The 30-60-90 Day Plan

When I had been working for about a year in my first job after Engineering school, I got invited to transfer to a new group whose focus was quite different from the entry position I had held. In the first job I was called a component reliability engineer; that turned out to be a good introduction to some important aspects of the business world. I dealt with several major suppliers of key electronic components used in our product, traveled to their manufacturing sites, learned how the parts were designed and specified and how they were used in our systems. Remarkably useful stuff for a rookie to learn. The second job was developing and deploying custom automated functional test equipment, which was new for me at the time and which rapidly drew me in and turned into a lifelong passion.

The test group engineering leader – Frank was his name – became a strong mentor over the next several years, and taught me things I carry with me to this day. Within the first week that I worked for him, he brought me in and asked me to describe my plan for succeeding as a member of his team. I don’t recall my inarticulate response, but I do recall almost word for word what his come-back was.

“Don’t wait for me or any other manager to tell you what to do, Dann. The best thing you can do for yourself is to figure out what knowledge you need to gain and what goals you want to accomplish in the next 30, 60, 90 days. You write up a plan, and I will help you make it better, and help you accomplish it.”

Over the ensuing days, I thought about and outlined some ideas, and Frank helped me polish them into a viable plan for learning the new things I needed to know – about the product and subassemblies that needed to be tested by my equipment, the capabilities of the equipment I would be charged with supporting, and the people in other parts of the company and in our customer’s shop who had an interest in the outcome. Frank pointed out or introduced me to other engineering leaders in the company who could help me in my quest, checked in every few days to see how it was going, and always made clear by his words and actions that the responsibility for making progress was mine.

So how did it work? The fascinating thing I discovered in that exercise of my first 30-60-90 Day Plan, and in nearly every subsequent time I have used the technique, is that when the 90^th day rolled around, the knowledge and abilities I had actually acquired greatly exceeded what I had conceived at the start. To my surprise, I found people regarded me as the expert in the test systems I had known nothing about only a few months before. When someone needed help to understand a test result or to know if the capability existed to perform some new test, they came to me directly instead of asking Frank.

Several years later, after I had become an engineering leader /  manager myself, the impact of Frank’s coaching method really hit home to me and I began using it myself with my engineering teams. It turns out to be a good technique for bringing new members into the team and for conveying the notion that the individual is primarily responsible for learning and growing, and for modeling the manager’s role of coaching rather than only “bossing.”

OK, Dann – What’s My Take-away?

When you bring a new employee into your team, it’s important that he or she have a plan for getting from Day 1 to being a full-fledged team member. As an engineering leader or program manager, you want self-starters and independent thinkers and doers on your team. You subvert your own leadership effectiveness if you do the plan and hand it to your new team member to carry out.

A far more effective approach is to challenge the employee to create the plan, and support him or her by providing advice and coaching. Encourage him to set a stretch goal – or two or three – rather than settling for incremental change from his current knowledge base. There’s no recipe to be found in a planning cookbook or Webinar; rather, help him flesh out the plan based on the experience he brings to the table and what he will need to develop. Recognize that her day by day actions may deviate from the initial plan, because of new knowledge she gains or unexpected events along the way. The use of 30, 60, and 90 day milestones is a bit arbitrary, but it provides guidance for setting intermediate objectives while also allowing enough time to achieve some meaningful outcome.

By managing and coaching your staff in this way, you will encourage their commitment to carrying out the planning and personal/professional development process, and enable them to be the owners of their own success.

That’s taking a giant step toward Next Level Leadership!