The First 90 Days as a New CEO: Three Traps I Fell Into

TL;DR: The first 90 days as a new CEO are less about what you change and more about what you learn before you change it. I fell into three traps in my first CEO role. I acted before I understood what was going on. I did not realise that my mood would become the organisation's mood, and that wherever I looked, the team would look too. And I thought doing my job well was enough, when half the job was managing the people above me. Avoid those three and most of the rest takes care of itself.

Most advice about a new CEO's first 90 days is about quick wins. My advice is about the three mistakes I made in my own first CEO role, because I see new CEOs make them all the time.

Trap 1: Acting before you understand

When you step into the CEO role, everyone expects you to do something. You expect it of yourself. So you start fixing things in the first weeks: a process that looks slow, a meeting that looks pointless, a structure that looks odd.

That is what I did. I jumped into action before I understood what was happening.

There is an old principle for this called Chesterton's fence, after the writer G.K. Chesterton. Imagine you find a fence across a road, and you cannot see why it is there. The tempting move is to tear it down. Chesterton's point is that you should not remove it until you know why someone put it up. If you find out and the reason no longer holds, take it down. If you never find out, leave it.

Every company is full of fences. The odd approval step may exist because of a costly mistake three years ago. The meeting you want to cancel may be the only place two teams actually talk. Some fences are useless. You cannot tell which ones until you ask.

What to do instead: spend the first weeks asking more than you decide. For every change you want to make, find out why things are the way they are. Write down what you would change, and wait.

Trap 2: Forgetting that the team reads you

My second mistake was not understanding how much my own state would spread. As CEO, my mood became the organisation's mood. And the direction I looked in became the direction the team looked in.

If you come in tense, the leadership team gets tense. If you spend a week focused on costs, people conclude costs are the priority, whatever the strategy says. If you look worried in a meeting, it is all over the building by lunch.

Before you are CEO, your mood is mostly your own business. After, it is a signal everyone reads, often more closely than your words.

What to do instead: be deliberate about where you put your attention, because people will follow it. Look after your own energy as part of the job, not apart from it. Say out loud what you want people to focus on, often. And when you are worried, say what you are worried about and what you are doing about it, so people do not fill the gap with something worse.

Trap 3: Doing your job and forgetting the people above you

The third mistake was misunderstanding stakeholder management. I thought that if I did my job well, the results would speak for themselves. They do not. It is not enough to do your job. You have to manage the people above you too.

For a CEO that means the board, the chair, the investors and sometimes the owners. Each of them has expectations, worries and a picture of how things are going. If you do not shape that picture, they will build one without you.

What to do instead: meet each board member one-to-one early, and ask what they expect from you in the first year and what would worry them. Agree with the chair how and how often you will report. Send short, honest updates between board meetings. And bring bad news early, before it reaches them another way. More on that in investor relations for startups.

A simple shape for the first 90 days

Days 1 to 30: listen. Meet every leader and as many people across the company as you can. Ask what works, what does not, and what they would change. Meet each board member. Change almost nothing. Keep a list of fences you want to understand.

Days 31 to 60: understand and test. Find out why the fences are there. Share what you are hearing with your leadership team and the chair. Make one or two small changes that most people already agree on.

Days 61 to 90: decide and set direction. Agree the few priorities for the year with the board. Say them clearly and often. Make the bigger changes you now understand well enough to make.

Throughout: watch your own energy, because the organisation is watching it too.

Common questions

What should a new CEO do in the first 90 days?
Listen widely, understand why things are the way they are before changing them, build relationships with the board, and then set a small number of clear priorities.

What is Chesterton's fence?
The principle that you should not remove a rule, process or structure until you understand why it was put there. For a new CEO, it is a guard against changing things too fast.

How should a new CEO handle the board?
Meet each member one-to-one early, agree how you will report, keep them informed between meetings, and bring bad news early.

Should a new CEO get a coach?
The first year is when habits form and when you have the fewest people to be honest with. A coach or sparring partner helps most at exactly that point.

The short version

Understand before you act, remember that the team reads your mood and follows your gaze, and manage the people above you as carefully as the people below. If you are stepping into a CEO role and want a sparring partner for the first year, that is the work I do in 1-on-1 executive coaching. For how the skills change as you move up, read how to become a CEO.