30-60-90 Day Plans Are Dead

Businesses Now Expect Immediate Value - Here’s How Execs Can Deliver

👋 Hi Technocrats,

Today I offer you my Immediate Impact Framework (IIF) as an alternative to the now (almost) dead 30-60-90 day exec plans we all have to write. Because let’s face it, the 30-60-90 barely offers any value anymore and needs to go away. I hope you can check out IIF and that you get a ton of use out of it in your next role.

Cheers and keep the shark swimming! 🦈

Bobby

Most top executives have spent their careers building 30-60-90 day plans when they join a new organization — in fact, its often priority #1.

I know I’ve definitely written my share of them.

In fact, it’s fairly common even during interview process to be asked to develop a 30-60-90 plan. Businesses want to see how an exec thinks and how well they understand things.

But while a 30-60-90 is a good interview tool the typical business environment has changed so much in the last 10 to 15 years that the traditional 30-60-90 no longer works.

I’d go so far as to say the 30-60-90 day planning framework is (almost) dead.

Why the 30-60-90 No Longer Works

Here’s why it’s dead:

Company Culture Shifted

Until about the early-2010’s typical company culture was urgent but didn’t feel frenzied. In most organizations you had a chance to think and breathe to some degree. Not anymore. Maybe it’s increasing competition or social media rewiring our brains, but most business cultures are a frenzy of hurried activity and it’s getting worse and worse. So 90 days for a new executive to “onboard” is now considered super-slow.

CEO Pressure Ratcheted Up

The pressure on CEOs to deliver quickly has gone through the roof and in turn this urgency is being passed down to their executives. I see it all the time: a VP of Product gets hired and the CEO wants next months roadmap to achieve big wins for the business. It wasn’t like this even 5+ years ago when product leaders, for example, were given much more time to think & plan out changes to roadmaps.

The Frequency of Turnarounds Increased

In a lot of cases executives are being hired to do a turn-around (whether anyone officially says the words or not). For example, you might have been hired as a CTO for an organization that’s trying to scale and can’t figure out how — they can’t deliver on time, their products are crashing and they can’t hire new engineers fast enough. As a new executive you really don’t have 90 days to figure the situation out.

Executive Careers Changed

A lot of executives used to stay at companies for 5 or 10 years. In fact, hiring and retaining an executive-level person was a BIG deal. That’s all changed completely. Now, if an executive stays for 2 years that’s considered baseline, perfectly normal and actually a fairly solid timeline. So imagine out of those 24 months you take out 3 to do a 30-60-90. That 12% — 15% of time is pretty significant in terms of overall average tenure in an organization.

LinkedIn Created a Weird Dynamic

This is going to sound odd but it’s real. In an age when execs see all their peers posting their accomplishments to LinkedIn the need to deliver & showcase fast results is significant. Can your company or you risk going dormant about your accomplishments for 90 days with nothing significant to show to the public? Maybe. But for a lot of businesses & leaders this is actually a real issue. It’s the new social media game, for better or worse.

Yes, 30-60-90 Really is Dead

It’s not just these factors that are killing the 30-60-90 — it’s that companies are getting sick of plans that don’t drive any results.

It’s a great framework conceptually, but a lot of executives have simply ruined it by building poor quality plans that don’t create any value.

All of this has given businesses a bad taste for the 30-60-90 and I’m seeing evidence that CEOs and Boards are moving away from asking for them.

Of course, there will always be some companies that require them because it has been such a common part of corporate life but the end has begun, especially in companies < 5 to 7 years old.

What Top Executives Do Instead of 30-60-90 Plans

If the Board or CEO is asking you to build a 30-60-90 day plan then of course go ahead and build it.

And clearly a lot depends on the size of the company, because if you’re in a large organization the high degree of complexity might warrant something like a 30-60-90.

But here’s what the elite, top 1% of leaders know:

The executive is the ultimate problem solver and unless you’re solving problems from day 1 you’re not really doing your job effectively.

A lot of execs forget this basic principle.

