30/60/90 day plan for managers

Starting a new job in a managerial position can be overwhelming. You’re not just taking on an unfamiliar role—you’re also inheriting a team that depends on you for guidance, direction, and support. 

To ensure your transition goes as smoothly as possible, it may be helpful to create a 30-60-90 day plan. In this post, we’ll explore exactly what this tool is, how to create one, and even share a template for you to use in your own role.

What is a 30-60-90 day plan?

A 30-60-90 day plan is a document that identifies objectives, tasks, and timeline for your first three months on the job. Creating this type of plan for yourself can be valuable in many ways. Specifically, it can: 

• Provide structure during your onboarding period. 
• Clarify what success looks like in your role.
• Help you track your progress. 

How to structure a manager’s 30-60-90 day plan

While every 30-60-90 day plan will look slightly different, it should generally help you accomplish three things: 

1. Identify your objectives.
2. Map those objectives to specific outcomes or tasks.
3. Establish “deadlines” for your goals.

Let’s explore how you could potentially structure your 30-60-90 day plan. 

Day 1 to 30: People

In the first 30 days, you should be focused on getting to know your team members and direct reports, as well as other managers you may work closely with. What types of projects are they working on? What do they want to see improved? What’s causing them problems?

Asking these types of questions can give you a better sense for what your immediate priorities need to be. This is also a great opportunity to get to know the people you’ll be managing. 

The goal of this phase is to form meaningful relationships, understand everyone’s role on the team, and start the process of knowledge sharing. 

Day 31 to 60: Process

During this phase, you can start to focus on creating new processes or improving existing ones to increase the efficiency, productivity, and collaboration of the team. 

For instance, let’s say you heard from a few employees that they find the weekly team meeting unproductive. You ask for suggestions on how to improve it and, once you’ve collected all the feedback, you implement changes to make the meetings more valuable for everyone.

While the goal of this phase is to start taking action in your role, you should still be setting aside time to continue getting to know your team. 

Day 61 to 90: Product 

The final phase of the 30-60-90 day plan is focused on taking action that directly impacts the company or the product. 

As a manager, one of your responsibilities is to enable your team to make an impact on the organization. So whether that’s overseeing a campaign or unblocking your direct reports so they can make progress on an important project, you want to start taking action in your role. 

Your goal during this final phase is to efficiently manage your direct reports, oversee important projects, and help your team make impactful contributions. 

Get started with this manager’s 30-60-90 day template

To make the process of crafting a 30-60-90 day plan a bit easier, we created a template that you can download and customize. Here’s what you’ll find in the document: 

• Guidance on how to establish your objectives, tasks, and deadlines for each phase.
• Customizable charts to map out your timeline.
• Examples of learning objectives and tasks. 

Best practices for making the most out of your 30-60-90 day plan

Of course, just creating a 30-60-90 day plan doesn’t guarantee a successful onboarding period. Here are a few additional best practices to keep in mind: 

Be consistent 

Try to follow your 30-60-90 day plan as closely as possible. This type of consistency will help you make steady progress towards your goals, stay on track, and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.

If you’re worried about losing steam, ask your boss or a fellow manager to hold you accountable or schedule the deadlines on your work calendar. Find any method that works for you and will help you complete the 30-60-90 day plan.

Leave room for flexibility

While it’s important to follow your plan, you also want to be flexible when necessary. It’s common for priorities, responsibilities, and roles to evolve. So being able to adapt to these changes as they happen will make your life much easier.

For instance, you may need to adjust your goals if the team’s objectives change. Or you may need to pivot the tasks you work on if there’s a last-minute client request that requires all hands to be on deck. 

Try to be open minded and make sure to work through any changes with your manager. 

Involve key stakeholders

Ensuring key stakeholders—whether that’s a boss or a company leader—are aware of and involved in the 30-60-90 day plan is key. Why? 

As we mentioned before, it’s an effective way to hold you accountable to your objectives. But that’s not the only reason. Looping in key stakeholders also gives you more people to turn to if you run into questions, concerns, requests. It also creates transparent, two-way communication channels and makes your work more visible to the right people.