by Guest Blogger, Shivani York
“You don’t build a business. You build people, and people build the business.” – Zig Ziglar.
Setting up your team for success is a leader’s most important and critical role. Within that domain, there is no greater way to support the people working in your team, than from the day they start with you.
A well thought out 30-60-90 plan supported by milestones and resources drives accountability for the newly hired people in an organization, sets the right expectations and carves a path for team and individual success. It lets you do what you need to do as a leader – set up your teams for success. Having a plan also indicates to the person starting, that their success is taken seriously and results matter within this organization.
As a huge bonus side effect of a well laid out plan from the start of the employee’s journey (starting at day 0 or 1), you will have a happier, more engaged and productive employee. And done repeatedly for every role, you will be one step closer to building a Self Managing Business.
So how do you create a successful 30-60-90 plan?
These critical 3 steps should be personalized for each role in the organization.
STEP 1: PLAN CREATION
The plan should allows the employee to track progress while targeting established milestones along the way. The plan should include:
- Incremental activities with set milestone; i.e. 30 day activities with milestones, 60 day activities with milestones and 90 day activities with milestones.
- Since the first 30 days are critical to assimilate the employee into the organization, the most amount of detail should go into the first 30 days.
- The first 30 days should offer a first week with a key milestone at the end of the week. It should offer the employee names of key people to meet (along with introductions where needed), access to core documentation and core processes. The first week should end with the employee giving a brief presentation at the end of the week on their progress and to date, his or her understanding of the role and what is expected of them.
- The end of the first 30 days should include a presentation on the assessment from their perspective of their core function, any gaps they see in their role/ team/ workflow as well as completion of a small project. Doing this in the first month ensures that you are utilizing every new person to give an assessment of gaps that exist while they still have an outsider’s view and are looking at their role as a management consultant generally would.
- The end of 60 and and 90 days should each include key targets (measurables) that are tied to a result or goal. This could be a larger project that is broken down into two milestones that the employee is tasked with completing at the 60 and 90 day markers.STEP 2: ESTABLISH OVERALL ROLE & HOW THE NEW EMPLOYEE FITS INTO THE COMPANY TEAM/VISION
Once a plan is laid out, you will need to lay it out in a simple one pager so the employee can follow it easily. Along with the plan, you will need to have a “555″ laid out so that the employee gets a bigger picture of their role and its impact to the organization.
555 stands for:
- 5 key tasks that this person is responsible for in their role
- 5 core values of the organization and
- 5 rocks (i.e their goals from their plan you’ve created for the first 90 days).
Each rock/ goal should be able to be measured so that you can track progress and the employee feels accountable.
Why is this important?
First, because each role should have clear accountability of the employee’s responsibilities. It is the only way to create a position where each employee can feel independent in their role and have clarity.
Second, the core values are what define you as an organization so it is critical that every new employee (or in fact, every employee) internalizes them. Making the 5 core values a part of their role ensures you do that at start and at every performance review.
Lastly, rocks are your measurables – the last part in 555 – it is how you’ll ensure that the three month plan you laid out can be measured along the way.
STEP 3: COMMUNICATE, REMOVE BLOCKERS AND TRACK PROGRESS
Now that you’ve done the set up work to set up 30-60-90 days, align the person’s role with a 555 plan, you need to communicate – and often! Research has proven that people need to hear something seven times before they hear it for the first time. So, the last part of a successful 30-60-90 day plan is to set expectations with the employee, and communicate what success looks like. The hiring manager for the group should create a rhythm such as weekly individual one-on-one meetings for the first 100 days with the following agenda:
- Review the 30-60-90 plan and progress against the goals
- Remove any blockers
- Review the values and any questions and gather feedback from the person
At the end of the meeting, the hiring manager should outline the next steps to remove any blockers, set up any further trainings that the person needs to continue to be successful and make any necessary introductions within the team to ensure the person in fully integrated into the company and is able to remove blockers more easily in the future.
Integrating every new employee in this manner will help ensure that you will eventually gain more control, have improved retention and increased employee satisfaction with positive morale across the board – in short, the ability to operate a self managing business. Remember, taking this time now will have a multiplier effect in the future, and give you dividends tenfold in the future as you manage a self run, highly efficient and accountable team!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shivani York is a business & culture transformation leader, and a growth hacker. She provides simple, practical strategies to transforming and creating growth engines across organizations. For over a decade, Shivani has been helping entrepreneurs and their leadership teams succeed, with proven successes turning multiple businesses around to growth and scale. Currently, she is the CEO and Founder of BrandPartner Group, a consulting firm that identifies gaps and impediments to organizational growth to help businesses become the best versions of themselves.