 Did you know if you were starting in a new job in a new company today, there's a 20% chance you won't be there in 90 days time? In this episode, I break down why this happens and what you can do to not only beat the odds, but fast-track your progress during your first 90 days and become a rising star. Let's do it! Hi, my name is Raph. Welcome to Riser. My mission is to help you go further faster in your career, sharing the tips and tools I had to learn the hard way, having come up from packing boxes on a factory floor through to a successful executive career. We've got you covered with new content each week, so hit the subscribe button to make sure you don't miss anything. We've got a longer video today guys, but it's rarely gonna set you up for success. So stay with me, because by the end of this you'll know exactly why you need to do certain things, what those things are, and how to do them. Firstly, we're gonna discuss why the first 90 days is important, as opposed to say five months or some other arbitrary number, and we're gonna go into the main reasons why people fail and of course how we can do better. Then, I'm gonna take you through six steps to success. Everything is time-coded below if you want to skip to a particular section, but if you're new to all of this, I strongly suggest you go grab your notebook and follow along step by step. Okay, some of you might be wondering why we focused on 90 days in the first place. What's so special about 90 days? Well, firstly, in the business world the year is divided into quarters, so we are naturally used to expressing business goals in those terms. Also, three months is about enough time to understand the basics of a new role and get some wins on the board and it's a pretty common timeframe that companies give new employees to prove themselves and like I said in the intro, there's a huge wave of people who for various reasons won't survive that first 90 days, let alone be happy and performing well. But why? What's going on and what can we do about it? Well, three reasons often given by employees are the job turns out to be different to what you expected, you had a bad relationship with your boss and you haven't been trained well. Now, from the company's perspective, their perspective is a little different. Of course it is. From their perspective, here's why they think new employees often don't do so well. The big one is poor performance and, yes, by definition that's objective, but that's what they say and the others are poor punctuality, not turning up on time and absenteeism, not turning up at all. So given these facts, you might be thinking that some of these issues are outside of our control, right? Right? Sometimes, but I'll tell you from experience that in many, if not most cases, there's actually plenty that we can do. Yeah, I get it and it's a well-known fact that many companies do a crappy job with onboarding, which is that whole first 90 or 100 day period in your new role, not just the paperwork and basic induction like training and meet and greets, it's supposed to be how you become fully integrated and supported so you can perform well, but most companies just don't do this and by most I mean like three quarters of them and of the quarter that remain many don't do that well. So if you look at this logically, you have two choices. You can let things happen to you and hope for the best, or you can give yourself a great shot at overcoming the shortfalls of bad onboarding by doing a few simple things. And if you're lucky enough that your company does a great job with onboarding, the advice I'm about to give you is just as relevant and it'll rarely set you apart from the pack. So now that we know why the first 90 days is important and the main reasons people don't do well, we're going to outline what we can do better before we step through how to do this. And when it comes to doing things better, the single most powerful thing you can do in your first 90 days is to prove to your organization that you really can do the job you were hired for by delivering the value your role is expected to deliver. This is critical. So write it down to prove you can deliver the value your role is expected to deliver. So we're going to focus on doing that. And at the same time, at the same time, we're going to help you clarify the purpose of your role. We're going to establish a good working relationship with your manager and make sure you know how to do the things you need to do. So here are the six steps to having a successful first three months in your new job. In step one, we lay foundations, connecting with your manager and setting expectations. Step two is about understanding your role more deeply and connecting with your colleagues. In step three, we select a couple of priorities to focus on with measurable outcomes. Step four is about putting a plan of action together to complete them. In step five, we work through that plan to deliver results. And in step six, we communicate your successes and establish your brand. And there's also a little power tip at the end. So make sure you don't miss that. So now we go through the steps in more detail, starting with step one, laying foundations. If you caught the previous episodes in the series, I spent a bit of time on the importance of connecting with your manager. I referenced a study where 72% of respondents said that one on one time with their manager was the most important part of their onboarding. And I can tell you from experience, this is true. So if your boss hasn't already set them up, then speak to them about setting up regular one-on-one meetings, ideally weekly. And it's best if you work from a clear agenda that you both agree to, but make sure it includes at least these two items. Firstly, what you've been working on. So that's where you've been spending your time. And the other agenda item is what you'll be working on next. And if you watched those previous episodes, you'll already know that you should always be structured and clear in those discussions. So prepare for them every time. Know and write down what you want to discuss