Let me give you a few examples of low-performing executives and what they do in their first 90 days:

• Many execs will come back at the end of their first 90 days happily reporting their success at “getting to know” the organization. The issue is that while that’s important it doesn’t fix any problems for company. Also, getting to know people and organizations takes a log longer than 90 days. Having meet and greets doesn’t truly build any sort of deep bond with anyone, so even the claim of getting to know people is actually pretty dubious.

• Execs will also come back after 90 days with a thorough and detailed breakdown of everything wrong in their department and potentially even company-wide. Often this is met with a semi-cringe response from CEOs who are actually quite aware of all the problems. Why CEOs are always looking for is the solutions to those problems. So taking 90 days to figure out the problems is absurd for most CEOs nowadays.

• The 3rd class of execs will come back with what I call the “overwhelmed” response to their first 90 days. These execs are so disorganized about their first 90 days that they end up shooting themselves in the foot with information overload. I’ve seen seasoned execs literally cry when they report their 1st 90 days because the information piled up and just overwhelmed them. Yikes.

The (Far) Better Alternative Strategy

So what’s the right alternative strategy to 30-60-90 for an executive in most companies?

Let’s break down a set of new principles.

Principle #1 Your entire mindset must shift from “I’ll take 90 days to assess the organization” to “I will begin solving problems in a matter of days.”

Principle #2 Only get to know people in the org in the context of problem-solving and leave all the social connections to develop naturally over time of their own accord.

Principle #3 Focus entirely on problem-identification and solutioning because that is an executives main purpose and key strength.

Principle #5 Do a bit of planning when initially joining an org, but keep it light and very short-term. Instead focus on building velocity 🏎️ in terms of solving problems.

Principle #5 Design a set of success metrics tied to the problems you’re solving that if you move the needle on will make a difference to the company.

The Immediate Impact Framework (IIF)

Let’s examine how to operationalize the principles above.

I call it the Immediate Impact Framework. It takes place in 4 to 5 weeks instead of the 12 weeks in a typical 30-60-90 day plan.

It’s also far more valuable and impactful. I’ve seen the Top 1% of executives use this and it makes them more effective and the organization better.

Let’s break it down:

Week 1 - Coffee with a Side of Problems

Goal The goal is to meet with as many people as possible about the problems in as little time as possible in order to figure out who is responsible for what, what influence people have, who are the problem solvers (vs. just the talkers) and who you want to keep vs. possibly replace.

Actioning Clear out your schedule and set up 10, 30 minute meetings per day for 5 days. That means you meet with 50 people in your first week. That will take care of all your direct reports, the next layer down, your boss, your peers, and a bunch of stakeholders like customers & partners.

Output The main output from Week 1 is a preliminary list of problems-to-solve which should remain un-prioritized at the moment. You might also want to keep a list of people observations, but truthfully that matters little since you will change your mind over time.

Side Note Use AI note-taking apps for all your meetings. They actually work and can be very helpful in summarizing all the learning from your meetings with staff. Also, ignore the naysayers when they say this is too many meetings. You need to get the lay of the land very fast.

Week 2 - Prioritize the Most Critical Problems

Goal The goal in Week 2 is to dive deep into the problems so you can figure out which ones are real and which ones are not, which ones are the most important and which ones can be solved later, and how big each important problem is in terms of level of effort to solve.

Actioning Actioning this week depends on a lot of different factors. What Top 1% of leaders do is just run a lot of problem identification sessions. They might bring 2 to 5 people (don’t make them to large) to these sessions and run 3 or 4 of them per day.

Output The main output from Week 2 is a prioritized list of the most important problems to solve. This list should have problem description, priority, business impact, owners, level of effort and a handful of other factors included.

Side Note Let the team vent. Just don’t do it in huge meetings with 10 people. Keep it to 2 to 5 people tops and delve deep into the root causes. Always look for the problem behind the problem until you can’t go any deeper.

Week 3 - Design Solutions

Goal The goal of Week 3 is to quickly move from identifying problems to actively driving solutions. This means mobilizing key problem solvers and stakeholders to design solutions that are practical and realistic for the company.

