need to figure out the real purpose you have for the organization and it’s generally not clear when you’re joining.
  • Figure out the obvious decisions you can make - Most organizations have a handful of pretty straightforward decisions to make that haven’t been made (which is why you were hired). Just make them fast so you can move to the more complex decisions.
  • Become a product expert - Try to be the most knowledgable about the product at a high level — this will require a lot of work and essentially studying.
  • Meet with almost everyone in the company - Schedule short 15 minute meetings. You’ll find a typical outlier distribution where a very small number of people will give you extremely critical information that is essential.
  • Meet with all key customers - usually companies have a notion of “top 100” customers and most customers are eager to meet with a new leader to give their perspective
  • Rebuild key metrics - Even if you think what’s there is decent rebuild these as a way to really collaborate with other execs on what success looks like.
  • Rebuild the roadmap - Even if you like what’s there this is a great way to collaborate and engage the product-focused people in the company
  • Rebuild operations - Even if what’s there is OK this is great way to engage the process focused people in the org.

First 90 days

  • Socialize your changes - The new roadmap, new operations/process, and new metrics with your org, company, and customers.
  • Hire new leaders if needed - If the roadmap and way of working require new/different leaders have all of these in place within 90 days.

G’s advice

The only point I’d add is to connect with some of the board members in the first 30-60 days, if you are leading product (with CEO approval, of course). Find out what the board sees as the company’s opportunity and any challenges to augment what the CEO and other execs share with you as the company’s goals.

Nadya Duke Boone’s advice

Some things that helped me in a previous role:

  • I set up a learning plan with things I wanted to learn and checked back in on it to make sure I was getting time for those things. There was a lot of gravity pulling me to the urgent and that helped me balance. But things like “learn the product” are important.
  • I did make a few key decisions my first month - in cases where I thought someone was about to drive into a rock and the damage would be hard to recover from.
  • I started a deck with the presentation I wanted to give at my 60 or 90 day mark - it became my dumping ground for key observations, questions to answer and changes to make. When I actually DID do my 90 report out to my exec team I didn’t use the framework but found a better one, but having some structure around my analysis helped me think.
  • As head of a function, you’ve been hired to be the expert which is awesome and terrifying. You can absolutely ask a lot of questions and test your theories - but also show your confidence in your ability to find answers and make decisions. You’re a badass and the exec team wants to see a little bit of that because it lowers their blood pressure to know they’ve got someone taking care of all the things.