Jeffrey Hurley, Global CIO, CTO

#70: What is Your 90 Day Plan

Posted on December 2, 2013

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In this week’s episode of CIO Playbook with Jeffrey Hurley I

am discussing the importance of a 90 day plan. Why is it
important to have one. How you can leverage a consistent
90 play more than just in your first 90 days as a leader.
Focusing on the power quarterly updates to drive your
agenda.

Delivering successfully in today’s technology environment is

a very complex challenge. The marketplace is putting ever­
increasing pressure and demand on your lines of business.
Every quarter has to demonstrate results, and the
expectation is now the same for the IT department. As a
leader, balancing cost reduction, rapidly evolving technology,
legacy systems, the consumerization of technology, while providing IT security is tough. How do you reduce
complexity and perform at the level your business requires? How do you get a great start when you take on a new
role? Have a 90 day plan.

There was never a promise it would be easy to be technology, business, and a strategy savvy and focus on the
impact IT initiatives while simultaneously. As a senior IT leader you have to manage seamless daily operations while
delivering complex initiatives consistently on schedule and on budget.

Welcome to Technology Leadership

To succeed you will need to bring your diverse talent to bear every day and follow a well thought­out and executed
game plan. The biggest challenges a technology leader faces are caused by how you, as a leader, go about
accomplishing your objectives. Understanding your lines of business and effectively communicating with them will
gain broad support, so that if things go wrong, everyone is in it together; avoiding being long individual standing and
thus a target for blame.

Critical to success is gaining the respect of your different constituencies: on one side, businesspeople who live in a
world of customers, competitors and the bottom line; on the other side, technicians who live in the digital world,
worrying about architecture, hardware, software, and process. A leader who doesn’t demonstrate empathy with both
sides will have a difficult time accomplishing her goals.

The first 90 days is not the time to reflect on how you made it. Rather it is time to set a rapid pace to establish you
as the right leader for the organization. Therefore your focus should be on the following:

Setting the vision and goals for your team.

Connecting with your customers, peers, boss, and your team members.
Identifying the critical issues.
Taking steps to address the critical issues identified.

Before you start your new role you should be thinking about what is your vision of success. Ensuring your vision
matches with the corporate vision. Begin communicating your vision immediately upon starting your new role. Keep
it simple and direct. Starting with broad strokes, focusing first on the cultural aspects of technology, for example
service, quality, efficient and easy for your customers. As you learn more about the corporate initiatives you can add
clear goals that will demonstrate how to achieve your vision. Keeping the focus of your team on the corporate vision
is the key to connecting the work each team members does with the work of the broader organization.

I recommend establishing your 90 day plan using the following template for success:

Prepare, use the techniques of the most success leaders and athletes, and prepare for each encounter ahead of
time

Assess, take a look that situation and break it down into components

Plan, once you have the components you can then plan on how you are going to address them and this is where
your plan comes in

Communicate, as a leader you will be working through others and looking for the support of those that you are not
working through. Communication of your plan will be important before moving to execution.

Execute, this is the phase when you put your assessment and plans into action

Measure, have a set of key performance indicators that will give you the tools to not only determine success but
also prove it to those around you.

Prepare
What are your major themes? The key subjects you will want to focus on both that define your leadership style and
how you plan to address the opportunities and challenges you will be facing.

Business Leadership
Research the key individuals you will be working with including the business executives. Identify the most senior
executives at the “C” level and senior vice president level. Understand their line of business responsibilities and
relationship with technology. What has worked well for them and what has not? Do they have urgent technology
needs that are not being met? What business objectives have they set out to accomplish in the next year? The next
three years? Is technology aware of these objectives and does it have corresponding projects in support of
accomplishing these business objectives.

The most important thing to do is connect with all the IT stakeholders in the first 90 days. This includes meeting
early and often with your direct reports and senior managers. Listen first and communicate your vision and operating
principles. Be aware of making any commitments to early unless you can absolutely meet them, your reputation will
be decided early and your ability to deliver on commitments will be a large factor in that reputation.

Spend time and connecting with your boss and peers. Make sure you understand what you are expected to
accomplish and what is needed to meet those expectations. Use these meetings to test your vision, goals, and
plans. If mention is made of things you ought to look into, put them at the top of your list and remember to follow up.