against the agenda that you agreed to, and try to stick to the agenda in your discussions. By doing this, you come across as someone in control of your work, self-directed, not needing your handheld, and at the same time, open to improvement. This is going to start you off on the right foot with your manager and give them a lot of confidence in you and your future potential. Now, here's a few things to do and watch out for when you're in those meetings. Spend the first couple of minutes connecting with your manager, getting to know them better and allowing them to get to know you better. And when it comes to what you've been working on, you want to touch on those items that you have completed, highlighting all the little wins and successes to keep them in the loop, but also to let them know that you're getting things done and you're doing those things well. And you also want to mention where you might have had some unresolved difficulties to get their advice and make sure you ask any other questions that might have come up during the week. When it comes to what you'll be working on next, you want to let them know how you intend to tackle those things. Again, keep them in the loop, but you're also inviting them to offer you guidance and be your coach. Yeah, we subtly nudging your manager to get what we need from them. Now, if you're in a situation where you've picked up a new role in the same company, then during the first couple of weeks, you'll want to be talking about your progress in letting go of your old job. And I'd suggest this as another agenda item. Your new manager might very well be able to help you if you're having trouble, for example, by having a chat to your old manager but letting go of your old tasks and not being distracted by people coming to you with questions or actions that you should no longer be taking care of is one of the most important things you need to do as quickly as possible. And of course, your boss might want to structure the agenda in a different way or include other topics, and that's great, but make sure that you at least get to cover off the things that we've just talked about. Now let's quickly touch on absences and poor punctuality because they're given as top reasons for underperformance as well, and I've had a lot of experience dealing with this one as a manager. Look, there's two sides to this one. One side has to do with desire and to an extent maturity, so if you've been parting it up the whole weekend and you want to call in sick to work on Monday and you're doing this over and over again, or Fridays are more your thing, well, it is what it is and you know what you need to do. But there are other circumstances, things that get in the way, like life. We lead complex lives with competing priorities, families, logistical issues, illnesses, and all of that. But the good news is, fortunately, most people and most managers these days acknowledge this and are quite willing to come to a reasonable solution. But you need to discuss these issues, you need to make them known, upfront, and set expectations so there are no surprises. Because like I said in our very first episode, your boss will be wondering what other surprises you have in store for them. So if you know you're always going to be late because you have commitments like dropping off the kids at school in the morning or whatever the case may be, maybe your train only comes every hour and sometimes it's late, discuss these things, and come to an arrangement well in advance. This happens a lot and it can often be solved with a frank, honest conversation if it's done in the right way and well in advance. If you're afraid it's not going to go well, you're only making matters worse by not communicating. So onto step number two, understand your role more deeply and connect with your colleagues. Remember, one of the top three reasons you'll leave a new job is because of a disconnect between your expectations and the reality of what you'll actually be doing. And I've seen this many times and I've also experienced it, that what you think you know about your role, maybe what's even been told to you by the hiring manager and the truth about what your role really is, can sometimes be very different from one another. By understanding your role better and doing this as quickly as possible, you can identify specific issues or concerns and you can raise them if you have to. Also by understanding your role, you'll be able to identify and focus on those few things that are going to drive most of the value for the company and not spend too much time on things that are just not important in the scheme of things. Now your boss might have a very clear idea about this and be very specific on what you'll be doing and their priorities, but it's still important to get a deeper understanding and validate for yourself so that you are aligned with them and so that you are comfortable there's no big disconnects. So you can start by going back through your job description and skimming through any other notes or information you have about your role, but the fastest way to come to grips with what your role really is about and bring it to life is to start speaking with people and the right people to speak to are usually pretty easy to identify because we don't work in isolation. The work that you do is a step in a process that has many. You receive things that come from people upstream like various types of information, systems and requests and you act on them and you work on those things and with these things the result of your work ends up with people downstream from you, people who receive your work and people who are affected by your work in some way. The people in these other parts of your process are your stakeholders. You need to identify the important ones and you need to meet with them to understand their role and how they fit into that upstream and downstream process. You'll be asking them a specific set of questions so I highly recommend putting together a simple template which you can use to keep the conversation nicely structured and ensure that you don't go off