Sprint To The Starting Line: 90-day Planning Tips

A useful exercise especially when starting a new venture or new job is to have a written plan for your first 90 days.  Obama was very proscriptive about his first 90 days.  In fact, in order to send the right tone for your leadership administration – the first 90 days are critical.  I fundamentally believe that your 90 day plan should be posted and communicated to your employees, your Board, and executive team within the first week.  The plan should include:

Financial metrics – an overview of your top 3-5 key performance indicators (KPIs) for your business as well as the budget number.  Make the financial message easy and memorable for anyone to understand.

Initiatives list – list your top 3-6 initiatives; these are key to implement as part of your business.  Those should be bubbled up as part of your regular strategic planning process.  Some tips are here.

Detailed list of tactics by month – list out the top activities that your team and you are going to accomplish each month

I am thoroughly convinced that most of the success with running a business is planning (and the rest is luck).