Is the business cyclical? Is the IT shop set up to work this way? For example I worked with H&R Block a US tax
preparer. Their business was cyclical and everything revolved around the annual tax filing deadlines. Thus between
January 1 and April 15th, the US deadline for filing tax returns, the entire IT organization was focused on keeping
the lights on. Then from May through December all technology projects had to be set up and completed by
December 31st. I remember having late night calls the week between the December 25th and January 1st as
technology pressed to get key projects delivered in time for the start of tax season. This was clearly cyclical
business with very little option for missed delivery.

Technology Staff
Gather the existing performance reviews and resumes of the first two management layers in the organization. You
will want to ask similar questions of your technology leaders as you did for your business leaders.

First you will want to understand which business relationships are strong and which relationships are weak with your
direct reports. Utilizing the organizational chart and the conversations you will want to understand the responsibilities
of each of your direct reports and the second downs. What are their roles and what are their priorities. Each team is
responsible for a set of common responsibilities and you should determine who is doing this on each of your teams:

Security
Backup and batch processing
Support and keep the lights on functions
Project delivery

Many shops will try to centralize these functions, however, not all of the work can be centralized and understanding
how the work is dispatched between the central function and the specialist teams will be important in understanding
key dysfunctions and disconnects between line of business demands and IT approach to solving them.

Use these connection sessions to help you define what is important and what both the near term actions should be
and the longer term goals toward achieving your vision. Reach out to your peers to further review and refine what
you have discovered in your meetings. Work with your senior team members to crafting the details of your approach.
Then write up your findings and validate them with your boss.

Assess
In addition to connecting to understand the landscape of your business and IT teams you will want to inspect the
environment. Ensure the important priorities are getting done, determining which fundamentals are in place and
obtain a summary view of the major risks that must be dealt with. Do not rely on a summary of what is going on.
Start by tackling the following items:
 Review the top 10 initiatives
Review the key production service practices including the change and incident management processes.
Review the key systems: upcoming releases, costs, and issues
Tour the data center and equipment rooms
Walk through the project methodology on several projects
Review the new employee technology provisioning process
Sit with your business partners and observe how they are using your technology. Get the first­hand view of how
effective technology is and the business perception of this effectiveness.
Assess your team and determine their strengths and weaknesses.
Inspect the work underway that is not following the prescribed project methodology.

It Provides Several Products

Infrastructure
Understand your hardware infrastructure and plant management reviewing for ability to support and scale. Identify
what your technology footprint looks like; getting an overview of your network, phone systems, and servers including
the aging of the devices. Determine what has been set up in your facilities, what is hosted externally and what is in
the cloud and delivered “as a service”. What is your desktop and mobile environment and how are you handling the
remote workforce (home based work, business travelers, etc.).

Applications

Are there specific solutions for your lines of business?

Are you a buy or build shop?
What are the business and technology feelings toward this strategy?
What in­house systems should be moved to external providers?
What applications are running on your desktops?
What is your telecommunications environment (the desktop phone, mobile phone, and remote worker phone set
up)?
Are you using soft­phones on home based computers?
Do you have a large number of user developed applications?
Do you have any rogue IT departments?

Data

Is there a Data strategy?

Is there Data governance?
How is Data collected and distributed within the organization?
How is unstructured Data handled?

Projects

Does the organization have an enterprise architecture

What is the business and technology attitude toward enterprise architecture?
How are projects managed?
Is the project management function within IT or is it part of the business responsibility?
Is there a project management methodology?

Services
 How is the service desk set up?
Do you provide overnight support?
Do you provide global support?
Is there a regular maintenance schedule?
Is there a head of IT security?
What processes do you have in place for security?

Budget

Review the budget and planning process. Are the budgeting and forecasting processes solid and effective?
Technology is usually the second most expensive area of any business after personnel costs. Thus having an
understanding of what is the make­up of the technology spend is an important component in connecting with your
business partners. Look into what it would take to split up your technology spend into consumable chunks. The most
popular methods focus on the categories of Change, Build and Sustain. I recommend going further in the break out of
technology spend, splitting the Build category into two segments: projects and small enhancements. I also
recommend breaking the Sustain category into Keep the Lights On, Mandatory Upgrades, Regulatory Audit
Compliance Governance, and finally Recommended Maintenance. By breaking out IT spend into this detail you are
able to take a very large expense and reduce it to an explainable size. I have a previous show focused on how to
structure technology budgets so I won’t go into further detail here.

