As a new manager, you are likely overwhelmed with responsibilities, from understanding the group dynamics of your team to identifying the important short term goals you need to achieve. Anytime I hire new managers, I ask them to prepare a 30 60 90 day plan. This is simply an outline of how they would onboard and become productive in the first 30, 60 and 90 days. If you’re a new manager and are being tasked with making a 30 60 90 day plan, here is a template and guidelines to help:
Before Starting
If you want to stand out and demonstrate dedication to you boss, include this bonus section, “Before Starting.” Leaders want anyone new, especially managers, to be able to hit the ground running the day they start. Prior to starting a new role, you may ask for:
- Any documentation about the company and product
- List of competitors to do basic research on
- Company handbook
- List of each staff member that will be reporting to you
In your plan, note that you’ll spend time researching before officially joining the team. This will take some extra effort on the nights and weekends, but will demonstrate that you are serious about your new management role.
First 30 Days
Discovery
On your first day and over the following month, the name of the game is “discovery.” Your goal is to learn as much as possible about the team and company. This means asking tons of questions, meeting with each employee or major stakeholder, getting first hand experience with the product and overall increasing your exposure to the operations of the organization. Some specific items you should include in your 30 60 90 day plan:
- Meet with each member of the team and understand their strengths vs weaknesses
- Meet with the senior management team if possible
- Join demos or sales calls to learn about the product
- Assist customer support reps to learn about the product
- Talk to customers to learn about the product
- Identify the current team goals and confirm they are still valid
- Ensure that the team continues to work towards their current goals
- Review your budget and identify gaps
First 60 Days
Implementation
After the first 30 days, you should be getting pretty comfortable with understanding the company, product and team. It’s now time to begin implementing some changes. You spent time learning and likely have a page of notes on what works and doesn’t work for the team. It’s now time to put it into practice. Consider these items for implementation in your 30 60 90 day plan template:
- Ensure the team is meeting weekly with a clear agenda and action items
- Set the team up sharing weekly written updates to increase accountability
- Create clear goals for the rest of the quarter and present to the team for alignment
- Assess the tools the team is using (e.g. CRM) and confirm they are effective
- Make changes to processes based on what you learned in the first 30 days
