Quick wins in the first 90 days of a new role tend to get talked about as a way of impressing the people who hired you. That’s part of it, but it’s not the whole picture. As coach Biran Yilancioglu put it on our podcast, the first 90 days are also about increasing your own confidence by doing some good things early on, not just showing other people they made the right decision.
That distinction matters. It’s easy to spend the opening weeks of a new job focused entirely outward, on managing how you’re perceived, and forget that the real audience for those early wins is yourself. Confidence built in the first few months tends to carry you through the harder stretches later.
The work starts before you begin
Biran’s advice is to start before the job itself. Do a skill gap analysis: look honestly at your strengths and your development areas for the specific role you’re stepping into, and use that to work out where your quick wins are likely to be. This isn’t about guessing what might go well. It’s about identifying, in advance, where your existing strengths line up with what the role actually needs, so you’re not spending your first weeks figuring that out on the fly.
For the academics, researchers and professionals we work with, this often means being honest about what the new role demands that the last one didn’t. A move into leadership, a shift from research into management, a new institution with different politics. The gap analysis doesn’t need to be formal or lengthy. It just needs to be honest.
We wrote a bit more about this in our piece on navigating leadership transitions, where Biran talks through what helps people move into a new role with more self-awareness and less second-guessing. The first 90 days sit right at the start of that process, and getting them right sets the tone for everything after.
If you’re heading into a new role, or know one is coming, try mapping your strengths and gaps against what the role actually needs before your first day. Notice which quick wins that makes obvious, and which ones you’d have missed otherwise.
Be sure to check out more from Biran at: Biran’s website and Biran’s LinkedIn.
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