Lead Upwards

CHAPTER SIXDefine Your Goals and Align with Your CEO and Board on Success

Congratulations, you've got the job—now the fun part begins. It's time to create your success plan for crushing it in your first 90 days on the job.

You're in your leadership role and you're ready to get started. Whether you're a seasoned startup leader or in a first‐time leadership role, every new “at bat” requires us to prepare for the task at hand: namely, setting up our first 90 days for success. Many startups require leadership candidates to present their 90‐day plan during the interview process. If you've made one of these, that's a great step. Even so, you'll still likely need to completely overhaul it once you join the company and see all the fun stuff under the hood that you had no idea was there! I've heard this referred to by a startup founder as “finding out where the bodies are buried.”

Before we get into how to build your 90‐day plan, set goals, and work with your CEO, board, executive team, and reports to be successful, let's talk about the purpose of your first 90 days. It might seem obvious to some—if you're on a quarterly system, you should probably measure effectiveness in the first quarter for a new startup leader. Still, it's useful to unpack the logic for getting an executive ramped (and ramping yourself!) out of the gate.

YOUR FIRST 90 DAYS: ONBOARDING TO YOUR NEW ROLE AND PROVING YOUR VALUE TO THE ORGANIZATION

Too few startup joiners give enough attention to succeeding ...