- Key features
- Reasons to read this book
- Who should read this book
- Origins of the ‘first 100 days’ concept
1 Key features
The distinguishing features of this book are that it is:
- 100 day timeline approach
- 100-minute speed read
- 100 per cent practical
100 DAY TIMELINE APPROACH
The book is organised to coach you, the reader, through the real-time challenge of the first 100 days of your new role, using a combination of structured planning, commercial insight and leadership coaching. The book offers you a highly structured 100 day timeline approach, how to prepare pre-start, how to write your first 100 days plan, how to tackle each key milestone @ 30 days, @ 60 days, @ 90 days – and how to successfully close out at the end of 100 days.
100-MINUTE SPEED READ
My recommendation is that you approach the book with a 100-minute speed read. And later on, read it again more slowly and use it as a companion guide during your real-time 100 day experience. In keeping with the underlying theme of accelerated performance, this book is organised in a ‘speed read’ style for the time-pressured leader. Time is often considered a scarce resource but never more so than at the beginning of a new role appointment when the pressure is on to deliver results, and quickly. Deliberately concise, this book provides the crucial insights in 100 minutes to empower you, the time-pressured leader, to achieve the greatest success during this intense early phase.
100 PER CENT PRACTICAL
This book is a coach and companion to help you to perform better and faster, by establishing the right set of 100 day desired outcomes, and showing you how to achieve them. The first 100 days is a pressurised moment of need, and intellectualisation of the issues won’t help. This book offers you a structured approach, practical guidance, thoughtful insights and useful advice – all easily understood and immediately implementable.
2 Reasons to read this book
The key benefits from investing time on this book are as follows:
- Your future career depends on it.
- You will succeed faster when you hit the ground running.
- You will cope better with intense time pressures.
- You will manage stakeholders when the stakes are high.
- Your company induction will not be sufficient.
- The ability to transition is an underestimated leadership skill.
YOUR FUTURE CAREER DEPENDS ON IT
The importance of your first 100 days is the difference between success and failure in this new role – and that has consequences for your whole career. If you have a successful first 100 days, it naturally follows that you are setting yourself up for a successful first 12 months in this role. If you have a successful first 12 months in the role, then it is likely that you will make a success of your whole role tenure.
You will want to succeed in this role for its own sake – because this is your new promotion and this is the job that you are being asked to do. But look at the bigger picture too. If you get this role right, if you succeed in this role better and faster than expected, then it naturally follows that you are more likely to get promoted sooner to an even better role, and you can continue to enjoy accelerated success in your career ambitions.
Judgments on a fast-track leader’s success in the first 100 days of a new role can be followed quickly by judgments about their leadership potential for success in the next step-up role in two to three years’ time. It is as simple as this – if you care enough to invest in doing a great job in your first 100 days, you will be noticed by your boss and others, and promotion naturally follows. Simple logic says that getting expert help is better and faster than going it alone. It is not unusual for a client of mine to gain further promotion within 12 months. I have worked with clients on consecutive promotions, so it’s good for my business too.
The opposite is also true. If you get off to a slow start, or a ‘no-start’, then imagine how much more difficult it will be to claw back lost time in an attempt to succeed later. If you fail to get it right from the beginning, then you seriously risk your chances of success in this role, which can stall or reduce your future career prospects. After all, if you cannot succeed in this role, then why offer you another promotion? Seen in the context of the bigger picture of your career, the importance of your first 100 days in a senior role appointment cannot be underestimated.
YOU WILL SUCCEED FASTER WHEN YOU HIT THE GROUND RUNNING
As the reader/learner, you can be assured that this book with provide you with a way to organise yourself and navigate the daunting challenge of exactly how to make a start in this role. Often, we experience feelings of being entirely flooded by the complexity of the handover and the expectations of what needs to be achieved. Getting up to speed in a new role can be extremely stressful, and if we can’t think clearly we can’t bring our best selves to the situation. Before long your diary is in charge of you and not the other way around.
This book offers practical guidance, thoughtful insights and useful advice in bite-sized portions, which are easily understood and immediately implementable – how to write a first 100 days plan, backed up by a timeline and process view on what to do at each of the key milestones @ 30 days, @ 60 days and @ 90 days.