track or miss out on anything important. My own template is a simple one pager with three sections. I've got the date and the name of the person on the top. The middle section consists of the questions and the ones I always seem to ask include getting them to tell me what their role is about, how long they've been with the company and in their current role, what their priorities are and if there's anything specific that they depend on my role for in order to do their role and what they think is generally done well because you probably don't want to be messing with those things too much at the start and also what could be done better because obviously these things will clue you in as to what's causing them pain and are problems that you might be able to solve. There's usually one or two more tailored questions depending on the role and I always keep the following two questions for the end. Number one is there anything we haven't talked about that they feel I need to know and number two who else do they think I should be meeting with? I usually number the questions and I leave a nice big space below to write answers and I've got a section at the bottom for any actions that we discuss. I keep those one separate so I can track them easily later on. Now that's what I do and it served me pretty well over the years. This is just a guide but I do suggest you make something like this for yourself using whatever tool you're comfortable with. Now I have a couple of tips for when you actually meet with them. Try to meet with them one on one. You're building relationships at this stage but also people are generally much more inclined to be candid if it's one on one and you'll also get insights from people who would usually be quiet in a group situation or if they were sitting with a boss or something. Another tip is I suggest printing out those templates and handwriting your notes instead of using a computer to take notes in those meetings and the reason for this is simply that the computer is a physical barrier between you and someone you're trying to get to know better and because they can't see what you're typing it's not the best way to establish trust. Of course once you get to know them better by all means use the computer. This is just during the first few days and follow good practices when setting up your meetings. That means keep them as short as possible, make sure the invite always states the purpose of the meeting in a short sentence and have an agenda using dot points so that it's easy to read and digest. When you meet with them follow the agenda and make sure that you validate your actions by quickly running through them before you leave the meeting and don't forget to thank them for their time and if you think you need to meet with them again lock in a time right then and there and send them the invite as soon as you get back to your desk. And we touched on this in previous episodes but I'll repeat it again here because it's relevant. Pick up on the language your stakeholders are using, those unique words, special terms, acronyms, all of that. Make a little glossary for yourself and start using those special words as early as you can. You'll find you learn the business faster but it also signals to your colleagues that you've gained a level of knowledge and because you're using the language of your new tribe you'll build deeper connections quicker. Through these conversations you'll be connecting with your colleagues and gain a much better understanding of your role and how it drives value and hopefully hopefully you'll find there's a really good alignment between what they are saying and what your understanding of the purpose of your role is. If this is not the case then right here is your best opportunity to very urgently clarify any disconnects with your manager. It's a super important conversation to have while you're still new in the role. Now that you've connected and you've set expectations with your manager you understand your role and you've connected with your colleagues we're ready to move to step three selecting a couple of priorities to focus on with measurable outcomes. Now at this point from everything you know and everything you've heard you should be in a pretty good position to be able to pick out let's say two to three things that you're going to focus on let's call them projects because that's exactly what they are that you're going to complete within your first 90 days. To clarify these are specific and measurable initiatives you're going to take that are going to add most value in addition to your daily tasks that are directly related to the purpose of your role. You see your daily tasks might keep things ticking over but even in an entry level role where tasks might be mundane these initiatives should be helping you do your job better proving that you're adding value and not just going through the motions so in a more junior role these projects could be for example implementing or improving something small that will have a good positive effect because maybe maybe the current state is causing a lot of people a lot of pain like more work or rework or complaints from customers and of course you'll have fewer stakeholders and you might have some challenges in getting their time but do what you can because this stuff will rarely set you apart so whatever the projects turn out to be it's all about what you can do within the scope of your role to benefit the business the most and things that could be done within that three month period at this point you might be asking how many projects should I do well there really isn't a rule except that any more than three is probably not a great idea because you're either not being realistic about the amount of work involved or they're just not going to be large enough to make a difference and prove that you're rarely adding value I usually start off by aiming for three and I see how I go if I end up with more than one project so if I have two or three I try to make sure that one of the projects can be completed quite a bit earlier than the others like within 60 days even if it