Actioning Assemble small teams to solve the top highest-priority problems identified during Week 2. Don't wait for exhaustive buy-in or perfect clarity—your mandate is to start making tangible progress. Be very clear with everyone about what success looks like for each problem.

Output By the end of Week 3 you should have a list of solutions to each critical problem. The solutions should fit the context of the business in terms of people and budget. None should require massive changes — they must be highly actionable.

Side Note Designing solutions can be difficult and you might feel the need to extend this week into next. That’s fine as long as you’re getting good answers. Also, if you don’t have experts in the room then get busying finding them.

Week 4 - Plan the 3 Months (Only)

Goal Here’s where I think even someone in the Top 1% trip up: they start solving problems in Week 4 instead of doing a tiny bit of planning. Businesses need predictability and while you can start fixing the small problems its vital to give the business a simple plan.

Actioning You might not need your entire team for the planning, so you can get some of them going on solving problems but you and a handful of people have to sit down and build a plan for the next 3 months. If things are really broken just a month out is good too.

Output By the end of Week 4 you should have a plan for the next 3 months of the problems you’re going to solve, how much it they will cost in people and time, who will work on them, and so forth. You will need to deliver on 90%+ of this plan.

Side Note If stakeholders expect a brand new product roadmap instead of a problems to solve plan, that’s OK. Your problems-to-solve plan and roadmap then are just the same thing. However, keep in mind that negotiating with stakeholders is a thing and you might have to do it.

Week 5 - Execute, Obviously

Goal The goal for this week is to execute on the plan and start solving problems. You want everyone on your team to be totally focused on this. You want to be able to show the world answers, solutions, fixes and resolutions to every major pain.

Actioning This really depends on how the organization is set up. But if you’re a CTO for example, you want every department to have a list of problem-solutions, plus the plan with milestones, and for them to report back against it daily. Yup, daily. Otherwise other things will intrude.

Output The output here might be code, architecture, a new sales strategy, a different customer support model, a new hire…the list is endless. The point is simply that you are in solving mode. You need one fix after the other happening this week.

Side Note Reporting up properly is really important here. You have to find the right cadence. You can’t brag and you can’t stay quiet. You have to keep letting stakeholders know you’re fixing their problems one at a time. Do this and other stakeholders will let you do your thing.

Closing Thoughts

I’m going to be real with you here — a lot of people in your organization are going to be frustrated with the Immediate Impact Framework (IIF) approach.

There are a lot of reasons for that including claims that they are too busy to get that deep into problem-solution mode. To which my response is, if you’re not figuring out how to solve the biggest problems in the company/department then is your work all that important?

But the naysayers don’t matter. Here’s who will be pleased by you utilizing the IIF: your CEO, the Board, and the people on your team who suffer the most from the problems.

Remember, executive have theoretically seen all classes of problems, so we are supposed to be the ultimate problem solvers! That’s literally the core of the job and people need to see that as soon as you join a new company.

Now, some executives do get nervous about implementing IIF because they feel like the organization is too busy serving customers, dealing with vendors and so forth. Again, let me assure you that all of that can wait. If you’re focused on figuring out the biggest challenges and how to solve them every stakeholder will thank you down the road when you’re making their lives 10 times easier.

Another pushback against the IIF is that if you’re running it you’re not assessing the team, technology, processes and so forth. But what better way to assess those things than actually doing work and solving problems? With IIF you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly who has the chops, which tech is serving you well and even what processes might be broken. The key is to smash problems-to-solve against people/tech/process and see what happens. This is much better than running almost any assessment framework out there.

IIF lets you solve high priority problems starting in 30 days and that’s very impressive.

It has just enough meet and greet, just enough assessment and just enough planning. But it’s far better than a typical 30-60-90 because it’s 99% focused on value creation.

Keep in mind one last thing: executives have onboarded in companies a million times before and therefore this is NOT an important thing for most organizations. I repeat, this is NOT that important. What is VERY important is delivering value to the business as soon as possible.

With IIF you get out of the 90 day “assessment” mindset and switch to a 30 days to high ROI solution “execution” mindset.