Chapter 17: Starting Strong: Your First 90 Days
The search is not over when the offer arrives
How you approach your first ninety days in a new role shapes the impression you make for a long time afterwards. Several outplacement providers now extend their support through this period rather than ending it at the offer stage, because a strong start genuinely reduces the risk of an early departure, for both the individual and the employer.
What a strong start looks like
Set clear, realistic goals for your first thirty, sixty and ninety days, agreed explicitly with your new manager rather than assumed. Prioritise building relationships early, particularly with people outside your immediate team. It is normal to feel some degree of doubt in a new environment, even after a successful search. That feeling is common and does not mean you have made the wrong move.
In practice: Nadia's early introductions
In her first week, Nadia scheduled short introductory conversations with every member of her new team and two key stakeholders in adjacent departments, rather than waiting for those relationships to form naturally. By day sixty, she had a clearer picture of the organisation's real priorities than colleagues who had been there for months.
In practice: Andrew's listening-first start
Andrew, moving into a new leadership role after a difficult redundancy, felt a strong urge to make immediate changes to prove his value early. His coach encouraged him instead to spend his first thirty days genuinely listening before acting. The credibility he built through that early restraint made the changes he introduced in his second and third months far more readily accepted by a team that could have easily been resistant to a new leader arriving with an agenda.
- Assuming goals for the first ninety days without explicitly agreeing them with your new manager.
- Waiting for relationships with colleagues and stakeholders to form naturally, rather than building them deliberately.
- Making significant changes too early, before genuinely understanding how the organisation works.
- Dismissing early doubts as a sign the move was wrong, rather than a normal part of settling in.
A note of supportIt is common, after a redundancy, to carry a quiet worry into a new role that this one might not last either, or that you have somehow been fortunate rather than genuinely chosen. That feeling tends to fade as you accumulate real evidence in your new environment, which is exactly what the ninety day goals and early relationship building in this chapter are designed to give you. You were offered this role on the strength of what you demonstrated, not despite what happened before it.
- Agree clear thirty, sixty and ninety day goals with your new manager in your first week.
- Schedule introductory conversations with key colleagues and stakeholders early, rather than waiting.
- Keep a short weekly note of what you are learning about how the organisation really works.
- Resist the urge to make major changes before you have genuinely listened and understood the context.
This programme gives you frameworks and actions. Your coach is where they become genuinely yours. Rather than arriving with answers, consider bringing these open questions into your next session and exploring them together:
- What do you want to be genuinely different this time, compared with before?
- What old habits or assumptions are you tempted to carry into this new role without questioning them?