means it's quite a bit smaller than the others I found it's helpful to have that quick win because it built my confidence it also demonstrates that I know how to get things done to get things completed which is important and it helps to build early confidence in me from my stakeholders and my boss and having this early support can really help get the other initiatives over the line as well so now you've selected your projects next you'll need to think about how each of them can be measured in some way so that you can actually prove that you achieve the expected outcomes basically if you can't measure or prove your outcomes you're wasting your time don't skip this part so what you need is metrics to compare your current state with your proposed future state if you find yourself struggling to come up with good metrics then it's likely one of two things has happened number one either your initiative isn't solid enough it's not shifting the needle on anything or number two you're not experienced that how to go about doing this in which case I suggest you have a try and then discuss them with your stakeholders and your manager there'll be future episodes on metrics but for now this approach should serve you pretty well so now that you have a list of projects and how you're going to measure their success you need to make sure that you're aligned with your manager you need to reach an agreement on the priorities you picked out to work on as well as the metrics if you're not 100% aligned 100% aligned you'll run the risk of in their eyes and maybe in reality spending time on things that are just not important but assuming that you do reach that agreement you'll have to now figure out how to get them done by diving deeper into each initiative that you've chosen okay how you'll find you probably need to circle back to at least some of the people that you've already spoken with to clarify points understand what information is available where the difficulties are who else to speak to what tools like existing spreadsheets or templates you need to know about and also systems that you might need to know about or that you might need to get access to and if you're in a more senior role with larger initiatives then there's probably related work that's been completed before so you'll be looking for summaries of previous projects proposals plans and strategies documented risks and issues etc again be structured when you have these conversations and write the stuff down especially who's given you what information and what they promise they would send to you so that you can follow up later I guarantee you're going to need to remind them which brings us to step number four how to put a plan of action together to complete them now what I'm about to show you is not a specific method but it's more like a framework or a guide that you can easily use and modify to meet your needs and your style it really doesn't matter what tool you use as long as you can update the various elements and you can easily change things and move them around as this is a living document that needs continual updating I often use Microsoft excel but sometimes I'll use a more advanced project management tool use what you have at your disposal that you think is most appropriate and here's what you're going to do so in this framework we're starting by making a timeline firstly divide the timeline into weeks and divide those weeks into days actual weeks with actual dates you need to get specific after all we are committing to achieving a goal within a specific period of time 90 days will usually give you 13 weeks which is 12 weeks plus one week as a buffer and by the way this includes the time that you've just spent planning then list out your projects and set target end dates for each one and remember to try and have one of those projects getting completed within the 60 days the next thing you'll want to do is block out the key steps under each of the projects in other words the main things that you need to do to complete each one and for any step that someone else will be actioning so if it's not you then note who else is responsible for that step after you've done that for each project then put in your milestones these are points in time precise dates where something important happens or a decision needs to be made you'll be working towards making these happen so one of the big benefits of mapping out milestones is that they're going to help keep you on track once you flesh this out you have a basic plan pretty easy right cool now you'll need to validate that it's good if you don't you're going to run the risk that you've made a whole bunch of untrue assumptions and you won't achieve what you set out to achieve so you'll need to circle back to any relevant stakeholders to test those assumptions to validate that if you in fact did a and then b followed by steps c d and e that it makes sense to them that you would achieve your goal at the same time if you haven't already done so then also validate your proposed metrics with them the principle here hopefully you can start to see what we're doing all the way through this process is we're getting information we're pulling it together we're understanding and doing some work on it and we're communicating with our stakeholders including our manager to test and discuss and make it better at the same time as I noted before we're building support and confidence in these initiatives and increasing our likelihood of success because we're bringing these important people into the process from the very beginning don't do this work in isolation at this stage also be sure to include any knowledge or capability gaps that you might have as part of the plan for example if you need to learn something in order to be able to implement a project but only include them if they are necessary to achieve the results that you want and if it is the case then don't keep them separate integrate them into your schedule now there are a couple of other basic elements that I suggest including in this plan as well include a status column so that at a glance you can take stock