Michael D. Watkins - Master Your Next Move, with a New Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Transitions into new roles are the most challenging times in the professional lives of leaders. Thats a bold statement, but its true and backed up by more than a decade of research and practice. If you are successful in rapidly scaling the learning curve, building key relationships, and getting early wins, your momentum will propel you through the rest of your time in your new role. But early missteps can create bad first impressions, leading to negative feedback loops in which you look increasingly unsuited for the job. Left unchecked, you could end up in a downward spiral it might be difficult or impossible to recover from.

I wrote The First 90 Days, the book for which Master Your Next Move is the essential companion and resource guide, because Id seen too many leaders get into needless trouble early on in their new roles. They made common mistakesnot learning enough about their new organizations culture and politics, coming in with the answer, trying to do too much too soon, not aligning expectationsand they paid the inevitable price in derailment or underperformance.

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The First 90 Days Framework

To succeed in a new role, you must:

1. Accelerate your learning. Efficient and effective learning is a necessary foundation for making a successful transition. The faster you learn about the technical, cultural, and political dimensions of your new position or assignment, the more youll be able to accomplish in the critical first months.
2. Match strategy to situation. Different types of business situations require you to make significant adjustments in how you approach your transition. A clear assessment of the business situation is an essential prerequisite for developing your transition plan.
3. Negotiate success. You need to figure out how to build a productive working relationship with your new manager (or managers). This means planning for a series of critical conversations about the situation, expectations, working style, and resources.
4. Achieve alignment. Armed with a deeper understanding of the business situation, your managers expectations, and the interests of key stakeholders, you can define your vision and core objectives. Then you can develop your strategy to realize that vision and achieve your goals.
5. Build your team. Like most leaders taking on a new role, you probably dont get to build your own team; instead, you inherit your predecessors. You must rapidly assess and reshape the team, and then align, organize, and energize it to achieve your goals.
6. Secure early wins.