The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies — The Bible of Leadership and Career Transition
After its original release, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies has not only become the global bestselling book but has emerged as the bible of leadership and career transition. In this book, business professor, internationally acknowledged transition expert Michael D. Watkins takes on how to tackle the situation when you are onboarding into a new company, promoted internally or setting out on an international assignment.
The all-important “First 90 Days” is a teachable skill finely laid out by Watkins. Using a standard framework for handling leadership transition along with ten key challenges, five fundamental propositions and four-fold
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Demystify the myths of leadership and understand how the system around you works, what is real important, why people do what they do and what strategy or a tactic will help you take your game to the next level. After reading the book, I personally learned the strategy to secure an early win, tactics that would align the goals up and down the chain, unique way to anticipate surprises, building coalitions, staying balanced and the best way to avoid vicious downward spiral… even you will learn it.
What’s In It for you?
The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies is actually a 90-days survival guide for a professional during his/her most lucrative times – transition. Watkins had given us a highly effective leadership handbook that will help us to become a better leader for ourselves and for the others. Here are some of the compelling features this book offers
• Checklist: Go through each chapter and the accelerating checklist will help you put your learning into practice and taste your success
• Insights & Actions: Watkins has penned down an excellent, actionable, insightful book that reflects deep skills, experience and wisdom required in a
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According to Watkins the core challenges that you will have to face during your transition are 1) promoting yourself, 2) accelerating learning, 3) matching strategy to the situation, 4) securing early wins, 5) negotiating success, 6) achieving alignment, 7) building teams and 8) creating a coalition.
Undoubtedly, a lot of information in this book is intuitive, but it is nonetheless useful to have it, read it and digest it in easy laid out
Jay, J. (2012). Strategic Leadership Review, Volume 2, Issue 1. In Scholasticahq. Retrieved Janurary 26, 2013, from https://scholasticahq.com/supporting_files/397/attachment_versions/394.
Leading Change was named the top management book of the year by Management General. There are three major sections in this book. The first section is ¡§the change of problem and its solution¡¨ ; which discusses why firms fail. The second one is ¡§the eight-stage process¡¨ that deals with methods of performing changes. Lastly, ¡§implications for the twenty-first century¡¨ is discussed as the conclusion. The eight stages of process are as followed: (1) Establishing a sense of urgency. (2) Creating the guiding coalition. (3) Developing a vision and a strategy. (4) Communicating the change of vision. (5) Empowering employees for broad-based action. (6) Generating short-term wins. (7) Consolidating gains and producing more changes. (8) Anchoring new approaches in the culture.
In today’s ever changing world people must adapt to change. If an organization wants to be successful or remain successful they must embrace change. This book helps us identify why people succeed and or fail at large scale change. A lot of companies have a problem with integrating change, The Heart of Change, outlines ways a company can integrate change. The text book Ivanceich’s Organizational Behavior and Kotter and Cohen’s The Heart of Change outlines how change can be a good thing within an organization. The Heart of Change introduces its readers to eight steps the authors feel are important in introducing a large scale organizational change. Today’s organizations have to deal with leadership change, change in the economy,
Kiniry, Malcolm, and Mike Rose, eds. Critical Strategies, 3rd Ed. Boston, MA: St. Martin’s, 1998. Print.
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement is a very popular and bestseller book in management section. Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox wrote the book in 1984. It comes in 390 pages. It published by The North River Press. In 20 years, over than three million copies were sold, translated into 21 languages and taught in over 200 collages. The way the book is written was like telling a story although the contents are science. That is because the author thinks it is the best way for education.
Hall, Peter, & Norris, Peter. (1993). Learning for leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 14(7), 35. Retrieved August 25, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 81758).
“On leadership” was written by John W. Gardner (The Free Press, New York, 1990). He used seventeen chapters to explain and describe essential components for the leadership should be in a successful organization. This book not only has significant influence now, but also for the future. Below are my understanding about this book, which was divided into two parts. For the first part, I will pick up some perspectives which influence me most from this book. For the second part, which is my comments and critique about this book.
Changing situations throughout the world affect all organizations in business today. Therefore, most organizations acknowledge the need to experience change and transformation in order to survive. The key challenges companies face are due to the advancements in technology, the social environment caused by globalization, the pace of competition, and the demands regarding customer expectations. It is difficult to overcome the obstacles involved with change despite all the articles, books, and publications devoted to the topic. People are naturally resistant to fundamental changes and often intimidated by the process; the old traditional patterns and methods are no longer effective.
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2012). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary
Fleisher, C., & Bensoussan, B. (2017). Ch18. Critical Success Factors. In Business and Competitive Analysis. (1st Ed.). Financial Times.
Though a little dry to read at times, I found this book to be an excellent beginner’s guide to leadership. Although the idea of “corporate” can be a bit dull after a while, Bennis and Nanus continuously attempt to liven it up with real-life examples of their strategies put into practice. They make it clear that the strategies are not what they came up with out of nowhere, but have been determined from years of various case studies. One of my favorite aspects of the book is its ability to imbue an “I can do this!” attitude to the reader.
Tucker, B. A., & Russell, R. F. (2004). The influence of the transformational leader. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 10(4), 103-111.
Adamson, J, Ahn, M. J., Dornbusch, D. (2004). From leadership to leadership: Managing change. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, vol. 78, no. 2, pp. 113-117. 10, no. 4.
After the self-assessments from the book, now I know what kind of leader I can be, what are the weakness I need to work on and how I can influence my team and the people outside my work environment. This course has taught me many different type of leadership style and one cannot be an effective leader but just following one specific style. To be an effective leader you need to assess the situation and act according to the situations.
When I first signed up for this course, I was excited and ready to learn how to be a manager and how to be an effective leader in the workplace. This class made me reevaluate life. Along with, my purpose of pursuing my degree in business administration. In this essay, I will expand on the hard life lesson this course and Professor White taught.