With this expert help and specialist knowledge on how to help senior executives make the most of their first 100 days, you will be able to hit the ground running faster, and achieve that extra leadership edge necessary to succeed faster on impact.
YOU WILL COPE BETTER WITH INTENSE TIME PRESSURES
Newly appointed leaders are compelled to have a great first 100 days because now, more than ever, the pressure is on to recover high returns on investments. Performance acceleration is a critical business demand in today’s global economy. For chief executives of companies listed on the stock market, the first 100 days is the approximate time between the day they start a new job and the stock exchange’s appraisal of their performance.
And, if you’re not the chief executive, you are under just as much pressure from your boss and stakeholders to show a fast return on their investment in you. Directors are commanding six-figure salaries, and recruitment fees for external appointments are extremely high. Executives no longer have the luxury of being in a role for 12 months before judgments are made about their worth. Time is up for the first three months to be seen as the settling in period.
YOU WILL MANAGE STAKEHOLDERS WHEN THE STAKES ARE HIGH
There is usually stakeholder pressure to deliver to high-performance agendas. Senior appointments are not made lightly – typically the stakes are high, a significant change or turnaround is necessary and people are looking to the new leader for answers and a clear pathway forward.
The hiring manager, incumbent team and other role stakeholders in the organisation typically view a new leadership appointment with a mixture of relief and apprehension. The first phase of a new leadership appointment not only represents a fresh starting point, but also raises concerns about how to make it work. It is a time of intense mutual scrutiny, and a successful first 100 days has a major determining impact on stakeholder success within the first 12 months and beyond.
YOUR COMPANY INDUCTION WILL NOT BE SUFFICIENT
Through my experience as a head-hunter placing senior executives in the City of London, I realised that, whilst significant time and attention were given to recruitment and assessment of potential new appointments, there was disproportionately little or no attention paid to their effective transition into an organisation.
In more recent years, organisations have become more enlightened and have invested in developing in-house induction programmes for external appointments. However, the weakness of these programmes is that they are often not expertly assembled or thoughtfully spanned across 12 months. Instead, they manifest as information overload about company processes which only adds anxiety to the newly joining executive.
In many companies the induction is totally online and lacks human touch. Sometimes executives are offered specialist third-party coaching assistance to help make the leadership step up or to acclimatise successfully into a new organisation, but the approach is usually soft ‘support’ coaching and does not incorporate more commercially focused performance acceleration coaching.
I have worked with the best global corporations in the world and have never yet come across an internal organisational solution that adequately serves the newly appointed external member of staff or the internal promotion – except at graduate and group CEO level. In between, there are usually very good leadership development programmes for new manager promotions, but otherwise, leadership transition is a totally inadequately served market.
Regardless of whether an internal organisation induction exists in some guise for external appointments, there is rarely any kind of process to support internally promoted members of staff to step up and succeed in a new role. This book fills this total void for those promoted internally who find it even more difficult to make an impact when appointed into a new role within the same company.
THE ABILITY TO TRANSITION IS AN UNDERESTIMATED LEADERSHIP SKILL
You can be the best possible appointment, but there is a skill to making a transition and an effective transition needs to occur before your talents can shine. Through my own observation I watched talented people fail to succeed, again and again. I observed that this resulted in wasted opportunities all round: at a minimum significant frustration, at a maximum job loss, for a talented individual, plus a waste of expensive recruitment fees and time invested for the organisation.
It is also a loss for the team who inevitably lacked leadership prior to the new appointment and once again has had to endure a leadership failure, another leadership gap and another attempted leadership restart with the next person. Instead of realising that the organisations with a strong culture need to do more to support external people on a successful transition, all the pressure is put on the new person to sink or swim. What good is it for either party if the new person has a totally stressful and unsupported first 100 days, and eventually sinks?
3 Who should read this book
This book is relevant to all newly appointed leaders, across a variety of contexts.
External appointments are most likely drawn to this book because of the opportunities and risks inherent in switching company. However, this book has particular relevance for internal leadership appointments. As an internal appointment, you are already a known entity, ‘institutionalised’ and most likely pre-programmed on the issues. It’s tough to bring a fresh perspective if you have always been there. Let’s face it, an external appointment with none of the internal baggage may have an initial advantage simply by turning up.
