Today, I spoke to Michael Watkins, who is the international bestselling author of The First 90 Days and his latest book is called Your Next Move. In this interview, Michael goes over how to succeed on the job in your first three months, tips for career transitions, opportunities that exist at a time of massive change and much more.
Do you know if you’ll succeed at your job after 3 months?
Your success or failure won’t be cast in stone at the 3-month mark, but significant momentum will have built up in either a positive or negative direction. You either will have built personal credibility and begun to generate some positive momentum, or you will have dug a hole for yourself and set up some vicious cycles that will be hard to reverse. People very quickly reach conclusions about whether you are effective and ineffective. Once these opinions harden, they will focus on evidence that supports their assessment (the so-called confirmatory bias).
Why is the 3 month mark the breaking point?
Often it’s not. The break point could come earlier or later. However the first 90 days is typically enough time for knowledgeable observers to make good assessments of whether a leader is on a good or bad trajectory. It’s therefore a good planning horizon and also a good time to take stock and make adjustments.
What are your top three tips for a successful job transition?
- “If you don’t own your transition, it will own you.” It’s essential to be proactive and to begin planning for a successful transition as early as possible, ideally before you are formally in the new role. Too many people taking new roles are dangerously passive in terms of how they approach the first few months.
- “Effective learning is the essential foundation.” Early on, newly appointed leaders should focus on “organizing to learn.” This means figuring your what you most need to learn, from whom you can best learn it and how you can be most efficient at extracting actionable insight.
- “Focus on securing early wins.” By the end of the first few months, you need to make substantial progress in energizing people. This means identifying and solving some key organizational problems. It also means pursuing the right kind of wins in the right ways, being careful to factor in the culture of the organization.
What opportunities exist at a time of organizational change and how can you take advantage of them?
This is a tough question because it depends on what “time of organizational change” means. If you mean the organization is in trouble and your have been brought in to fix the problem, then crisis provides opportunity. You typically have more scope to drive change in a turnaround situation than you do if the organization is in better shape. That’s why, unfortunately, that proactive change is so much harder than reactive change.
Can you name a few hurdles that any leader will face upon transition?
Moving out his or her comfort zone and embracing the adaptive challenge. I always ask the leaders I work with, “What are things that you are good at and enjoy doing that you need to do less of?” and “Are there things that you don’t like or don’t feel competent doing that you need to do more of?”
Avoiding the temptation to come in with “the answer. Even if you are 100% sure that you know what needs to be done, you still need to build awareness and support for your plan. Otherwise you risk creating unnecessary resistance. Staying focused on the “vital few” priorities. There typically is so much going on in transitions, and it’s all-to-easy to take on too many things and get spread too thin. So focus, focus, focus.
What went into the branding of your books since they all look similar?
I believe that focus and branding go hand-in-hand. My work is all about making successful transitions into new roles. So both the form and the content of the books reflect this. I also wrote Your Next Move to be a complement and companion to The First 90 Days so they really fit together. Also I think my publisher has done a great job with the titling and visual design for the books.
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Dr. Michael Watkins is the world’s leading expert on accelerating transitions. He is author of the international bestseller The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at all Levels, which The Economist recognized as “the on-boarding bible.” There are 500,000 in print, 420,000 copies sold in English, and translations in 27 languages. Recently it was named one of the best 100 business books of all time. Michael is the Chairman of Genesis Advisers, an executive on-boarding and transition acceleration company located in Newton, Massachusetts. Previously he was a professor at IMD in Switzerland, INSEAD in France, the Harvard Business School, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He has designed award-winning programs in accelerating transitions, Future Enterprise Leadership™ development, negotiation, and corporate diplomacy. Michael’s new book is called Your Next Move: The Leader’s Guide to Successfully Navigating Major Career Transitions.
