[0:00]If you've just started a new job or you are about to, then stick with me for a second because this could completely change how your entire career plays out. I am personally of the opinion that the first 90 days in any role are not just a settling in period. They are the window that determines how you're perceived, how quickly you progress, and whether you are seen as someone with long-term potential to rise through ranks or just someone who does the job. And I think this is so important to talk about because most of us leave school or university thinking that being good at work means doing tasks well. Which is true to an extent, but in reality, lots of jobs and particularly the first three months of any job are about something much bigger. They are about positioning, visibility, judgment, and providing your value in a way that sticks. And I genuinely believe that if you play your first 90 days strategically, you can change your entire trajectory at a company, regardless of what they thought your path would be when they hired you. Because one thing I will tell you about someone who has worked across multiple different organizations and hired over 100 people is that you always have a certain thing in mind for a certain job. However, the right candidate will change that view. The right candidate will change the view of what progression looks like in that role. The right candidate can absolutely start in one role and climb their way through the whole organization to a place where you never imagine they could be just because they are so indispensable. So I promise you, you can affect this. Obviously, in some careers more than others. Okay, and on the other side of this first 90 days, if you don't play it right, you will spend years trying to reposition yourself as someone who should be trusted, promoted, or listened to. So, in this video, I am breaking down exactly what you need to do in your first 30 days, your second 30 days, and your final 30 days of that 90 days. This is all inspired by reading the first 90 days by Michael Watkins and what I've actually seen in my work at my companies, after, as I've said, hiring over 100 people to them, working through many different types of companies at different stages. So, if you want a faster route to be taken seriously at work, this is very much the video for you, and if you are new here, please hit subscribe because every Monday we talk about how to build a career and a life that you actually feel good about.
[2:11]So, before we even get into the first 30 days, I want to talk about something that I genuinely wish that someone had explained to me earlier in my career, which is how you prepare yourself mentally for a new job. Because I think that most of us prepare in the obvious ways, so like, we read the job description again, we might stalk the company a bit, we might if we're lucky be able to talk to some people who work there. We tell ourselves we're going to work really hard, but we don't always think strategically about the transition itself. So this is concept in Watkin's book, the first 90 days, which is called the break even point. And it completely reframed how I think about starting anything new. I'll put the diagram on the screen here for you.
[2:54]But the break even point is basically the moment where you stop consuming value from the company and start producing value for it. At the beginning of any job, you are an investment, like they are paying you, they are training you, they are onboarding you, they are introducing you to new people. You are absorbing time, energy, and money from the company, and like that's totally normal and not something to worry about. But the goal is to shorten the time it takes for you to become someone who is visibly adding more than you are taking. And I think this is where people fall into traps because when you start something new, your instincts kick in. So, there are a few really common traps that people fall into when they are starting a new job, and I'm going to go through them. So, first of all, some people go into overdrive and try and prove themselves immediately, which can actually backfire and I have seen it backfire so many times. If you haven't understood the landscape yet or consumed enough context, you are probably going to have this backfire on you. Another thing people do is some people play it too safe and just quietly do what they're told for months hoping that someone will notice. Some people try to replicate exactly what made them successful in their last role without actually adapting to the new environment or getting really clear on what success looks like in this company instead. Some people come in thinking this worked for me before, so I will just do it again, but every company has different politics, different rhythms, different definitions of what good looks like, and different goals as a whole company. There's also a really common trap of coming in with, quote unquote, the answer, so wanting to show you are smart by immediately pointing out what should change. And sometimes that can be useful, particularly if you're coming in in like a head of role or a director role. Of course, that is going to be incredibly useful. You should be looking at how much low hanging fruit there is in the first few months to be able to actually start solving some things and that break even point is going to be much closer. But that's going to be harder a lot earlier in your career where maybe you are