The Ultimate Guide on 30-60-90-Day Plan For Managers

Taking up a new manager role in an organization is exciting. The new opportunity comes with a lot of perks and a zeal to prove yourself. But it also comes with anxiety and uncertainty. Are you going to be an effective leader and deliver superior results for your business? Most importantly, do you know everything you need to be able to deliver effectively in your new role? The most effective way for a leader to create results and build culture is to adopt a rolling focus, 30 60 90 day plan for managers.

This plan is designed to help new managers focus on the 3 elements: people, process, and product, and help them prioritize areas of emphasis in the first 90 days. One of the key ingredients for a successful plan is the ability to define clear and realistic goals. Our first section clearly guides you through developing clear, relevant, and measurable smart goals.

Art Of Goal Setting

While the plan’s main objective is to help you transition smoothly to your new role, it should also push you to perform better and raise the bar for yourself. Hence the plan should consist of practical, measurable, and focused goals for you and your team.

To write challenging and realistic goals for each of the 30 60 90 day periods, follow the approach below:

Identify

Identify the key objectives of the business. What are the targets, milestones, and strategies needed to accomplish those objectives? How would these targets translate into objectives and timelines for your team? It helps you to align yourself with your management and business objectives, and also understand the strategic initiatives of the organization. Find the quantifiable parameters, that allow you to gauge your success. For eg, for a sales team, the number of sales made in a month is a definite and quantifiable target.

Classify

Classify the above goals into four categories

1. Learning Goals Learning goals help you absorb information about your organization: its culture, people, policies, competition, strengths, and weaknesses. These goals list the various facets you need to be aware of regarding your role, organization, team, etc. Being informed is critical for your success, as it allows you to make better and more informed decisions. Not to mention that getting familiar with the company’s culture and people, helps you create better work relationships. Hence the more you know, the better you are!
2. Initiative Goals These goals are the various leadership decisions you plan to take in the early days of your role. Based on your understanding of the business objectives, the company’s competencies, and competition; you need to identify a few important strategic initiatives which will help drive the objectives and performance of your business. This can be as big as suggesting a different strategy, or as small as changing your team’s work process to make it more efficient. These initiatives are what make you stand out in your organization.
3. Personal Goals It is important to develop good professional relationships with team members and senior management. So, ensuring that you know your team members and other important stakeholders in the business is important. Choosing a mentor and ensuring you understand success factors for yourself in the company are equally important.
4. Performance Goals These are the most important quantifiable goals. They describe the targets you wish to achieve regarding the basic responsibilities of your job. Based on your overall understanding of your organization’s vision, and how your role impacts the business, you need to set goals that increase your efficiency and contribution to the organization.

Prioritize

Once you have listed and classified all your goals, they must be arranged in the order of their priority. For each of the 30,60 and 90 day periods, the listed goals must be prioritized, based on the business objectives, time constraints, and feasibility Now that you know how to define and quantify realistic goals for 30 60 90 day plans, let us see what kind of goals go into different periods of the plan.

The 30 Day Plan

Be A Sponge, And Absorb As Much Information As Possible!

The 30-day period of your 30 60 90 plans is all about familiarizing oneself with as many aspects of your role and the organization as possible. Many managers are eager to get started and get into execution mode too soon. The first 30 days period requires a little bit of patience. The focus of the first 30 days should be all about absorbing and learning about the business, environment, and team as much as possible.

Spend time understanding your team’s existing strategy, and past triumphs. Understand their dynamics and recognize their strengths and weaknesses. Focus on your company’s vision the work ethic and the environment in the organization. The aim is to learn the exact purpose of your role, how it fits in the entire machinery of the organization, and how to perform it optimally.

