The first 90 days of a new job is your window to implement changes, restructure, improve and adapt your role to best suit both yourself and the company. There are certain things that will help you to make this process more effective and more likely to produce a favourable work position for you. There are a few tips in this post that are designed to help you with this process and get you to think about what you can do to shape your new position to best suit your working style.
Now, there are some obvious things to do, one might almost say obligatory, such as staff meeting to introduce yourself, a series of 1:1 meeting with key staff to better understand what they are expecting from you based on what your predecessor did. But there are other things you can do to get the most out of the new role. Here are 5 tips to start with.
1) use your newness in the role to make mistakes. Breach protocols by talking to people you maybe shouldn’t, i.e., senior management or finance or HR without going through the right channels; you can plead ignorance of procedures and get valuable information much faster, this will be invaluable to your job role if used effectively. In the same vein use the adage ‘ask for forgiveness not for permission’. These first 90 days is the period when you can make mistakes, talk to the wrong people, pitch ideas that are completely outside the box; in other words, any radical change you want to implement must have the seeds sown in this initial period. This is critical to the first 90 days; it is definitely a limited time offer unless you want to be labelled the company maverick (a move that can be either inspired or disastrous so think carefully before pursuing this angle!) for being too radical in the day to day running of your areas.
2) in order to do the first pointer well, you need an element of preplanning, as soon as you have secured the job, go through the job description, and create a file for each distinct area of responsibility. This gives you a chance to do three things; firstly, you can gather information on these areas prior to the job starting, secondly it gives you a chance to organise your intel within the first 90 days effectively, and lastly it gives you an opportunity to clearly work out which areas of responsibility need most work and which need radical change. This will infinitely improve your ability to manage both new projects and staffing to implement change and improve productivity in key areas.
3) have a perfect idea, you should go into the job with a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Do your research on the company in the first 90 days, identify key growth areas and potential changes to increase effectiveness and come up with a 3–5-year plan. This plan should have 1-3 major improvements to delivery and several smaller improvements to productivity. This needs to be clearly communicated to your staff and they need to share this goal. Therefore, it is important to do this early on. You have to establish yourself as a change agent with existing staff quickly or there will be more resistance to change long term.
4) think about your long-term progression, you have 90 days where there is enough freedom for you to get to know the company and the role well enough to identify the direction in which the company is travelling and align your job role and areas of responsibility to this. By matching your productivity to the company goals, you generate interest in the work you are doing and create opportunities for growth and potential promotion opportunities as well. Always have your eye on the long-term progression; the clearer your goals are the more likely you are going to be successful in achieving them.
5) be friendly, get to know people; sad as it may seem there is definitely an element of who you know as well as what you know, especially in a large organisation. Use the first 3 months to get to know everyone you can, introduce yourself to people and get to know the names and key collaborations between senior and strategic members of staff. This will be invaluable in the future. Even just knowing who to go to for what information or services will speed up any future processes you need to implement. If you can go to the right person first time around, you can save days of procrastination and delay in trying to get things done. There is enormous power in simply being nice and getting along with people.
With these processes among others, I managed to go from assistant team leader of one programme with no staff, to team leader of the NEET provision across the organisation, with 10 members of staff and a nationally recognised quality qualification. I raised the standard of provision to over 90% from 54% before I took over and created progression stats of over 80% in a period of economic decline. I was also largely responsible for lowering NEET figures for the area in a time when all other areas in the region are increasing in NEET numbers. I achieved all this in three years through the application of these processes and dedication to the job. How does the first 90 days relate to 3 years’ service? Well, I was promoted in each of those three years meaning I completed this process every year in a new role to get to the position I attained. It really does work.
Hopefully this has at least given you some ideas to take away with you to help with your career change, the very best of luck to you in the future and remember; your potential is only limited by your imagination.
Shevek Pring 