Book Review: The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins

Most management books offer some platitudes, have 2 or 3 useful sentences and then lots of padding. "The First 90 Days" offers a real exception

I will not pretend to summarise all the useful information in this book for this book review. But I hope to whet your appetite so that you go out, buy this book and feast ravenously upon it.

I guess I relate to it so much because I have moved from site to site and job to job so often - mainly as a consultant, or contractor, but latterly as a full time employee. I have experienced a lot of transitions, and I know how hard those first 90 days can seem. Lessons I learned on my own:

• track your successes - otherwise you'll look back and wonder what happened (it all moves so fast)


• set expectations early with your boss (particularly on how you can evaluate success together)


• evaluate your team quickly and don't shirk the hard early decisions

Michael Watkins covers all this and more. And I wish I had read this before.

[amazon.co.uk] [amazon.com]



As a new leader you want to make an impression fast - to seal your position and to demonstrate that you can add value to the team and the organisation. Given that every situation and business context throws a unique set of challenges, how can a small book like this help everyone? ... by distilling the experiences of a lot of people into one tidy little package with 10 main sections:

1. Promote Yourself


2. Accelerate Your Learning


3. Match Strategy to Situation


4. Secure Early Wins


5. Negotiate Success


6. Achieve Alignment


7. Build Your Team


8. Create Coalitions


9. Keep Your Balance


10. Expedite Everyone

So we start with Promote Yourself.

• Making a break from the past (previous jobs, previous roles, previous mindsets, previous strategies) and identify what mindset and approach you need for this role.


• Set specific goals and milestones in that first 90 day period - this forces you to have awareness of the passage of time and the value you add.


• Assess your weaknesses and strengths in particular regard to the current role and situation - identify any steps you need to take quickly to compensate for your default preferences or weaknesses.


• Identify the critical things to focus on - write them down - that becomes your pragmategy (pragmatic strategy)


• Adopt a beginners mind and learn anew. Identify who in your network you can get advice from.

Accelerate Your Learning

• Look at the history. Learn what actually goes on, not just what people say goes on.


• Check your assumptions


• Plan to learn by setting out a list of questions


• Identify challenges and current strategies


• Identify strategies that worked in the past - why did they work? within what context or situation?


• Have any strategies stopped delivering value but still continue to run?


• Learn the culture - then decide if you need to adapt, or the culture needs to change

Match Strategy To Situation

Michael identifies for broad situations that describe the situation that most new leaders face:

• start-up


• turnaround


• realignment


• sustaining success

A STaRS model, and Each of these offers different challenges and opportunities and Michael explains ways of handling each.

You can use the STaRS model at a high level to check your basic context, and for each item in your managerial portfolio. This can help you make decisions about how much time to spend learning, how much time to spend acting, take the offence or defence?

Secure Early Wins

• Common traps for failing to achieve early wins include: Failing to focus and taking on too much too fast, ignoring the business and stakeholder context (what does win mean, and to whom?), winning at the expense of long term relationships.


• Define long term wins by thinking "how do you want people to describe your legacy?"


• I behavioural changes required - those to adopt, and those to drop. What does your group need to learn to do this?


• Build your credibility as a leader


• Pursue quick wins and track your successes


• Identify they key stakeholders that you need to communicate too and what communication do they need?

Negotiate Success

• proactively engage with our boss to agree expectations and outcomes


• take 100% responsibility for making the relationship work


• negotiate timelines for learning an action planning


• report on quick wins and successes

As part of your 90 day plan, Michael recommends 5 conversations to have with your new boss:

• Current Situational Diagnosis and how it got that way


• Expectations Conversation - short term, long term, how to measure success


• Style Conversation - style of communication (written, email, phone), how often? what level autonomy do you have for decision making?


• Resources conversation - negotiate the resources you need.


• Personal development conversation - what areas do you need to improve, any projects you could do to improve them?

Michael expands each of the conversations in the book.

Achieve Alignment

Identify misalignments in your organisation between your department and others regarding:

• skills and strategy


• systems and strategy


• structure and systems


• culture

Change your structure when necessary and you understand the impact so that it seems simple, with streamlined processes.

1. Start with strategy - alignment with goals and priorities


2. look at supporting structure, systems and skills


3. decide when to introduce a new strategy


4. reshape structure, systems and skills simultaneously


5. plan for the changes effectively

This chapter also has a huge amount of useful information in it - too much to summarise effectively here.

Build Your Team

Evaluate your staff and remove under performing staff, or restructure systems and roles to help them do their best. Challenge your staff to achieve what you need and set goals and performance evaluation accordingly. Make sure you signal the top performers that you want them to stay during any transition (if you do not communicate this clearly then they (rather than the under-performers) seem more likely to leave).

Create Coalitions

• Identify the people key to your success.


• Get your boss to help you identify the people you should speak to.


• Draw an influence map


• Identify supporters, opponents and convincibles

Identify the right messages and message delivery strategies for each of the different key people.

Keep your balance

Michael suggests taking stock of your current situation by asking 7 questions:

1. I feel very busy but don't find time for the most important things I should be doing


2. I am doing things I should not be doing at the request of others


3. I am frustrated that I cannot get things done the way I want them to be done


4. I feel isolated in the organisation


5. My judgement seems off these days


6. I am avoiding making tough decisions on key issues


7. I have less energy or work than I usually do

• So do what you should do - focus on results and track successes.


• Set priorities and boundaries.


• Make time to plan


• Defer commitment - then analyse and respond


• Set aside time for the hard work


• Go to the Balcony (view from 50,000 feet)


• Focus on influence process design - how will people likely react to this idea - managing the consulting and decision making fairly.


• Check in with your self - take time to evaluate how things progress and adjust


• Recognise the points of diminishing returns and quit


• Gain control over your local environment

Expedite Everyone

• Institutionalise a transition model. Use the framework for new starters. Build people up and plan for succession early.

Phew lots of stuff and the book goes into much more depth.

This book does not have a lot of fat and padding.

Read it.

Related Links:

• Preview on Google Books


• Michael Watkins Blog


• Interview with Micahel Watkins on "The First 90 Days"


• amazon.co.uk


• amazon.com