coming in as a less highly skilled person. Like you have skills, you have training, but you are not necessarily an authority on the subject that you are working within. And if you haven't built trust yet in a company, that can land us criticism in the wrong way rather than contribution. And of course, any company should be happy taking criticism. Like criticism is important, criticism is constructive, criticism is what is going to get you towards your goals. But you need to be aware of the managerial style, what the company rewards, all of these different things so that you don't ruffle the wrong feathers. So, when I think about preparing for a job now, I think about it like this. There will always be a time before the break even point in any job. Your goal is to come prepared enough to do the job, but open enough to understand where you are, who holds influence, what the actual pain points are, and what success genuinely looks like in that environment. If you can go in thinking, my goal is to move from absorbing to contributing as fast and as thoughtfully as possible, you will find you start asking better questions and looking for leverage instead of just tasks. So, let's move on to the first 30 days. The headline is, learn everything. And I don't just mean learning your job description or where things live on the shared drive. This is about learning how the company actually works, how it operates, what its goals are. You are arriving with something incredibly valuable that you will lose very quickly if you're not intentional about, which is an external perspective. Within a few months, you will be completely indoctrinated into the way things are done, the internal language, the assumptions, the blind spots. I have seen it happen at every single one of my companies, it's natural because you are assimilating to the company. But it happens faster than you think, and you want to be able to provide value when you do have this fresh perspective. So, in this first month, your job is not just to learn, it's to observe. Notice what feels disconnected between what the company says about itself externally and how it operates internally. Obviously, you don't need to ruffle all the feathers in terms of this. But I'm talking about if the brand message is this internally, and you couldn't see that anywhere externally and therefore, none of your friends know that this company stands for this and they can big up that brand messaging, that's great. I'm not necessarily saying come in and like stomp all around the place and say you guys are inauthentic, all of that, and I'm not saying that would be helpful. But just alignment in terms of what's coming across externally versus what your aims are internally. I'd really recommend you pay attention to repetitive processes that also feel overly complicated, and spend time looking for moments where people seem frustrated but resigned, like, that's just how it is. Particularly if you're coming into a more senior role, I would really recommend writing all of this down privately and collecting your thoughts and insights and save it. I'll come back to where you can use this later. Right, another one of the most powerful things you can do in this first month is to ask a really good questions early. This has two benefits. First of all, it gets you clarity on things and you're trying to learn everything, right? Second of all, it shows that you are the type of person who is invested in their role, like they want to know the answers to these questions. You wouldn't believe how many people show up expecting to get all sorts of promotions and to live their dream career whilst doing the most bare minimum they possibly can in every role. I would really recommend asking your manager what success actually looks like in this role. Asks what they are personally struggling with in the team or the department. Ask what has historically not worked, particularly in the role you're going into or in the department. This shows you are thinking long-term. It shows you can manage the job beyond the day-to-day tasks that they are training you up on. You have a wider view of the company, you have a wider view of the team. So in your first meeting with your manager, right at the beginning of your first 30 days, I would ask to put a meeting in 30 days in advance to see how your role is going, discuss your first month, and then deliver them any of your insights that you feel appropriate to mention at this time. I would say, as part of this, most managers are constantly given problems without solutions. If you can align your observations you've made with your external perspective to the pain points you've identified from your questions, you will instantly become useful in a way that goes beyond your job title, and is much more likely to be seen as a route for promotion. I would really recommend using the meeting at that 30-day mark to share high-level observations. It's not a rant, it's not a long document, it's definitely not an investigation. Just themes and observations, and where possible, pair each observation with a potential solution or improvement, even if it's rough. It will benefit you so much, and a good manager will love this. You are offering a fresh set of eyes before you lose them, which is the most important part of starting at any company. And I do have to say, at this point, different managers will be different. You will at multiple times in your career get an insecure manager who is