Your first 100 days in charge: a time to show the organisation who you are. The people you are about to lead are waiting, full of expectation and apprehension. How will you change their jobs? Will they even have jobs? Everything hangs on what you do.
The idea that the first 100 days of a leader’s reign are crucial dates back to Franklin D Roosevelt’s inauguration to his initial US presidential term in March 1933. The country was in the grip of depression. “Almost every bank was closed, one in every four people was unemployed and the very survival of democratic capitalism was in doubt,” wrote Thomas Neff and James Citrin of headhunters Spencer Stuart in their book You’re in Charge — Now What?
In his first 100 days, Roosevelt and the US Congress brought relief to businesses, farms and the unemployed, and created the Tennessee Valley Authority to control floods and produce electricity along the Tennessee river. Roosevelt’s 100 days set an example for many organisational leaders who feel that they, too, have to use those first three months to take decisive action. An energetic first 100 days shows you mean business, that you can act decisively before people settle back into their comfortable ways.