Some examples of the different goals that can be a part of the 30 day plan are,

1. Learning Goals
   • Study the organization’s vision, mission, and strategy.
   • Learn about the company hierarchy, culture, and code of conduct.
   • Meet with the senior executives of the company.
   • Understand the company’s target audience and the product/service it provides.
   • Learn about the existing team and their expectations.
   • Meet your manager and learn about their expectations.
   • Read up on the company’s existing strategy, past triumphs, and past failures.
   • Learn about all the different departments of the organization, and how they contribute to the organization.
   • Research on the competition of your organization, and how your department can help the company to get ahead.
2. Initiative Goals
   • Run an initial stage experimental strategy, in consultation with your manager.
3. Performance Goals
   • Maintain the team’s current performance output.
4. Personal Goals
   • Interact with each team member, and senior management, and get to know them better.
   • Identify a mentor from senior management to take advice on a periodic basis to ensure you are on the right track and in alignment with company objectives

The 60 Day Plan

Become A Contributor And Let The Team And Management Get Confidence That You Are Ready To Get Actively Started On the Execution

At the end of 60 days of your 30 60 90 day plan, you should have already established a positive image for yourself. People must know you as a contributor, team player, and good listener. You should be able to share your ideas freely, speak more at meetings, contribute to the overall progress, and help improve the team’s functioning. You should increase your workload, and ramp up your personal progress.

The following goals can be a part of your 60 day plan,

1. Learning Goals
   • Learn about how to optimize the processes of your team and business.
   • Understand the entire product roadmap, and identify key strategic areas where you can contribute.
2. Initiative Goals
   • Devise a strategy or define a roadmap based on the business objectives and get consensus from Senior Management and team members.
   • Based on the approved strategy, spearhead the execution strategy by initiating many projects from scratch.
   • Take more responsibility in current initiatives
3. Performance Goals
   • Increase the team’s productivity.
   • Smooth out the kinks in the team’s workflow.
   • Take at least one existing project to successful completion.
4. Personal Goals
   • Develop relationships outside of your team.
   • Actively organize team bonding events like team lunches or Fun Fridays, to increase team bonding.

The 90 Day Plan

Become A Leader Who Is Well Trusted And Respected

By the end of 90 days, you should really be feeling one with the organization. You should have a firm grasp of your role and the work culture around you. Personally, you should be familiar with everyone on your team and all the stakeholders that are related to your business. You must build on what you have learned in the first 60 days and work more towards execution. People must view you as a leader, and be comfortable with sharing ideas and experiences with you. Also by this time, you can take up projects outside of your roles, and collaborate more with the other teams.

The following targets can go in the 90 day plan,

1. Learning Goals
   • Take note of the key learnings that come from an analysis of the major successes and failures of the execution from the last 60 days.
2. Initiative Goals
   • Initiate a collaboration between cross-functional teams of the organization, and spearhead various initiatives
   • Define new KPIs for the team.
   • Now that you know the current policies adequately, you can propose changes to them for more effective business practices
3. Performance Goals
   • Deliver superior results on the projects that you head.
   • Ramp up the output of your team by 10 percent.
   • Perform better on the business’s feedback.
   • Hire all the vacant positions on the team
4. Personal Goals
   • Join an activity club or group in the organization.

Notice how with each period, the number of learning goals decreases, and the number of performance and initiative goals increases. Hence a 30-60 90-day action plan helps you to smoothly transition from a new manager to an integral part of the organization, with the greatest efficiency.

30 60 90 Day Plan Template Examples

Below you can find some 30 60 90 Day Plan Examples in PowerPoint Templates and Google Slides Templates to effectively articulate your plan to senior management.

1. This is a 30 60 90 day sample plan for new managers who have just been onboarded in the organization.

2. With this template you can highlight the first 90 day priorities to the senior management.

3. This is a visually appealing example to showcase your 30 60 90 day plan in an effective manner.

4. This is a sample 30 60 90 day plan for a newly onboarded sales manager.

5. We have compiled an extensive collection of different ways of showing your 30 60 90 day plan.  

Conclusion

The 30 60 90 Day Plan Templates allow you to decide on the key priorities and the action plan for the quarter. Using a 30-60-90-day plan for manager’s examples, you can effectively showcase your understanding of business and goals to senior management.