going to hold you back from certain things, or they feel threatened by you, or they feel insecure about their own role. You can still do this, you just need to be emotionally intelligent about how you do it, where you do it, the ways you push different things and understanding what gets them going, and what makes them feel even more insecure. Okay, your aim for the second 30 days then, is to start acting on what you've learned. By the time you've hit month two, you should be finding a rhythm within the role, you should be reaching the first parts of that break even point we spoke about earlier. And this is where a lot of people relax a bit and just focus on doing the job, which is fine, because you can get back to living your normal life because you probably can have more plans in the evening and all of that because you're not learning so much in the day, you're so exhausted and trying to make sure you're performing at this role. But this is also where you can really start to stand out. So, if you want to do extraordinary things in your career, you have to do the things that other people aren't doing. You absolutely, in any job, I am not going to tell you, oh, you can't sit back and just do the job. Of course, you can. But if you want to get to places that other people aren't, you have to do things that other people aren't. Therefore, that means when you are settling into a job role like this, you have to understand what above and beyond is. And most of the time, you will not get to the next rung until you prove that you can operate at the next rung. And as unfair as you think this is, it is the reality, and you are much better off playing that game and doing it for yourself, rather than for the company than not doing it at all if you want progression. So, this second month is the phase where you start acting on some of the insights that you've gathered in the first month. Not all of them, just one thing that will make a difference to your manager's life, and that is the crux. How can you make your manager's life easier? That should be what you are asking yourself over and over again. So this could be streamlining a process that your team does every week. It could be introducing a better way to take notes, to track approvals, or to communicate updates. It could be fixing something tiny that everyone complains about but no one has taken ownership of. You just need to show that you can observe, that you can think critically, and then you can take action. Managers remember people who reduce friction and make things easier, clearer, or calmer. Even if your manager hates you, if you make their life easier, they are much more likely to start to like you. They are much more likely to start to think, oh god, I really can't deny this person that much longer, like they make my life easier. And that is what will get you a promotion. And I can tell you from experience that making your manager's life easier is so much more valuable than being the loudest or busiest person in the room. And this is also the phase where you can start positioning yourself as someone who goes beyond execution. I'm not saying that you should completely let your life be run by your job and go above and beyond on everything and completely burn yourself out. Don't do that, but understand what you are doing for yourself. Understand what you are doing for yourself that is going to get you to the next level of your role. And as I've said before, to get to places that other people aren't, you have to do things that other people aren't. So, if that's not you, fine. If that is you, show that you are someone who doesn't just do tasks, but genuinely understands why those tasks exists, and questions and improves processes. Also having a view of the company beyond just your individual role, shows that you can be the type of person that is promoted to leadership. And this really reminds me of something that Vanessa King O'rie, the Google MD, said in her episode of this podcast, about taking on the jobs or projects no one else wants to do. Because if you can turn around an entire project that everyone else has let slide, you will do so much more for your reputation at the company, rather than having a small impact on like the cool project that everyone wants to be on. I'm just going to put that snippet in here for you because I feel like it'll be very helpful. Try and do the things that no one else wants to do. Mhm. So everyone thinks that their career is going to jump forward by being on the most important project, the biggest, shiniest, most visible project and all of those things.
[13:02]For bosses, there's always some stuff that's like left at the bottom that you're just like, oh God, I'll deal with that. I need someone on that, but I don't know who it is and it's not profitable yet. And the anecdote that I always give there is, people ask particularly about the GQ thing and being, you know, in every single one of my roles, I've been first and only in some way or another. What they say is, but how did you become the fastest person to be promoted to publisher in British history and the youngest and all of those things? The piece that's often missed around that story is, I was not in the hierarchy. So there's a publisher who'd been there for donkey's years. There was an associate publisher, below that there was boom, boom, boom. There's a master head that ranks the order and everyone sort of moves up in a nice, you know, orderly British line.
