The First 100 Days on the Job

How to plan, prioritize and build a sustainable organisation

Anne Augustine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351275903
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

The First 100 Days on the Job is for sustainability leaders – in organizations of any size or sector – who want to make an impact in their first one hundred days on the job, and set themselves up for long-term success. In the absence of complete and perfect information you will be expected to lead and to act, often in partnership with other businesses, government and civil society, and almost certainly by building relationships across functions, departments and geographies within your own organization. It is the timing of your decision making that will set you apart.This short guide offers: 1) A process to make the most of your first 10, 60, 90 and 100 days 2) Some practical tools you can use to set priorities and manage your programme 3) Sources of research and information for measuring the impacts of your organization 4) A heavy dose of realism about what can be done, to keep you sane – and links to some practical support and inspiration.

The Next 30, 60, 90 Days

THIS SECTION CONTAINS THE SUBSTANTIVE TOOLS and insights to making your first 100 days effective and successful. In writing this DōShort, I kept changing my mind about the sequence or prioritisation of what needs to be done. Was it possible to be so prescriptive? Only you will be the best judge of where to start, because only you know where you are. For what it's worth, I started with the plan. And if nothing else, I would suggest you do too.

The four tools that will set you up to succeed are:

• Have a strategic plan
  1. Define your terms of reference
  2. Too soon for a strategy?
  3. What is material to your organisation?
  4. Don't forget the golf balls
  5. Your 30, 60, 90 day plan
• Re-learn the organisational context
  1. Adopt the beginner's mind
  2. Surveying the landscape
  3. Doesn't everyone feel the same?
  4. Adding value
  5. TIPS
• Achieve something
  1. Deciding on the quick win
  2. Creating an action plan
  3. Brainstorms that buzz
  4. Managing change
  5. Being open to emergent change
• Be resilient and adaptable
  1. Finding meaning through work
  2. What's driving you?
  3. Where are your values?
  4. Adjusting to leadership
  5. Building your support network

About that plan. While there are four key tools, five if you include the first 10 days, the section on planning is by far the most detailed and practical. This is for one simple reason - in my view, thorough planning in these early days underpins everything else that you will want to accomplish. It is the one thing that you want to have completed as your transition phase in the new role comes to an end. That is not to say you need to spend three months in a locked room preparingelegantGanttcharts, northatyou only act on what is in the plan, but critically by going through a planning and consultation cycle you will gain insight into what is the job at hand.

The other tools are ongoing (although planning is an iterative task too) but they need to be initiated during the first 100 days.

And then there is the quick win.

1. Have a strategic plan

There is no way to better instil confidence in yourself and with your stakeholders than to have a plan. And you will have multiple plans - your first 10 days, the first three months and then the longer-term implementation plan. They should be complementary and build on each other.

EDS was a data-driven organisation, with its own proprietary management methodologies, including systems for project management and programme control. They were cumbersome, process-heavy and not at all user-friendly (unless the user was equally and methodically process-driven, which I am not). They certainly didn't tell you how to manage.

When I was given the role of sustainability lead at EDS I began to work with a whole new set of organisational stakeholders. Time-short, information-hungry, results-focused. Leaders who were interested in the so what, and what was next. But they still expected these documents to exist and for someone else to have read them. It was, after all, part of the organisation's psyche to have a methodology and audit trail.

Your organisation might have a methodology for how this programme should be managed and what the plan looks like. Or maybe you have experience as a project or programme manager. In the first instance, create a document that has a familiar feel to your sponsors and stakeholders, even if you only ever present a subset of the whole.

Define your terms of reference

So, here is my next top tip. It may be expedient to use the processes in place to manage your endeavours. But there is a simpler, and far quicker, approach to strategic planning in remembering the mnemonic 'BOSCARD'. Developed by Cap Gemini as their project management methodology, BOSCARD is now a freely and widely used way of developing terms of reference for projects and programmes:

Background	• What was the rationale or need for creating this project?
	• What are the anticipated outcomes and benefits?
	• Who are the primary and secondary stakeholders?
Objectives	• What are the specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely objectives that drive this project forward?
Scope	• What are the changes, features or outputs that this project will deliver?
	• What are the work streams of activity that need to be done?
	• What, specifically, is out of scope?
Constraints	• What restrictions exist that will have an impact on the scope?
	• What other limitingfactors may affect the project?
Assumptions	• What do you currently assume to be true that might have a positive or negative impact, and that need validation?
Resources	• What do you need in the way of time, money and people to implement this project?
	• How are you going to track this for reporting purposes?
Deliverables	• What must the project deliver in order to achieve the objectives?
	• How is the project to be implemented?
	• By what means will you know the project is complete?

You will be judged not only on the quality of your strategy, but more likely on your ability to implement it and get the job done. Well-defined terms of reference and a supporting plan demonstrates that you know the job at hand, what's required to deliver and what success looks like. It will also become a key communication tool. And sometimes a stick when carrots don't work! BOSCARD is the clearest way I know to create a rounded and credible plan, and I still use it as a checklist when I start something new.

Too soon for a strategy?

Having a plan is not the same as having a strategy however. For me, a strategy is about having an idea of where you are going, why you are going in that direction, and how you will get there (and how you will know when you getthere). The plan helps you execute thatstrategy by breaking it down into phases of activity so that you can track progress against the goals and manage expectations along the way.

If you are starting your sustainability efforts from zero, or close to zero, it is very unlikely that you can develop a measurable long-term strategy in three months, even though it may be one of the first deliverables your sponsors ask you to develop. The risk is to aim too high ('we will double our widget production and sales, while at the same time halving all associated environmental impacts, and all within two years'). The other risk of course, is to aim too low ('all our employees will spend one day per year volunteering and switch off their PCs at the end of the working day'). There is too much you don't know right now.

Another frustration, and it is a frustration, is that where sustainability is concerned there are no elegant or tern plate solutions for an organisation. Many leaders - and I experienced this at EDS - want certainty and clarity about what a strategy will deliver. I have worked with many clients who tell me they 'want a Plan A'. While imitation may be the highest form of flattery, taking what M&S has developed over a number of years (and through significanttrial and error) does not guarantee success. There are too many variables, not only within the organisation itself, but its market and wider societal context.

It is realistic however, to begin to shape the vision of what your organisation can - maybe should - aspire to (think of this as True North), and how to develop the strategy. Don't lose sight of True North, even it can't be neatly quantified. In fact, some of the most courageous actions being undertaken by businesses in response to the challenges of sustainable development are being done in spite of an apparent lack of a more traditionally defined business case.

In the very short term, you probably need get some sense of where you are. Some of this information you will have already uncovered during your due diligence, or at least met the people who can help you track this down. You will also have an initial idea of the organisational context, which you will now need to supplement with a more external, market-led, analysis.

You might need to conduct some form of baseline or benchmark, but perhaps not within your first 100 days (such as energy consumption, carbon emissions, charitable donations, employee diversity, etc.), which will take time and quite possibly money.

The international framework ISO 26000 (http://www....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Abstract
• About The Author
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• A Few Words About You
• What Is Sustainability, Anyway?
• Why 100 Days?
• The First 10 Days.
• The Next 30, 60, 90 Days.
• But What About Sustainability?
• From 100 to 1000 Days, and Beyond
• Final Thoughts