How to write the 30/60/90 day plan to build trust with your manager
Congratulations! You’ve landed a new job to build and run a team. Now it is crucial to build trust with your manager. Of course, your manager trusts you already. At least to some extent. Otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten the job. But: You still need to build more trust. With trust, you earn the freedom to bring all the great ideas into action that you plan on doing as a leader. So let’s start building trust.
Let’s write a 30/60/90 day plan.
I want to share with you my experiences building and leading 3 User Experience Research (UXR) teams and implementing them in the new org.
How to write a 30/60/90 day plan
Writing such a plan is often requested by managers. But in case your manager doesn’t ask you to write one: Even better. Write one regardless and share it with your manager. You will show proactivity (which is always great!), strategic thinking and have a plan to execute against.
Break the first 90 days down into 3 areas (Learning, Planning, Contribution). Each area then focuses on the elements “learning, performance & personal”.
The first 30 days focus on learning. Therefore, your main priority will be learning, but you should also think about some performance as well as personal aspects. Performance could be linked to e.g. „have all hiring done“. A personal aspect could be “get feedback from the manager”.
The next 60 days are all about planning. Again, think about learning, performance and personal aspects. Your priority will shift more to performance while you will continue learning.
90 days are all about contribution: You want to be able to contribute to the org by having your team up and running, team values in place and already add some clear value to the company. In my case, this means that I want to have generated some actionable insights that can be used by PM, design, marketing etc.
As you see, the focus on the topics learning, performance & personal shifts over time. Let me illustrate this:
Let me give you some concrete examples
In the first 30 days, you want to focus on understanding the new company. You will spend time getting to know the stakeholders & understanding their pains. You will also want to understand the company and processes, understand what works well and which problems exist. In my case, it was crucial for me to understand the ongoing research efforts.
The 60 days are then dedicated to planning: Define roles & responsibilities in your team. Complete hiring. Define the way of working. In my case, it meant to have first research projects running and the user feedback process was established.
90 days focus on contribution: Your domain is set up with clear responsibilities and go-to people. In my case, first projects lead to actionable insights that have been used by stakeholders. The research team is the owner of research activities.
Share your plan with your manager
Once you have finalised your plan, share it with your manager. This is a very important part, as you will get your manager’s view on your plan. Do you share the same viewpoint? Are there any differences? Does your manager see other focus areas?
This is a really good exercise for both of you to align and it will avoid misunderstandings. Regard this as a chance to share your views and discuss why you want to proceed that way.
Execute on the plan and share your status & learnings
Once you are aligned, be sure to use the plan as a tool throughout the next 3 months.
- Guidance: You will get flooded with new pieces of information in the first 3 months, and the plan will help you stay on track & focused.
- Trust: Be sure to include the plan in your 1:1s with your manager to give visibility of your work and to build trust. Your manager will see that you deliver on your promises, which is an excellent state to be in.
But what happens if I don’t meet everything I put on paper?
As with all plans, chances are high that you won’t meet everything you planned. We work in an agile environment, the only constant is change. So don’t worry if things change. But be transparent about it with your manager as early as possible.
Nobody likes bad last minute surprises. So be transparent.
So: Once you can foresee that you won’t meet something you planned to achieve, don’t hesitate but share this with your manager. Be clear about why you won’t achieve it. This will give you more trust, as your manager learns that there are no bad surprises with you and that you don’t shy away when problems occur.