There is an additional group who would benefit from this book – candidates preparing for interviews and pitching for a promotion. As I read the many reviews of the first edition of this book, I noticed that some people said they were being asked for a first 100 days plan as part of their recruitment interview and selection process. The structure of this book offered them a template and approach on how to think about what they would do if they got the job.
Regardless of the context, ultimately the characteristics of the would-be reader or learner for this material are consistent:
- Ambitious: This book is for the ambitious leader, some of whom already have achieved fast-track careers to date, often promoted ahead of their peers, and still very keen to continue to succeed in their career, possibly all the way to group CEO. This book will be of value to you because it examines new angles and ideas and offers the ambitious leader an extra edge.
- Keen to make an impact: You will be impatient for the answers to your problems. This book gives you that instant solution within a 100-minute read. Take this book with you on your next train or plane journey, and it will make great use of your travel time, resulting in the most productive journey you have ever taken.
- Smart, senior, successful: I noticed that a lot of business books are aimed at managers, and not the senior leaders in organisations. This book will be of value to you because it is intellectually stretching and insightful – written for smart, senior, successful leaders – and is not dumbed down or oversimplified.
- Anxious not to fail: Anybody who has just received a big promotion will be determined to succeed and anxious not to fail. A big promotion is an important move and the personal stakes will feel enormous. You will be seeking some answers, some insider information – a way in – and this book offers reassurance on those answers and will give you the comfort and security of learning the best way to prepare for the role, writing your first 100 days plan, and executing it with success.
4 Origins of the ‘First 100 days’ concept
Originally the concept was used to describe the speed and scope of US President Roosevelt’s legendary first 100 days in office – and the measure against which, later, many other American presidents and politicians have been judged in terms of the pace at which they have mobilised their own administrations. It has since made its way into the business lexicon to describe the early phase of a new leadership appointment. It has become an effective method of setting out a time-bounded period for the newly appointed leader to demonstrate early actions, wins and tangible deliverables to role stakeholders.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT – A LEGENDARY FIRST 100 DAYS IN OFFICE
Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) had his inauguration as President of the USA on 4 March 1933. It occurred in the middle of a terrifying bank panic. Historian Arthur Schlesinger described the mood at FDR’s inauguration: ‘It was now a matter of seeing whether a representative democracy could conquer economic collapse. It was a matter of staving off violence – even, some thought – revolution.’
Nearly 13 million people in the USA – one in four – were jobless. Nineteen million people depended upon meagre relief payments to survive. Workers lucky enough to have jobs earned, on average, only two-thirds what they made at the start of the Depression in 1929. Many of those who had money lost it: 4,000 banks collapsed in the first two months of 1933. So great was the emergency, some urged dictatorial powers, but FDR rejected the suspension of constitutional government. Instead he embarked on a plan of ‘Action, and Action Now’ to meet this vast crisis. The speed and scope of his actions were unprecedented.
FDR’s legendary first 100 days concentrated on the first part of his strategy: immediate relief. He successfully prevented a run on the banks by immediately declaring a ‘bank holiday’, closing all banks indefinitely until bankers and government could regain control of the situation. From 9 March to 16 June 1933, FDR sent Congress a record number of bills, all of which passed easily. The second part of his strategy was to provide long-lasting reform to the nation’s economy. The first 100 days was important because it got the New Deal off to a strong and early start, resulting in many essential programmes taken for granted in the USA today.
Many later presidents have used the first 100 days as a measure against which to mobilise their own administrations. Arguably none has succeeded in achieving FDR’s legislative agenda. In less than four months the economy was stabilised, homes and farms were saved from foreclosure, and massive relief and work programmes addressed the dire needs of the people. Most important, the first 100 days restored hope and, in the process, preserved democratic government in the USA.
Your first 100 days context will not be as dramatic as that of President Roosevelt. Nonetheless, companies and shareholders expect their leaders to perform better and faster than ever before.
Leaders in today’s high-performance corporate organisations find themselves in extremely pressurised situations and need to be able to take charge and step up with speed.