The First 90 Days was one of the first books I’ve read in a long time. I could honestly say I haven’t read a book by choice since the Harry Potter collection, (not counting grad school books). It was a gift I received on my last week of employment at TimeTrade from my former manager. I decided to move on to a different company after seven years at TimeTrade managing product marketing for the group. It was one of the toughest decisions I made. I had an entrenched and established position with a great boss, an awesome team, and fantastic relationships throughout the company. I really only left for one reason.
I was too comfortable and not excited. And I could tell it was reflecting in my work. I know based on my personality traits and lifestyle that I was becoming bored, and I’ve been lucky enough to achieve a level where the money is no longer as monetary to me as it is a measurement of success. My work was becoming sub-par and I was having a challenging time to motivate and step up. So it was time to light a fire under my own ass.
The book does a fantastic job breaking down the strategies you should follow to ensure you need to be successful in your new job. And statistically, the first 90 days on the job will expose whether you are going to be there after the next 90. Without giving too much detail you are asked to assess:
The Company Goals
Are you entering a company looking for sustainability, is it failing, or is it stagnant and looking for rapid growth? These are just a few of the categories discussed that you need to identify in order to set your priorities on what impact you can have on the organization.
Your Own Goals
Setting 30, 60, and 90-day goals to ensure you’re not becoming lost in the weeds and are growing in your new role, especially if you’re coming into mid-management where you split your time between people management and individual contributor, and even more if you’re expected to coordinate with individual contributors that don’t report to you.
Your Personal Onboarding
You need to ensure you’re meeting with the right people. At an early stage where it’s critical you come up to speed fast you need to generate a meeting checklist to ensure you’re completing your orientations, connecting with stakeholders, aligning expectations, and culturally fitting with the existing employees
Implementing Change
Many new managers are tasked with implementing change that will meet resistance. The book goes into amazing detail on how to assess the types of change and the best strategies to achieve implantation while keeping affected employees happy or at least without resent.
There are many other topics covered in this book to provide great strategies on stepping into a new role in a new organization. The reason why it resonated with me was because of my personality and career. I don’t change jobs often. Excluding the job I lost due to COVID, my average tenure is 6.5 years with a company. I can easily become anxious with the thought of starting a new job in a new place. This book helped me structure my challenges into manageable goals I can write down and see. This took a decent amount of the “unknown” pitfalls I was worried about and helped me take a much more confident step into my new role. If you’re in between jobs or looking for new work, I recommend picking this book up.
