New Book Review: "The First 90 Days"

New book review for The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, by Michael D. Watkins, Harvard Business Review Press, 2013:

Copy provided by Deloitte.

The introduction provided by Benton actually offers a realistic look at what is offered in the rest of the book, unlike many other business texts I've read over the years which initially entice and subsequently disappoint, offering only an article's worth of information watered down to fill hundreds of pages. And I personally have the dog ears I left behind over the course of reading this text as evidence that this is the case. That said, however, the introduction provides enough value that it could actually stand on its own as an article, briefly walking the reader through glimpses of several pertinent topics such as avoiding transition traps, creating momentum, assessing transition risk, mapping out one's first 90 days, and hitting the ground running.

"Even though a lot has been written and discussed about how to be a more effective leader in general, little research and writing addresses how to successfully accelerate through leadership and career transitions. People will go through these all-important career crucibles with little preparation and no reliable knowledge or tools to help them. That's what this book is designed to give you. Your goal in every transition is to get as rapidly as possible to the break-even point. This is the point at which you have contributed as much value to your new organization as you have consumed from it. New leaders are net consumers of value early on; as they learn and begin to take action, they begin to create value. From the break-even point onward, they are (one hopes) net contributors of value to their organizations."

"The root causes of transition failure always lie in a pernicious interaction between the new role, with its opportunities and pitfalls, and the individual, with his strengths and vulnerabilities. Failure is never only about the flaws of the new leader. Indeed, all the failed leaders I studied had achieved significant successes in the past. Nor is it only about a no-win situation in which not even a superhuman leader could have carried the day. The business situations facing leaders who derail are no tougher than those in which others succeed brilliantly. Transition failures happen because new leaders either misunderstand the essential demands of the situation or lack the skill and flexibility to adapt to them."

"The good news is that there are systemic methods you can employ to both lessen the likelihood of failure and reach the break-even point faster. The specific business situations that confront transitioning leaders vary. But specific types of transition situations, such as start-ups and turnarounds, share certain features and imperatives. Further, there are fundamental principles – for example, securing early wins – that underpin success in all transitions at all levels. The key, then, is to match your strategy to the situation."

This book was actually gifted to me by a new manager of mine soon after accepting his offer to work as director and chief architect for the company. As I mentioned in my recent review of "Executive Presence for the Modern Leader: A Guide to Cultivating Success and Thriving in the Workplace", by D. A. Benton, I've spent the vast majority of my software delivery career in hands-on software architecture and development roles, increasingly working with executives over time. Unlike this other book, which likely would have been more beneficial to me at an early stage in my career, if I had wanted to focus on leadership rather than building software, what Watkins offers here is coverage of a much deeper topic that I've revisited time again throughout my career: tackling the first few months of a job, and for someone like me who doesn't have the tendency to job hop, tackling the first few months of a new project or product.

Because the last decade of my work experience has largely revolved around building new software products rather than being parachuted into ongoing projects as is the case with my current roles, I've been spending a lot of time revisiting how I approach my work, gathering together my thoughts on all of the software development and architecture efforts I've lead while working through the suggestions offered in this book. And now that I'm well past the hypothetical 90-day time period covered by the author, regardless of calculation, as I tend to view this as an 18-week time period of 5-day weeks rather than a 13-week time period of 7-day weeks, I've been revisiting what the author does and does not cover.

The biggest drawback of this book, from the perspective of an ongoing software development effort, is not recognizing the need for ramp-up time at the outset. In other words, the need to get up to speed from day 1 on how the product has been built, what development processes look like, and the culture and history of the product. The index to this book doesn't even include an entry for "product". While taking a product approach to both development and non-development efforts is relatively new, it's not like this was an unknown when this book was written in 2013. As a prolific book reviewer, Amazon had sent me a pre-publication uncorrected proof of "The Lean Startup" for my review in 2011, introducing me to the concept of the minimum viable product ("MVP"), but tackling work with a product approach had already started taking root in industry by this time. My experience taking this approach with colleagues, for example, started at least 5 years prior building a product for a healthcare client of mine.