of your project in terms of what's not started what's in progress and what's completed and at the high level where your initiatives are on track at risk of falling behind schedule or actually behind schedule so what you now have is a timeline view of your top two to three initiatives broken down into key elements and milestones with tracking status and action owners all validated by your key stakeholders including your boss who would like to see these things happen and have had the opportunity to input and make it better than if you did it yourself now you have something that is very powerful the plan itself shouldn't take any longer than a couple of days a week tops to pull together and to give you an indication at this point you should be somewhere between two and three weeks into your new role if it took a little longer and you have a quality result that's fine as well but try not to let it go more than four weeks to get to the stage where you've completed your plan because we do need time to actually get stuff done which brings us to step number five working through that plan and delivering results and you're going to do it by using the plan daily and updating and reviewing it weekly by using it daily I mean you're using it to plan and complete your work continually looking ahead to identify issues like roadblocks dependencies and constraints so you're looking ahead so you know what you need to do like setting up meetings with people well in advance making sure everyone is clear on what needs to be done how those tasks will get done who's doing them and when they need to be completed by and taking whatever other actions you need to take to make sure your steps are on track by updating I mean going through the plan to ensure it's all accurate and up to date and in real life things happen some of them outside your control that might affect your plan so you'll need to adjust it as you go reviewing happens with your manager taking them through the plan in a structured way giving them a sense of comfort that you're in control and that you're driving it forward and at the same time allowing for their input to help make it better along the way so again you're using the plan every day and you're updating and reviewing it weekly now if you follow these steps and not too much has gone wrong you're going to end your first 90 days with some proven results that you can be really proud of you don't want to waste this opportunity they don't come around that often so step number six is celebrate and communicate your successes thank people for their input and assistance here's where you can definitely write emails to groups of people copying your manager and their managers as well it's acknowledgement of their efforts and your results at the same time it's win-win for everyone involved good feelings all around also why not take it a step further and put together a short good quality presentation summary and send that around too to showcase the achievements after all who doesn't enjoy a good news story as leaders we're always on the lookout for great work to showcase as examples for others to follow and this could be one of them which leads us on to our power tip this is a great opportunity to ask for more what do i mean by more well you've just demonstrated that you can add value so speak to your manager about how you can add more value maybe a little more responsibility if you're ready for it let them know what's on your mind what about the next nine months of your first year maybe bigger and better projects next time maybe you'll get a small budget to do something special don't be afraid to ask for more but just remember to be reasonable and never make demands because that's a terrible strategy that has way more downside than any potential upside now if you're still with me then you probably have every intention of implementing what we've just been through and that's awesome and thank you so much for listening the reality though is that most of you are not going to take action because that's just how the numbers go only the tiniest percentage of people that actually buy self-help books even actually read them and they're spending money in the back of your mind you might be thinking this all sounds pretty cool but wow it seems like a lot of work do i really want to do this so i want to leave you with this thought because i can tell you from experience there is a massive difference in outcomes when you do this versus when you don't so i want to offer you some perspective that apart from the day-to-day things that you need to take care of for your job this 90-day plan of action is going to help keep you from getting distracted and if you set it up in the right way you'll know with absolute confidence that you're putting your time where it matters and where it's going to add maximum value to your organization and in the end it's no more work than if you were doing other random stuff it's just more controlled with more meaning because you're using your time wisely and the other excuse i've heard so often over the years is that you're not sure how well you can do this so i'm here to tell you even if you get this mostly right you're going beyond what 90% of what other people do and you're setting yourself up to be a rising star no matter what level you're at this one is a game changer so please come back and let us know how it went if you have any questions or comments about starting a new job then please leave them down below if you enjoyed this content please hit the thumbs up button and don't forget to share it with a friend or a colleague and if you are seriously interested in building a rewarding career then go ahead and subscribe so you're always getting our new videos as they are released like the rest of the episodes in the three-part series all about how to start a new job on the right foot beginning with the first day at work and your first week at work coming up in future episodes how to be efficient and effective if you want to make your life easier and get results at the same time then you don't want to miss those till next time keep rising