Nobody teaches you how to be a manager. This journal does.

You were good at the work. That is why they promoted you. Now the work is other people, nobody handed you a manual, and the first ninety days are the ones everyone remembers. The First-Time Manager’s 90-Day Journal gives you a structure for those ninety days: what to look at each week, what to write down, and what to decide before the grace period runs out.

Ninety days, three months

The journal runs for thirteen weeks across three months. Each month has a different job, and trying to do all three at once is the most common way a first management job goes wrong.

Month 1: Survive and Observe, weeks 1 to 4

You learn the team, the work and the expectations above you. You change as little as possible. Most of what you think you see in week one turns out to be wrong by week four, and the journal is where you record it so you can check. More on this in your first week as a manager.

Month 2: Build and Implement, weeks 5 to 8

You start setting expectations, running one-on-ones that go somewhere, and delegating results instead of methods. This is where a manager stops being the best technician on the team and starts being a manager. See how to delegate results, not methods.

Month 3: Lead and Strategize, weeks 9 to 13

You take responsibility for the output of the team as a whole. Their results are your results. Their failures are yours too, and their successes stay theirs.

The shape of every week

Every week has a theme and the same seven pages: a mission on Monday, three prompts through the middle of the week, a debrief on Friday, and a weekend that is deliberately not about work. By the second month it runs without effort.

The themes move from listening and mapping the ground in the first weeks, through feedback, delegation, meetings and coaching, to the harder things at the end: difficult conversations, setting expectations, and a review of your own first ninety days.

Who this is for

• You were promoted in the last few months and you are managing for the first time.
• You are about to be, and you would rather not learn all of it the expensive way.
• You were promoted from inside the team and now you manage people who were your peers. If that is you, start with managing people who were your peers.

It is not for people who want a theory of leadership. There are plenty of those. This is a working document you write in.

Start reading

The two guides on this site follow the same path as the journal, and both work on their own.

• Your first 90 days as a manager: what each month is for, and what to review at day 90.
• Leading a team for the first time: expectations, culture, delegation and feedback once the transition is over.