The First 90 Days: Why New Executives Should Listen Before They Fix

Michael Timmons

Sep 14

6 min read

One of the biggest mistakes a new executive can make is walking into a company believing they were hired to fix everything they see immediately.

I know because I've made that mistake.

I entered a company with experience, confidence, and a pretty clear idea of what I believed needed to change. I saw opportunities almost immediately. Processes needed improvement. Accountability needed to increase. Certain parts of the organization needed structure, direction, and stronger leadership.

So I moved. I moved fast. Very fast.

The problem wasn’t necessarily that the changes were wrong.

The problem was that I hadn’t earned the right to make the changes yet.

I didn't spend enough time listening to some of the key people in the company. I didn't fully understand the culture before I started changing it. I didn't understand why certain processes existed, who had built them, or how much history was attached to them.

Instead of first learning how the organization worked, I walked in and started laying down the law.

And I lost trust during my first week.

Some people eventually came around. Some never did.

There were employees who didn't want to work with me after that initial experience, and no matter how much I tried to rebuild those relationships later, some of them had already made up their minds about who I was.

That's on me.

It became one of the most valuable leadership lessons of my career.

Experience Doesn't Mean You Know the Company

Executives are usually hired because of what they've accomplished somewhere else.

That experience matters.

But experience can also become dangerous when it creates the belief that what worked at Company A automatically belongs at Company B.

It doesn't.

You might understand the industry extremely well and still know very little about the company you're walking into.

You don't yet know the personalities.

You don't know the history.

You don't know which employees hold the organization together behind the scenes.

You don't know why a process that looks ridiculous on paper may exist because of something that happened five years ago.

You don't know which customers are truly profitable, which ones are difficult, which relationships are fragile, or which salesperson has spent 15 years building trust with an account.

You don't know where the bodies are buried.

And you certainly don't understand the culture after sitting through a few executive meetings.

That takes time.

One of my biggest takeaways was that sometimes I needed to learn less about the industry and more about the people.

I already understood the industry.

What I didn't understand yet was them.

Your First Job Is to Learn

Nowadays, when I think about an executive's first 60 to 90 days today, I look at five areas before making major changes:

Culture - How do people communicate? How are decisions really made? What behaviors are rewarded? What frustrates employees? Who do people trust? What traditions matter to the organization?
Customers - Who are the most important customers? Why do they buy from the company? What do they value? Where are the problems? What promises have been made to them?
Financials - Before declaring that something needs to grow, shrink, or disappear, understand the numbers. Revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, inventory, customer profitability, cash flow, channel economics, and the real cost of doing business all matter.
People - An organizational chart doesn't tell you who the real leaders are. Spend time with employees at every level. Find the people others naturally turn to. Understand their strengths, frustrations, ambitions, and institutional knowledge.
Processes - Never assume a process is stupid simply because you wouldn't have designed it that way. Understand why it exists first. Then determine whether it still serves the organization.

That doesn't mean an executive should sit around for 90 days doing nothing.

Far from it.

There will always be obvious issues that require immediate action. Safety problems, ethical issues, major financial leaks, serious customer problems, or destructive behavior shouldn't wait because someone created a 90-day listening plan.

But most things aren't emergencies.

They can survive another few weeks while you understand them.

Listen to the People Doing the Work

Executives frequently spend their first weeks talking to other executives.

That's important, but it isn't enough.

Talk to the warehouse.

Talk to customer service.

Talk to sales.

Talk to marketing.

Talk to engineering.

Talk to accounting.

Talk to the person who's been there for 20 years and the person who started six months ago.

Ask questions without immediately telling them how you would solve the problem.

That's harder than it sounds.

Executives are often conditioned to provide answers. Sometimes leadership means resisting that instinct and asking one more question.

Why do we do it this way?

What would you change?

What's working that we shouldn't touch?

What frustrates our customers?

What is leadership missing?

What would make your job easier?

Who should I be talking to?

You may be surprised by what you learn.

Results Don't Always Mean the Approach Was Right

This was probably the hardest part of my own experience to reconcile.

Many of the changes I made worked.

The company grew.

The brand improved.

Processes got better.

There were people who later told me they learned more working with me than they had from anyone else in their careers.

I'm proud of that.

But successful results don't automatically mean every part of the leadership approach was successful.

I accomplished things while also damaging relationships I probably could have preserved.

That's an important distinction.

As executives, we can become too focused on being right.

The better question is:

Could I have achieved the same result while bringing more people with me?

In my case, the answer is yes.

And that's where the growth happened for me.

Trust Comes Before Transformation

People don't automatically trust you because you have a big title.

They don't trust you because of your resume.

They don't trust you because the CEO hired you.

And they certainly don't trust you because you walk into the first meeting announcing everything that's about to change.

Trust is earned through consistency, listening, transparency, competence, and respect.

People need to understand that you're interested in improving the company, not proving that everyone before you were wrong.

There's a massive difference between:

"Here's everything you're doing wrong."

and

"Help me understand why we do this today and whether there's an opportunity to make it better."

Both conversations might eventually lead to the exact same change.

Only one of them brings people into the process.

I Don't Know Everything

That's another lesson experience teaches you.

The longer I've been in leadership, the more comfortable I've become saying: I don't know.

I've spent decades in the automotive aftermarket and worked across sales, marketing, operations, distribution, product, leadership, and business strategy.

I know the industry extremely well.

But I will never walk into another company assuming that means I know everything about that company.

I don't.

Nobody does on Day One.

A strong executive should absolutely bring experience, standards, expectations, accountability, and ideas.

But they should also bring humility.

Listen first.

Learn the business.

Learn the financials.

Learn the customers.

Learn the processes.

Most importantly, learn the people.

Then start changing things.

What I Would Do Differently Today

If I walked into a new executive role tomorrow, I would still move with urgency.

But urgency doesn't have to mean recklessness.

I would spend my first 90 days asking far more questions than making declarations.

I would identify the immediate issues that truly require action and separate them from the things that simply look different from how I've done them before.

I would meet with employees throughout the organization.

I would spend time with customers.

I would understand the P&L.

I would like to learn how the company really makes money.

I would understand its culture before trying to change it.

And before changing an important process, I would find the people closest to it and ask them why it exists.

Then we could decide together whether there's a better way.

Leadership isn't about proving you're the smartest person in the building.

It's about creating an organization where the collective experience of the people in the building can be used to make better decisions.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

I accomplished things at that company that I'm proud of. There are people I helped develop. I made meaningful improvements, drove growth, and created positive change.

But I also learned that results and relationships aren't mutually exclusive.

You can drive performance without bulldozing culture.

You can create accountability without destroying trust.

You can make difficult changes without disrespecting the people who built what existed before you arrived.

And sometimes the best thing a new executive can do during their first few weeks isn't to show everyone how much they know.

It's to show them how willing they are to learn.

Listen first. Learn second. Lead third. Then fix what actually needs fixing.

We all make mistakes.

We all learn.

We all grow.

The important part is making sure we don't keep making the same ones.

My website: www.michaeltimmonsgg.com