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The Seductive Lure of the 90-Day Plan
How a bad idea usually prevents managers from starting well.
There’s probably no one who’s worked in a large organization for more than a couple of years who has not experienced the phenomenon of a new manager appearing on the scene who then proceeds to initiate a series of seemingly inexplicable actions during their first three months. Many of these actions are either harmful or downright bone-headed. Very rarely are they cogent, well-planned, and positive.
What lies behind this curious phenomenon?
Please step to center stage: The 90-Day Plan.
The reason for the newly-arrived manager’s bizarre behavior is because they believe that in order to impose their authority and demonstrate their genius, they needed to formulate a 90-day action plan prior to stepping into their new role.
I recently mentored an executive who was transitioning from a role in a global corporation into a more senior role in a much smaller company. She was convinced that success would require her to formulate a decisive and radical 90-day plan but the problem was that she knew almost nothing about the company, nothing whatsoever about the group she would be managing, and nothing about the CEO’s expectations of her. This had not deterred her from creating a skeleton plan, but she was deeply uncertain about…
