The First 90 Days as a New Executive: The Playbook
The first 90 days in an executive role are not about proving yourself. They are about positioning yourself. The pressure new executives feel to make a big move in the first month is usually the worst possible advice they could follow. The professionals who set up a strong run at the executive level take the first three months to listen, learn, and build the case for what comes next.
The first 90 days as a new executive is one of the most consequential windows of a career. Get it right and the next two years compound. Get it wrong and you spend the rest of the tenure trying to recover the credibility you spent in the wrong places early.
If I could redo my own first 90 days in an executive role, I would release the pressure to start doing and take the proper time to immerse myself in the business. The three moves below are what I focused on and what I would do more deliberately the second time around.
Why the First 90 Days Set the Tone
Those first three months shape three things at once. How you build the executive relationships you will rely on for the rest of the tenure. How you are perceived by your board, your peers, and the team you inherited. How quickly you can drive impact, because impact at the executive level requires context.
The mistake most new executives make is treating the first 90 days as an extended onboarding. They show up. They read the materials. They wait for the work to find them. Then they spend month four scrambling to deliver something visible to prove they belong.
The professionals who set up a strong tenure do something different. They run the first 90 days as a deliberate campaign with three distinct moves.
1. Run a Listen and Learn Tour Before You Make Any Changes
Before initiating changes, focus on understanding the business as it truly operates, beyond org charts and onboarding presentations. The published version of how a company runs is almost never the actual version. The actual version lives in the friction points, the workarounds, and the things people are hesitant to say out loud.
Three rituals I would build into the first 30 days.
A series of one-on-ones with every direct report. Forty-five minutes each, minimum. The agenda is them, not you. "Walk me through your scope. What is working. What is not working. What would you change if you could change anything. What is the one thing you think I should know that nobody is going to tell me." Take notes. Patterns will emerge across conversations that single ones hide.
A series of conversations with every peer on the executive team. Thirty minutes each, in the first six weeks. The questions are different. "What is your team most focused on. Where does our function show up in your work. Where do we cause friction. What would make us stronger partners." These conversations build the cross-functional trust that makes executive work possible.
A series of conversations with two or three customers or stakeholders external to the company. Often skipped, often the most useful. The view from outside the building usually contradicts the view from inside in important ways.
Three rules for the listening period.
Listen for what is repeated. The themes that surface across multiple conversations are the real priorities. A concern raised by one person might be personal. A concern raised by five is structural.
Listen for what is avoided. The topics people will not discuss directly are often the ones that matter most. Inherited team dynamics, political friction, decisions that were made for reasons nobody wants to name. Notice the avoidance. Do not push on it in the first month, but log it.
Listen for the language. The exact phrasing leadership uses about priorities is the framing you should adopt in your own work. Senior leaders track when their language is being internalized.
The hardest part of the listening period is resisting the urge to act. The instinct is to make changes that prove you are leading. The strongest move is to listen first, build the case, then change what actually needs changing.
2. Get Clear on the Business Levers and What Success Looks Like
The second move is the one that turns listening into strategy. At the executive level, your role is to move the business. That requires clarity on what actually drives growth: revenue, margin, customer base, productivity, brand equity. The combination depends on the company.
In my first 90 days at every executive role, I spend extra time understanding the channel performance, where we are winning, and where focus would create disproportionate impact. The questions are unglamorous and essential.
Where does growth actually come from? Not in theory. In the last twelve months of actual results. Which channels, products, segments, or markets generated the gains? Which generated the drags?
What moves revenue, margin, and momentum? Identify the two or three levers that, if pulled correctly, create disproportionate outcomes. These are the levers your work should be biased toward.
Where is the company losing money or attention it should not be? Underperforming initiatives. Bloated processes. Recurring meetings that have outlived their purpose. The places where the business is leaking value are often the places where the fastest wins live.
What is the leadership team most worried about? Listen for the risks senior leaders surface unprompted. Those are the risks they want the new executive to solve.
What is success defined as by the people who will evaluate me? The board, the CEO, the head of the business. Their definitions of a successful first year may differ. Get all of them on the record explicitly within the first 60 days.
I spend a meaningful amount of time in the numbers early in any new role. The numbers do not lie about where the business actually is, even when the narrative around the business is doing something different. The professionals who skip this step often spend their first year working on what they assumed mattered, only to find out at the annual review that the priorities were different.
3. Build Relationships That Make the Work Easier Later
The third move is the one most new executives underestimate. Your effectiveness at this level is directly tied to your ability to operate cross-functionally. Early on, prioritize building trust with key stakeholders across the organization.
Three categories of relationships to invest in deliberately in the first 90 days.
The executive peers. These are the people whose alignment you will need on every meaningful decision. Cross-functional partnership at the executive level is what unlocks speed. Without it, even the best strategies stall.
The next level of leadership on your own team. The directors and senior managers below your direct reports. They run the day-to-day. They will know whether your strategy is realistic. They are also your succession bench.
The senior leaders adjacent to the work, even outside the executive team. The board chair, the founders if they are still in the business, the long-tenured employees who carry institutional memory. The relationships that look optional in month one are the ones that decide your hardest moments in year two.
The investment is light in the first 90 days. A coffee. A working lunch. A short conversation about how they have seen the business evolve. The relationships will earn their return when you need them later.
Collaboration at the executive level is what unlocks speed. Without it, even the best strategies stall.
The Bottom Line
The first 90 days as a new executive comes down to three moves. Run a deliberate listen and learn tour before initiating changes, so you understand the business as it truly operates. Get clear on the levers that drive growth and the executive definition of success. Build the cross-functional relationships that will make every later decision faster.
Simplify the first 90 days into a phrase: listen well, prioritize quickly, build relationships. Get that right, and the next two years take care of themselves.
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Want the full executive onboarding framework? Inside Work Lunch, the Strategic Thinking masterclass covers the playbook senior leaders use to design their first 90 days. [Join Work Lunch →]
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Jeanelle Teves is the Chief Commercial Officer at Bugaboo and founder of Work Lunch, a career platform for ambitious professionals who want the playbook, not the pep talk.
