First 90 Days: Advice For New Managers

You’ve landed your first managerial role—congrats! Now it’s time to plan for your first three months. As a jumping-off point, Kim Van Lue, MBA’06—founder and CEO of NorthSpring Leadership Consulting and an IU Alumni Association career coach—recommends reading The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter by Michael D. Watkins. She also has a five-step plan, outlined below.

---

Build relationships

According to Gallup, managers account for at least 70 percent of the variance in employee engagement. With high engagement leading to higher profitability, productivity, and lower turnover, the employee-supervisor relationship is critical to company success. Van Lue says the first 30 days should be used to lay a solid foundation with supervisees.

“I would encourage a new manager to have a list of questions that they begin to cover in an introductory conversation and then continue during recurring one-on-one meetings,” she recommends, adding that these questions should be wide-ranging—everything from their preferred communication method to their favorite local restaurant.

Understand company culture

Assessing a company’s culture involves understanding the values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of its leaders and employees. What is the dress code? How is taking PTO viewed? Which positive behaviors are celebrated? Which negative behaviors are tolerated? Jotting down your observations and conversations with others in a journal is Van Lue’s go-to tactic for analyzing a new office’s culture.

“In most cases, success in a new role will be linked to the ability to effectively navigate the existing culture,” she says. “Even in cases where one is asked to lead a culture change or shift, it is often valuable to understand where you are starting from. As an example, if celebrating birthdays seems to be a valued tradition or norm, then consider how you can maintain or support that in your role. Another example, if all meetings start and end on time, then make sure yours do too.”

Take the right actions

If you’re an action-oriented person, fighting the urge to implement change in your first 90 days may prove challenging. “Map out an action plan first,” Van Lue urges. “You want at least six months under your belt before you start to push for significant change. Transformational change efforts are most successful when all the parties impacted are aligned, and that alignment takes time.”

Be transparent about expectations

Transparency is valuable currency in the working world—that’s why it’s important to set expectations early with supervisees. Van Lue recommends meeting with each individual to review their job description and set goals. This should be followed up by a team meeting where expectations for communication and collaboration can be established as a group.

Get comfortable with conflict

Van Lue is seeing a trend: leaders are becoming conflict avoiders. “That could look like avoiding giving tough feedback, making an unpopular decision, or managing around a difficult employee,” she says. “It creates massive dysfunction and a lot of inefficiency in organizations. It’s also very demotivating to your top performers.” If you’re struggling to get cozy with conflict at work, consider seeking out a mentor who can lend a few words of advice.