Project Intake
Determine how projects are identified and prioritized.
What level of business sponsorship do you have for your projects?
Do you have the appropriate level of business sponsorship?
Do you have the right type of project managers?
Is there effective change management including business change management, not just IT change management?

Before I leave the assessment phase there are a couple of additional items you should assess:
Organization Structure, are you set up correctly to delivery against the mandate.
Security, I did mention security earlier, however, it is worth mentioning again.
Troubled projects
Unsupported vendor software
Key­man risk
Other employee departure risk

Now that you have completed your assessment phase it is now time to move to the planning phase where you will
figure out your priorities.

Plan
After meeting with your stakeholders and completing your preparation and assessment phases you should have a
good idea of what your mandate is: strategist, cost cutter, maintainer, etc. Regardless of your mandate begin having
strategic conversations. Use the knowledge gained in the earlier steps to fill out your vision and set long range goals
and establish tactical plans. While there is quite a bit to do, the previous steps will underpin your later success.

Pick several low­hanging fruit opportunities for quick wins. For example cut low­value spending, run a few short
projects, or improve network speeds.

IT organization
Is your IT organization set up for success? Now I am familiar with the three envelopes joke. In this joke the out­
going leader leaves three sealed envelopes on the desk, as part of the transition plan, number one to three with a
note that says when you get into trouble open an envelope in the numerical order. The first envelope says blame
your predecessor, the second envelop says do a re­org and the final envelope says make three envelopes. I have
always felt that it isn’t the organizational structure that is the problem rather it is having the right people in the right
roles. However, I am finding more and more that is not the case. Most IT organizations tend to evolve their structure
without a lot of clear thought put into them. There are many reasons for this evolution that we don’t need to get into
here. The bottom­line is organizational structure should be examined to determine if it is a structure that will be able
to deliver against your vision and mandate.

Here are a few key organizational concepts you might want to consider when planning your organizational structure:

Customer­focused, align the IT organization with internal customers front to back.

Single point of contact for the IT services provided.
Reduce complexity; is the structure one that makes it easy to do business with IT?
Are shared or common services grouped together?
Where is IT security and Enterprise Architecture represented?
Is the customer and business mandate appropriately balanced between your leaders?

Before you move to the next phase of communication, consider taking a look at your transformation plan and
determining what you can actually achieve in the next 90 days before you begin to present your transformation.
There will be lots of opportunities for change. It will be a matter of selecting just a few to advance first. Your choice
will be the key to your success in this role.

Communicate
Develop your communication plan, Identify who needs to be communicated to and at what level. For example who
could be updated without having to attend meetings? Start with a communication matrix. Present several alternative
approaches for transforming the IT organization; stating the alternatives in business terms and specifying the ways
they will help the company accomplish its goals, such as increasing revenue, productivity, or customer satisfaction.

The results of your efforts during the first three phases (prepare, assess, and plan) should be summarized in a
strategic plan for the IT organization. Your strategic plan should include your vision for an overall IT architecture
based on principles appropriate for the organization. This plan serves as the road­map for the next one to two years.
You will need to maintain a consistent communication with your stakeholders during this time­frame and test your
recommendations to determine management acceptance.

The document should lay out your plan including the following information. A assessment summary that outlines
the process you used to develop the strategy, architecture, and execution plan. Have several bold recommendations
with alternative solutions and a set of road­maps to guide the implementation.

As the CIO, you will be making the why we should do this business case for the transformation you are looking to
execute: strategically, technically, organizationally, and financially. I am not suggesting you will be asking permission
to do things. Rather it is creating a level of comfort that you have a firm hand on what’s going on in your area of
responsibility.

Execute
Now you are ready for the execution phase of your 90 day plan. I know that you never stopped moving toward
action, every day is full of activities that you as a leader had to participate in. Rather my emphasis has been on the
importance of preparation, assessment, planning, and communication prior to moving to your execution phase of
your 90 day plan. Too often as IT professionals we think we know what the issues are and start applying our known
toolbox to solve the problem before understanding what the root issue is. The often used phrase of if you have a
hammer everything looks like a nail.
Don’t make this mistake with your new role. Assemble the teams and lead them through the steps with continuous
follow up. I use a tool called a Task and Responsibility Schedule to keep track of what is assigned and when it is
due. Living by the same tools I expect my teams to live by. Remembering, if you didn’t write it down then it doesn’t
count. As a senior leader in the technology space you probably have a very large mandate and as a result multiple
things happening all at once. Keeping track of where you are in your plan is the key to being successful in your
mandate.