The content of this book is broken down into ten chapters: (1) "Prepare Yourself", (2) "Accelerate Your Learning", (3) "Match Strategy to Situation", (4) "Negotiate Success", (5) "Secure Early Wins", (6) "Achieve Alignment", (7) "Build Your Team", (8) "Create Alliances", (9) "Manage Yourself", and (10) "Accelerate Everyone". Each of these chapters is only about 20 pages, but I found myself reading through the content much more slowly than usual because it is so dense. Unlike my reviews of other books in which I easily recount which chapters brought me the most benefit, I found this book to be actually pretty consistent throughout, especially surprising for a book from Harvard Business Review Press. 

That said, I especially appreciated chapters 3, 5, and 8. The third chapter covers the start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, sustaining success ("STARS") model, which explains the five common business situations leaders may find themselves moving into, outlining the characteristics and challenges of, respectively, (1) launching a venture, (2) getting one back on track, (3) dealing with rapid expansion, (4) reenergizing a once-leading business that's now facing serious problems, and (5) inheriting an organization that is performing well and then taking it to the next level.

After this explanation, the author walks through data from the Harvard Business Review transition survey, in which participants were asked which of the STARS situations they thought were most challenging and in which they would most prefer to be. The most challenging situation was assessed to be the fourth type of business situation, the realignment, followed by the fifth and second, respectively, sustaining success and turnaround. As I've thought through my current roles, I think a hybrid of the turnaround and accelerated growth situations is the closest match. While respondents said that accelerated growth was the least challenging, both it and turnaround are in the middle of the pack with respect to respondent preference.

The bulk of my career has been spent on start-up situations, followed by turnaround. Interestingly, respondents rated the start-up the second-to-least challenging, but overwhelmingly the most preferred situation. From a software development perspective specifically, I definitely view the start-up as preferred, but relatively less challenging? I don't think so. While the STARS model helped put things into perspective for me with respect to considering opportunities related to the five types of business situation, I'm not sure it takes a holistic view.

For example, cited opportunities for the start-up are (1) "you can do things right from the beginning", (2) "people are energized by the possibilities", and (3) "there are no rigid preconceptions". However, note a couple key words here: "can" and "possibilities". These words are very optimistic, but as I've been known to say to my clients in the past, everything is possible, but not everything is probable, so saying that something is possible doesn't really provide value. Additionally, individuals far removed from the tasks being discussed tend to think in the realm of their own definitions of possibility rather than probability, so when this term gets brought up by someone it makes sense to explore what they are really trying to say. One important question to ask about the start-up is whether the work has been done well, and whether the overall product has been successful. Respondent preference and perception of challenge don't really speak to either of these aspects of the work. Just take a look at the track history of industry successes and failures. And again, from the perspective of software development, I know from experience that start-up work is an especially challenging endeavor. 

The fifth chapter discusses the fact that executives in transition plan and implement change in distinct waves: (1) transition, (2) immersion, (3) reshaping, and (4) consolidation. As such, the author explains the implications as to how one should manage transition, keeping one's ends clearly in mind when planning to secure early wins. Following an early period of focused learning, an early wave of changes then commences, involving a slower pace to permit consolidation and deeper learning about one's organization. Implementation of deeper waves of change is enabled by the additional insight gained, followed by a less extreme wave that focuses on fine-tuning to maximize performance, by which time leaders are ready to move on.

This chapter later provides the "early wins evaluation tool", which is intended to help assess the potential of candidate focal points for securing early wins. The four questions asked are the following: (1) "does the focal point offer an opportunity to make a substantial improvement in the performance of your unit?", (2) "is this improvement achievable in a reasonably short time with available resources?", (3) "would success also help lay the foundation for achieving agreed-to business goals?", and (4) "will the process used to achieve the win help you make needed changes in behavior in the organization?"

The eight chapter provides a simple checklist for framing the types of arguments one needs to convince people as a leader, in the form of categories and questions: (1) logos: data and reasoned arguments, (2) ethos: principles, policies, and other "rules", and (3) pathos: emotions and meaning. For example, this first type asks whether there "are there biases to which they are falling prey and, if so, how might you demonstrate this?", the second asks "if you are asking them to act counter to a principle or policy, can you help them justify making an exception?", and the third asks "if they are reacting too emotionally, can you help them step back and get perspective?" In a similar vein to this last question, while I appreciate many aspects of this book I think the author should consider working on an updated version that addresses software as a core business function, and provides coverage of products, not just projects.