The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael D. Watkins

Undoubtedly helpful for people transitioning into new jobs, especially jobs where they'll be managing others for the first time. But I just couldn't get into it at all; it reads more like a business textbook than anything else

August 7, 2022

MercerSupporter

Many really awesome things in here, but also many extremely problematic things. I worry that someone could read this and assume that this narrow-mindedness is actually what business has to look like, and the thought of that early indoctrination makes me feel deeply sad.

February 18, 2021

Diogenes

Highly recommended for any professional to transition from one position to another or from one company to the next.

I started reading this book as I made a major transition, changing city, company, and industry. It helped me document, organize, and act on an effective onboarding, have effective communication with my new manager and learn the ins and outs of my new company.

December 7, 2020

Mehdi

“The First 90 Days” by Michael D. Watkins is a great book in #leadership and #management fields. This book is a fantastic source for first time managers up to C levels. How to strategize the transition as well as put a framework in place within organization in order to help and mentor the employers for their transition and assist employees to leap from a strong functional performer to cross-functional management roles.

Although the focus of the book is on transition from one role to another or one company to anther there are plenty of useful pragmatic approaches have been illustrated within this book. Michael explain about the importance of securing early wins and avoid early losses to build momentum and credibility.

The author introduced a model call STARS (startup, turn around, realignment and sustaining success) and elaborate the difference when it comes to transition. He discusses about when need to used offense versus defense, how to define “A priority” items and how to overcome to resistance to change, how to build personal credibility and people perception especially within the first 90 Days of your transition. This book teaches how to think like organizational architect. How to deal with technical, political, and cultural problems as well as being a change agent and create coalitions have covered into the details.

The author strongly believes Darwinian leadership (sink or swim managerial culture) is unproductive for the employees as well as organization in large. He illustrated his points with several tangible real-life examples and shared the result of several studies to support his points. This book helps to accelerate the transition period and reach to breakeven point earlier which helps the individuals as well as the organizations reach to their goals much faster and avoid unnecessary failures.

February 19, 2021