The Question

From a reader · introduced by Hannah Park-Lee

A reader who has just been appointed group HR director at a listed firm wrote in. Her board has asked for her 90-day plan. She has the framework, she has the workstreams, she has the slides. She is not convinced the document is doing what the board thinks it is doing.

The Answer

By Hannah Park-Lee

She is right. The 90-day plan, as it is now generally written, is a performance of legibility. It tells the board that the new hire has read the books and can use the format. It does not tell anyone what they will actually do, because by month three the actual work has not yet revealed itself. The honest plan has two phases. The first hundred days is for finding out which of the firm’s stated problems are real, which are proxies for harder problems, and which were invented by your predecessor to manage the board’s anxiety. You cannot promise outcomes in this phase because you are still confirming the questions. The second phase is the work itself, which begins around month four and is the thing you should be measured against. The mistake is treating the first phase as if it were already the second. Boards prefer the comfort of an early plan because it lets them stop worrying. Resist the comfort. Ask for two phases. Give them a clear date in month four when the actual plan will arrive.

The Margin

By Stefano Bellini

From Milan, an observation on the same point but from the structural side. The 90-day plan is also a thing the organisation needs from you, regardless of whether it is useful for the work. It is the artefact by which colleagues decide whether to bring problems to you yet, or to wait. It is a credentialing document. Treat it as such. The honest content goes in the four-month plan. The 90-day plan should be a short, dignified statement of intent and a calendar of one-on-ones.

The Week

• Three of you wrote in about the McKinsey reorganisation. Hannah is writing on it for the May 27th edition.
• Reading: Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind. The chapter on offloading cognition into space is the one we keep coming back to.
• A reader who has stepped back from her CEO role asked for advice on the transition to her chair role at a different organisation. Our advice: chair the meetings you have inherited as they are for the first year. Resist all suggestions to reshape them. The temptation to be useful is the new chair’s primary occupational hazard.

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