The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels

How should you compile your early list of guiding questions? Start by generating questions about the past, questions about the present, and questions about the future.

Relearning to learn can be painful. Transitioning into a new job may revive some deep fears about your capabilities that you thought you had long laid to rest. So if you find yourself waking up in a cold sweat, take comfort. Most new leaders experience the same feelings. And if you embrace the need to learn, you can surmount them.

Because many professionals are almost always successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure. So whenever their . . . learning strategies go wrong, they become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the “blame” on anyone and everyone but themselves. In short, their ability to

All too often, promising managers get promoted but fail to promote themselves by undertaking the necessary change in perspective.
A related mistake is to believe that you will be successful in your new job by continuing to do what you did in your previous job, only more so. “They put me in the job because of my skills and accomplishments,” the reasoning goes.
“So that must be what they expect me to do here.” This thinking is destructive because doing what you know how to do and avoiding what you don’t can appear to work, at least for a while. You can exist in a state of denial, believing that because you are being productive and efficient, you are being effective. You may keep on believing this until the moment the walls come crashing down around you

Begin by thinking about your first day in the new job. What do you want to do by the end of that day? Then move to the first week. Then focus on the end of the first month, the second month, and finally the three-month mark. These plans will be sketchy, but the simple act of beginning to plan will help clear your head.