In your initial days and weeks as the new leader, it will be crucial to determine whether your organization has a plan
for increasing efficiency, quality of service, and transparency for your stakeholders. Today’s IT consumers expect to
receive a high level of service and the best solutions for their business goals.

To meet these objectives within your organization you might want to consider some of the established IT governance
tools. The IT Service Management (ITSM) strategy based upon the Information Technology Infrastructure Library
(ITIL) international framework provides a tool­set for IT services and service catalogs. The Control Objectives for
Information and Related Technology or COBIT is a framework created to assist IT and business leaders in the IT
governance. COBIT consists of linking business goals to IT goals and provides metrics to measure the achievement
of these goals. Both framework tool­sets are helpful for the next phase when we begin to measure our results.

Measure
Every leadership position has a level of accountability. Being able to say what you are going to do and then doing
what you say is where the rubber will hits the road. You, as a technology leader, will be judged on your ability to
deliver more than anything else. Thus identifying effective measures is important to your ability to declare success.
Pick several areas that you can measure and avoid broad brush stroke objectives.

Performance management
The biggest issue with IT organizations is not being able to demonstrate the value they deliver. I am a big advocate
of setting up an index that you can use to measure your teams performance against. This is similar to what many
investment organizations do to show their ability to successfully manage money; often selecting the S&P 500 as a
measure of an investment fund’s performance. IT does not have an equivalent third party fund to reference as a
measure point for success or failure. Many of the third party provided metrics are better indictments of technology
rather than an effective performance measure. Last week I asked the question would you outsource IT? My answer
was the areas where you cannot cost effectively compete with a third party provider is the areas should be
outsourced. Moving a service to the third party rather than attempting to provide an inferior service will result in an
improved perception of your organization.

Business Value index

Intel has a tool called the Business Value Index or BVI. I have a previous show dedicated to using the BVI for
measuring technology. I would suggest taking a look at this as a tool you could use for your organization. There are
other external tools and having one or two of these will be important for demonstrating the success of the
transformation.

Your Call To Action

In your first 30 days you are working to get the lay of the land; meeting with your business and technology
leadership, preparing and assessing. From day 31 to 60 you are planning and communicating your plans to the
organization. Assessing the willingness of the organization to change and what size of hurdles you will have to
overcome to get your agenda on the table. Readying your impact and understanding where the hidden land mines are
including political and hidden agendas. Finally days 61 through 90 it is time to act and measure the results. The
entire time you are responsible for the continuity of communication ensuring your support remains intact both in the
business and technology groups.

You can consider yourself successful in your first 90 days if you have accomplished the following:
Addressed some of the current pain points within the organization
Established a rapport with key members of management
Set up a consistent mechanism for tracking value

Keep doing it over and again

I recommend that you break your year into 90 day segments; effectively targeting a quarterly set of objectives. This
way you can take the broad opportunities in your transformation plan and outline what areas you plan to advance in
the next 90 days; simplifying your communication plan and the same time enabling your teams to be more effective.
Tying your strategic objectives to the 90 plans will give everyone the vision for what you what your organization to
look like and how they can contribute.

This is certainly not the be all end all of 90 day plans, rather in this brief discussion I have only highlighted the
potential opportunities you will face as a leader. There have been many books written on 90 day plans; my
recommendation is you look into a few of these if you are facing your next opportunity. If you have experience with
90 plans I would like to hear from you and if you are looking to engage further please reach out.

Notes:
Photo Credit via Flickr.com: Maggie

CIO Playbook with Jeffrey Hurley is a podcast dedicated to the development of technology leadership hosted
by Jeffrey Hurley, a seasoned global technology leader who has held positions with Fortune 500 companies
throughout the world including diverse countries: Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, United Kingdom, and the
United States. He is currently based in Toronto, Canada.

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About Jeffrey Hurley

Jeffrey Hurley, a seasoned global technology leader who has held positions with Fortune 500 companies throughout the
world including diverse countries: Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, United Kingdom, and the United States. He is
currently based in Toronto, Canada.
View all posts by Jeffrey Hurley

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