[13:53]I'd come into the organization way down the master head, and there was a biannual publication called GQ style, which was basically a pain in everyone's butt. It happened twice a year and it snuck up on everyone. There was no publisher on it. There was no team on it. It was the editor at the time who was a huge character and very important pet project, and everyone sort of did it because they had to. There was no energy around it. And so I said everybody was chasing becoming associate publisher and what could they do and they wanted the shiniest things. And I said, why don't you let me run GQ style and run it as a business for the first time, separate to GQ. Um, I would love to be the publisher of that. I mean, I was like, this was pretty audacious. I was like a young buck. They were just like, uh, that's not what we normally do, but I said, I don't need any resource. I just need, I can bring people along with me, but I do need titles for people. So if you allow me to give a parallel title to certain people in the team, I can galvanize energy around this and I can turn it into a money-maker. And I managed to for no extra investment, turn it into a highly profitable part of the business that then everyone wanted to be a part of because you could suddenly have these elevated titles and go out and meet with Chanel directly and blah, blah, blah and what have you. And so I tend to go for the low hanging fruit because there's less of a legacy to prove and anything that I did was super visible because it was such a low base. I will say as well, Vanessa's episode is amazing for anyone in a corporate job, so if you haven't listened to that already, I will add the link in the description. Okay, so for the final 30 days then, your keywords are feedback, reflection, and positioning. The last month before when is likely your probation review, which for most people is three months, is all about feedback. And this is where a lot of people get uncomfortable because it feels scary, but it's one of the biggest differentiators between people who progress quickly and people who plateau. Criticism or feedback a lot of the time in school and in education generally, was terrifying. Like if someone went out like you wouldn't necessarily invite that from a teacher because it felt scary, it felt like getting yourself into trouble for no reason. That is not the case with corporate jobs. That is not the case with most jobs generally. Being someone who can take criticism and who can take feedback is the difference between being someone who can be a leader and not be a leader. Because you absolutely need to be able to take feedback to be a leader. So it has to be something that you invite and you get very comfortable with asking for and acting on. You should not be walking into your 90-day review unsure of how things are going. You need to seek feedback before then. Obviously, at that first 30 days meeting, I suggested that you put in with your manager, you should have already got a little bit of a sense of what's going well and what's maybe going to need some work. I would recommend continuously from that point to probation checking in on those specific things because nothing at your probation review should really be a surprise. Secondly, a really important part of this is that it shows self-awareness, which managers value far more than perfectionism. Asking for feedback is not going to plant seeds of doubt in your manager's head. If anything, it should show willingness to improve and commitment to the job. And I would also strongly recommend preparing for your probation like it's a presentation, even if it's informal, or you're at a small company. Like come with examples of what you've learned, of what you've observed, of what you've improved, any early results you've seen from your changes or your role within the company, and the path you'd like to set yourself on at the company. You are not bragging, you are not begging, you are telling the story of your first 90 days. You are taking control of your career so they don't need to take control of your career for you. In fact, if you're interested in learning more about this, I would really recommend listening to my episode with speaking coach Susie Ashfield. Before you go into that meeting to help prep for it. She's so good at explaining how to turn your progress into a story that someone will actually want to listen to and how to present that confidently. I think it's also important to remember at that 90-day point that most formalized feedback or reviews become annual after this point. And that's why it's so key to make a good impression because you might not talk about your progressing for another year. You want to make sure it is in the right place in their heads. I would really recommend you make sure before the meeting ends that you confirm when your next review will be, so you know what you're working towards. And also particularly in some smaller companies, they don't have a lot of formalized reviews and that can be harmful for your career progression. It's not something you should be trying to get out of. It's something you should be trying to make sure is in the diary, so that you have set aside time for your own progression. As always with these episodes, I wanted to speak to an expert on the topic, so I spoke to the founder of Fuck Being Humble, which is a women's work community, Stephanie Saw Williams, about how people can be more intentional in the early stages of a role and why the first few months are such a powerful opportunity to define how you want to work and where you want to get to within your career. Really great place to start is asking yourself what words do you want to be associated with in the workplace or known for? And then how can you marry up your actions to show that? Because I think it's a really important reminder, not just telling people you could do something, but showing that you can do something too. And on in that similar vein, I think so often people wait for permission before they step forward and make a good impression. And actually my advice to people is don't wait to be invited, invite yourself. Think about how you could be adding value to other people, to the company, towards the company's goals and make sure that you're not getting hung up on feeling like you need to be an expert. See yourself as a contributor, so it doesn't matter how much experience you have. See yourself as a contributor that has got something to say that has got valuable things to share and don't get caught up on needing to be the smartest or cleverest or most experienced person in the room. Another thing that I think's really important is to self-promote all year round and not just before your performance