30-60-90 Day Plan: How To Create a 30-60-90 Day Plan

A 30-60-90 day plan is a roadmap of performance goals and tasks for your first 30, 60, and 90 days on the job. Hiring managers might ask you to write up this plan in the final stages of a competitive job interview process, or your employer will ask you to write it early in the training process of your new job.

If you have to create a 30-60-90 day plan for an interview, try to be as concrete as possible about the topics you’d like to learn and the processes you’d want to implement. A job description will likely provide insight into what kind of employee they’re looking for, and what the measurable outcomes will be.

When you’re just starting a new job, the 30-60-90 plan can be more detailed and specific to personal goals. A new employee’s 30-60-90 day plan should focus on the company’s mission, professional development, and the team’s processes. It shouldn’t be all about outcomes, though; it should also include learning goals.

If you want to hit the ground running, starting on a new team with a 30-60-90 day plan will help make a good first impression and offer a rubric for achievable goals. For a new management role, it’s especially important to have a 30-60-90 day plan with SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) for you and your team. Developing a plan will ensure that your expectations are clear and offer metrics for success, giving you a better reputation with the company in general.

If you’re in a client-facing role, customer satisfaction and understanding stakeholders will be a major priority for you and your direct reports. Developing achievable performance goals for these benchmarks in your 30-60-90 plan also helps to onboard new hires. Providing a 90-day plan template to all new hires (or existing hires, if you’re a new manager) will get everyone on the same page.

• The first 30 days: During your first month at a new job, you should develop an understanding of the company’s processes, as well as what the stakeholders need from you and your team.
• Days 30 to 60: This is the time to pick a process that you think can be improved. Brainstorm with your team, and strategize how to implement a new process that could work for everyone.
• Days 60 to 90: The final portion of the 90-day plan should focus on making something better. Whether you implement a new strategy or want to teach everyone how to use a more effective software, you should be able to show a new system and a successfully completed project.
• 90 days and beyond: At this point, you should understand the workflow of the company, and be actively working toward short- and long-term goals for professional development.

If you join a team as a manager and you’re in charge of customer service, a good goal for the first 90 days would be to track and improve customer satisfaction.

• The first 30 days: In the first month, you will learn more about the processes and the company’s customers.
• Days 30 to 60: You could implement a new way of tracking customer satisfaction where employees get involved in a keyword analysis of all customer emails or comments. After finding recurring keywords, the customer service team will try to come up with a better way of addressing customer satisfaction based on the research findings.
• Days 60 to 90: By the 90-day mark, the team will have a better understanding of how their systems can be more efficient and successful.

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