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After 45 days most of your team have made up their mind if they are on-board with you as their new leader or if they plan to move on. Focus the 30-45 window on getting a deeper perspective in where you have your staff. Expect this to be two weeks focused on your internal capabilities.

Review the old role descriptions

Take time to go through current roles definitions. What works well and what does not. Probe for the opportunities your team see for how to develop the team and roles.

By discussing roles deeper with each team member you will get a feeling for what they do and how they can develop. The questions in play are different than the ones used during an employment interview.

Aspire to get ideas for how to develop your team. All teams have latent potential to unlock as you clarify focus and put a bigger part of team members’ capabilities in play

Self asses your own on-boarding

As your team members are firming up their minds you need to assess how your own on-boarding turned out. Have you managed to build trust around your leadership principles and ideas?

Have a deep conversation on the subject with your coach or mentor. Discuss how well you are following your plan. Talk through if your primary challenge is the plan or the execution of your plan. Expect to make a half way correction of your 100-day plan.

Who in your team will join you on the journey

Now you are starting to get an idea of strengths and weaknesses in your team. Parts of the challenge is what you think and part what team members feel about you.

You want to understand who see an exciting future in your team and who are less thrilled. It is your responsibility to ask the questions and build a perspective of where you have all team members.

Create a SWOT on the Strategy

At the mid-way point you also want to have a grip on the current strategy. By doing an analysis of Strategy strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

As a new leader you are responsible for understanding the strategy and take ownership of proposed changes. It is easy to get excited by your own ideas and thoughts before understanding what the existing strategy is all about. The hard part of adjusting a strategy is to understand what you change from

Great questions to ask yourself are

1. What is the best way to understand current roles – look for delta between reality and role descriptions.
2. How clear are the current role descriptions – a common rot-cause for performance issues.
3. Are the role descriptions clear enough to guide quarterly execution – clean out high level and irrelevant statements.
4. What do you measure your own on-boarding success against – should be clear day 0.
5. Which questions will you ask to gauge team members’ excitement about continuing the journey.
6. Who in the team is best qualified to articulate a strategy SWOT – pick the best insider.

Additional reading suggestions

• Leading the leader: On-boarding your boss [BLOGPOST] – by Click Boarding
• The best onboarding process for new managers [BLOGPOST] – Help.com
• How not to lose your new employees in their first 45 days [ARTICLE] – by Forbes
• Why the first 45 days of an onboarding plan are crucial [BLOGPOST] – by D HR Drive
• 18 jaw-dropping on-boarding stats you need to know [BLOGPOST] – by Click Boarding
• SWOT Matrix and Organizational Strategic Plan Paper [TEMPLATE] – by Ohio Dominican University