A Winning Team in the First 90 Days

"The most important decisions you make in your first 90 days will probably be about the people on your team. If you succeed in creating a high-performance team, you can exert tremendous leverage in value creation. If not, you will face severe difficulties, for no leader can hope to achieve much alone.— Michael Watkins, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New
Leaders at All Levels, Harvard Business School Press, 2003.

Assessing a team—deciding who should stay and who should go—is one of the most critical tasks an executive faces when transitioning into a new position. It can create or destroy leverage—and leadership is ultimately about leverage.

Each year, about 25 percent of managers in typical Fortune 500 companies change jobs. Most spend an average of four years in a given position. High-potential leaders in mid-senior ranks move more frequently: every 2.5 to 3 years. These statistics demonstrate why leaders must build strong teams, composed of the right people in the right jobs, as quickly as possible.

The first weeks are crucial for learning and evaluating. Leaders must maintain the right balance of confidence and humility, while asking probing questions and actively listening. During this time, leaders are most vulnerable. Without a firm support network in place, they must learn everything they can about the organization, its strategies, customers and team members in the shortest possible time frame.

Leaders must dedicate a large percentage of learning time to getting to know
existing team members. If you are promoted to a new position from within the organization, you are likely acquainted with some of its key people. Transition from the outside, and you face the task of identifying and placing the right people into the right positions—a much greater challenge. Either way, you must choose wisely, without disrupting short-term performance.

How do you assess your existing team as quickly as possible? How do you reduce your learning curve and jumpstart your team’s performance in the first 90 days? What are the most common mistakes leaders in a new position make?

The full 1800 word article covers the following concepts:

How to Assess an Existing Team
Probing Questions
Testing for Judgment
Assessing the Team
Restructuring a Team
Alternatives to Termination
7 Common Mistakes
Resource: Watkins, M. (2003). The First 90 Days: Critical Success
Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels. Boston, MA. Harvard Business
School Press.

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