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Michael Watkins. The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003, 208 pages, $24.95 softcover.
Leadership is the only area of organizational behavior where psychologists claim to know less than your average grandmother does. As Avolio, Sosick, Jung, & Berson (2003) noted, organizational behavior (OB) specialists are almost expected to display ritualistic self-abasement when discussing the supposed puny amount of knowledge "we" have about leadership. There are two reasons for this profession of humility. The first reason OB specialists demur from deep knowledge is because the number individual difference constructs germane to leadership have been overwhelmed by the permutations of situations where leadership is needed. It seems appalling that there is not the same taxonomic pallet of leadership traits, behaviors, cognitions, emotions, and so forth, as there are situations. The second reason is that OB specialists pride themselves on being scientist/practitioners, on not being celebrity "leadership gurus," and on their stubborn, snobbish resistance to the faddish mass market. But in the end one might ask: What exactly do OB specialists know about leadership that matters a whit?
The First 90 Days by Watkins covers the here-and-now earthly world of the new leader. This book is two levels up from the "dummies" series of books, which is to say it's focused on the problem at hand and it's light on attitude. There is precious little theory, conjecture on multiple archetypes and leaders, riffs on "creative destruction," and so on, and although Watkins presents his own "STaRS" framework, he does not demand unwavering fealty.
What is the primary problem the new manager faces in the first 90 days? Simply put, in most situations, new managers do not have a probationary period where they can mentally as well as physically promote out of their previous roles (most likely out...