The First 90 Days When You're the New Executive

Everyone has advice for the first 90 days. Here's what the advice usually gets wrong.

There is no shortage of frameworks for the first 90 days of a new executive role. Listen first. Build relationships. Don't make big moves too fast. Understand the landscape before you try to change it.

This advice is largely correct. It's also, in practice, much harder to follow than it sounds — and the reasons it's hard are worth naming directly.

Why the standard advice breaks down:

The "listen first" framework assumes you have the psychological bandwidth to listen. But you're also managing an enormous amount of incoming information — new relationships, new culture, new political terrain, new performance expectations, often a team that is actively assessing you as you're assessing them. Listening well under those conditions requires more deliberate effort than the framework suggests.

It also assumes that you know what you're listening for. In reality, early in a new role, you often can't tell the difference between the signal and the noise. You're hearing narratives from people who have their own stakes in how you interpret the situation. You're receiving information that is sometimes incomplete, sometimes strategically filtered, sometimes genuine. Distinguishing between those requires pattern recognition that takes time to develop in a new context.

And the directive to "not move too fast" creates its own tension. You were brought in to do something. There are expectations above you and below you. Pure observation mode, held too long, creates its own credibility problem.

What the transition actually requires:

A clear distinction between what you need to learn and what you need to establish. These are not the same thing, and conflating them is where most executives lose time.

What you need to learn: the organizational history that explains present dynamics, the formal versus actual power structure, the state of your team, such as their strengths, their frustrations, their read on what's working and what isn't, the strategic context, and what your predecessor's choices built and left unresolved.

What you need to establish: your presence and communication style, your standards and decision-making approach, your accessibility and reliability as a leader, and that you do what you say you'll do.

The first can be learned over months. The second has to start immediately.

On the team:

Your team is watching you more carefully in the first 90 days than they will at almost any other point. They are making assessments that will shape how they engage with you for a long time. Not all of those assessments will be fair or accurate. But they are real.

What most teams are trying to determine is not whether you're smart or whether you're accomplished. They generally assume the former and take the latter on faith for now. What they want to know is: will you advocate for us? Will you tell us the truth? Will you make decisions, or will you hedge indefinitely? Are you someone we can trust?

These impressions form quickly, and they form on small signals: How you handle a difficult conversation in week three, whether you follow up on something you said you'd look into, and whether you're present and focused when people have your time, or distracted and half-available.

On managing up:

The first 90 days are also the highest-leverage window for establishing your relationship with the people above you. And this is the area I find most executives underinvest in, usually because they're so focused on getting their operations on a solid footing.

The conversations you have with your manager or board in the first 90 days about expectations, about what success looks like at 12 months, about what you'll need to do the job well, are much easier to have now than six months in. Get explicit. Name what you heard about the priorities. Ask whether you heard it right. Those conversations feel formal and slightly awkward in the early days. That's okay. The alternative, operating on assumptions for months and discovering a misalignment later, is much more expensive.

The frame I'd offer:

The first 90 days are not a performance review period disguised as an orientation. It's a window for building the foundation on which you'll execute for years. Use it accordingly, not to demonstrate competence by doing, but to build the relational and contextual infrastructure that will make your doing effective.

If this framing is useful, I write regularly about executive transitions and organizational leadership at deliagrenville.com

Delia Grenville, Ph.D. is the founder of Slyn Consulting, an executive coaching and advisory practice based in Portland, Oregon. She works with senior leaders navigating significant organizational transitions.