reviews. It's so important to give regular updates, all the status updates that you're doing all year round so that people see the progress you're making as and when it's happening. This is especially important if you are working remotely, because if people can't see you doing the work, you have to make sure that you're communicating that message. And not just promoting your own professional successes, also be promoting the company's successes through platforms like LinkedIn. I have a contact of mine who was promoting the company's successes and as a result of doing that, someone at one of the global offices invited her to take part in one of the global projects. So she was able to build her reputation even virtually through connections that she'd never met before because she was clearly demonstrating her passion towards seeing the company grow. And I think on that note, it's so important to understand what the company is trying to work towards and not just what your own professional goals are. So you'll probably be hired with a job specification, but it's really important to ask your line manager, senior decision makers, the leaders of the company, what does success look like? How are we measuring good this year so that you can make sure that you're talking about your contributions, not just in relation to your job specification, but also in relation towards where the company's going. So that's something that will make a really good impression when you are working with new people. And then I think it's also so important to build intentional relationships with people. I think a lot of people when they work full-time think they don't need to network or they don't have to work that hard because they're in a company and they're looked after, but it's a massive oversight. And the more people you have backing you up, advocating for you, saying your name when you're not in the room, the more opportunities you're likely to access. So identify who those influential people are in your career, in your industry, and try and find ways to connect with them and build up a mutually beneficial relationship so that you have other people championing you. And I think what's really important as we go through our careers is to make sure that you keep checking in on what you care about. I've noticed a big shift at the moment where companies are not expecting people necessarily to follow a career ladder form anymore. They're kind of encouraging you to take charge of your own progression, but a lot of people freak out about that because they don't know where they want to go or what they want to do. So, really simple thing that I recommend people doing is creating a career bucket list. All the things you'd love to achieve one day without timelines or goals, but just making sure that you have them in the forefront of your mind so that when you're having conversations about your progression, you're steering and you're molding the career that you want to experience instead of being put on a track and realizing 10, 15 years down the line that it no longer aligns with you. I also had so many thoughts on this topic that didn't quite fit into the structure of this episode. So, before we end, I've also written down my top tips for your first 90 days that I have learned myself from hiring for over 10 years now. Okay, first, being likeable is not the same as being valuable. Obviously, you don't want to be difficult. But if your main goal in the first three months is to be liked, you will often avoid asking good questions or challenging bad processes, which can be antithetical to being good at your job. So, remember that respect and trust matter more than being the office clown. That doesn't mean you can't tell a few jokes, I love telling a few jokes at work. I love being a fun person to be around at work, but it shouldn't be the center point of what you're bringing to the company. Second, your calendar is part of your job. If you let your calendar get filled entirely by other people, you are signaling that your time has no strategic value. Even early on, I would really recommend blocking time for thinking, learning, and preparation. And beyond the inevitable intro coffee meetings that you're going to need to have, don't let your calendar get filled with meetings that should have been an email. I will say the caveat to that is if you are junior and you are not coming in with a certain level of skill necessarily. And I'm not saying you're not skilled, but I'm saying that you're not necessarily high up enough to dictate how things should run in a certain department. You are probably going to have to do more meetings than you want to do because that is how your manager likes to run things. Suggestions are still important at the right time in terms of could we make this more productive, but you don't want to come across as someone who just wants to get things out of their calendar. So, there's a fine line to walk. Thirdly, do not assume your manager knows what you're doing. This one is big. Doing great work quietly does not equal being seen as effective. You need to communicate progress, learning, and impact in a clear way to your manager. It is not their job to know what you are doing all the time. They have their own job as well. Fourth, solve problems that feel slightly beneath your role. The fastest way to earn trust is to remove friction that everyone else has accepted as normal. People who make life easier, particularly for their manager, become indispensable very quickly. Fifth, I would really recommend you write things down. So keep a running document of what you're learning, what's confusing, what's working, what you've improved. When review time comes around anytime within the company, this becomes absolute gold. I think one of the biggest gaps in education is that we are never taught how to actually succeed in a workplace. And I feel like this is one of those invisible skills that changes everything once you understand it. Your first 90 days are not about being flawless at all, and you're going to make mistakes and you are going to get work ons. Like that is the whole reason for asking for them, but they are about learning fast, they are about building trust, and they are about showing how you think. If you do that well, you will give yourself so much more control over your career than most people will realize you are ever able to actually affect yourself. If this episode was helpful, please send it to someone who has just started a new job or is about to start a new job. And as always, please make sure you are subscribed. That means that new episodes will land exactly where you want them every Monday morning so that you can work on your career and your life. And I will see you next week.
