Taking up a new manager role in a company is exciting. The new opportunity comes with a zeal to prove yourself, and so comes the anxiety and uncertainty. Are you going to be an effective leader and deliver results for your company? Most importantly, do you know everything you need to deliver effective results in your new leadership role?
A Leader who is new to a team has the difficult task of getting results, building trust, and establishing credibility in a relatively short period of time. The most effective way for a new manager to generate results and build culture is to adopt a 30-60-90-day plan. This action plan is highly used by new managers to focus on the important aspects of your role.
A 30-60-90-day plan for new managers is an action plan which details the targets you plan to accomplish in the first 30, 60, and 90 days of your job. By setting up practical goals and a vision at each stage of your plan, you can make your transition into an organization smooth. One of the key ingredients for a successful 30-60-90-day plan is the ability to define clear and realistic goals. Our next section clearly guides you through developing clear, relevant, and measurable goals.
ART OF GOAL SETTING: FIND – CATEGORIZE – PRIORITIZE
As the plan’s main purpose is to help you transition smoothly in your new role, hence the plan should consist of realistic, measurable, and focused goals for you and your team.
To write challenging and measurable goals for each phase of the plan, follow the approach below:
- FIND – Identify the key objectives of your company. What are the targets, milestones, and strategies needed to achieve those objectives? How would your job targets translate into timelines for you and your team? Identifying the objectives helps you to align yourself with your business objectives.
- CATEGORIZE – Classify the above goals into four categories
- Learning Goals – Learning goals help you absorb as much information as can about your organization: its culture, policies, competition, strengths, and weaknesses. Being informed is critical for your success, as it allows you to make informed decisions.
- Initiative Goals – Initiative goals are various leadership decisions you plan to take in the early days of your role as a manager. Based on your understanding of the role and the business, you need to identify a few strategic initiatives that will help drive your business’s performance.
- Personal Goals – Personal goals are important to consider, helping you develop good professional relationships with your team members and senior management. Knowing your team members in the business is important.
- Performance Goals – Performance goals are the most important quantifiable goals. They describe the targets that you wish to achieve regarding the basic responsibilities of your role. Based on your overall understanding of your company’s vision, you need to set goals that increase your contribution to the organization.
- PRIORITIZE – Now that you have listed and classified all your goals, they must be arranged in the order of their priority. For each phase, the goals must be prioritized, based on the business objectives and time constraints.
Now that you know how to define realistic goals let us see what goals go into different phases of the plan.
THE 30-DAY PLAN – Be A Sponge and Soak Up As Much Info As Possible!
The 30-day period is all about familiarizing yourself with as many aspects of your role and the company as possible. The focus of the first 30 days of the plan should be all about learning about the business, environment, and the team.
Some examples of the different types of goals that can be a part of your first 30 days of your plan are –
Learning Goals –
- Study the organization’s vision, mission, and strategy.
- Learn about the organizational hierarchy, culture, and code of conduct.
- Understand the target audience and the product/service of your company.
- Read up on the existing strategy, past triumphs failures of the business.
- Research on the competition and how you and your department can help the company to get ahead.
Initiative Goals –
- Run an initial stage strategy in consultation with your manager.
Performance Goals –
- Maintain the team’s current performance output.
Personal Goals –
- Interact with each team member and get to know them better.
THE 60 DAY PLAN – Become A Contributor and Let the Team And Management Know That You Are Ready To Execute
By the end of 60 days, you should have created a positive image for yourself. People will know you as a team player and a contributor. You should be able to share your ideas and help improve the team’s coordination and efficiency.
The following goals can help you build your 60-day plan –
Learning Goals –
- Learn about how to optimize different processes of your team and overall business.
- Understand the entire product roadmap, identify key areas where you can contribute.
Initiative Goals –
- Devise a strategy based on the business objectives and get the consensus from Senior Management and other team members.
- Based on that strategy, lead the execution strategy by initiating some projects from scratch.
- Take more responsibilities in current initiatives.
Performance Goals –
- Increase the team’s productivity.
- Smooth out the process of the team’s workflow.
- Take at least one existing project and make it successful.
Personal Goals –
- Develop relationships outside of your team.
- Actively organize team bonding events like team lunches to increase team bonding.
THE 90- DAY PLAN – Become A Leader Who Is Trustworthy and Admired
By the end of 90 days, you should really be feeling like an integral part of the organization. You will understand your role and the work culture around you. People will see you as a leader.
These goals can help you draft your 90-day plan –
Learning Goals –
- Take note of the learnings by analyzing the successes and failures of the execution from the last phase.
Initiative Goals –
- Initiate a collaboration between teams of the organization, and lead various initiatives
- Define new KPIs for the team.
Now that you know the current policies, you can also propose some changes to them for more effective business practices and processes.
Performance Goals –
- Deliver good results on the projects that you head.
- Ramp up the output of your team.
- Perform better on the business’s feedback.
- Hire for all the vacant positions on the team
Personal Goals –
- Join any activity club or group in the organization.
Notice how with each phase of the plan, the number of learning goals keeps on decreasing, and the number of performance goals increases. Hence a 30-60-90-day plan helps you make a smooth transition into an organization with the greatest efficiency.
SlideUpLift has a vast collection of 30-60-90-day plan templates to showcase your plan to senior management effectively.
