Most new CEOs spend their first ninety days trying to prove they were the right choice.
That's the wrong instinct. And it's where most of them go wrong.
The first ninety days aren't for proving. They're for understanding. The leaders who come in with an agenda already set, a restructure half-planned, a new positioning half-written, a handful of people they want out, almost always regret it. Not because change isn't needed. It usually is. But because change lands badly when it comes before trust.
We all know what it feels like when the new leader walks in announcing that everything is going to change. Ew.
The first thing to do
Listen. Properly. To everyone. Not in a performative way, the kind that happens one-to-one, off the record, with no agenda.
One of the smartest approaches we've seen is simple: ask every person in the organisation to finish this sentence: "If I were CEO, I would..."
Ask it exactly that way. Open. Imaginative. No wrong answers. What comes back will tell you more about the business than any onboarding pack. You'll hear what people are proud of, what they're embarrassed about, what they've been waiting for someone to fix, and what they're terrified you'll break.
That's your real brief.
The three As
Every new CEO walks into a business with an existing set of dynamics. Three questions will tell you whether those dynamics are working for you or against you.
Ambition. Does everyone agree on what this business is trying to become? Not at the level of values on a wall, at the level of actual decisions made on actual days. Misaligned ambition is the most common invisible problem in creative businesses.
Alignment. Is the leadership team pulling in the same direction? A room full of brilliant people can collectively produce nothing when everyone is optimising for different things. Find out who is genuinely aligned and who is performing it.
Autonomy. Are you actually going to be allowed to lead? This question matters most in founder-led businesses where the founder is still present. If the autonomy isn't real, the role isn't real. Find this out before you start making promises.
What to do with what you find
Month one: listen. Ask the questions. Map the dynamics. Don't make big moves.
Month two: share back what you heard. Not with names, under Chatham House Rules. But show people you listened. That alone builds more trust than most leaders realise.
Month three: start making the first decisions. Informed by everything you've heard. Clearly explained. Consistent with what you said you were going to do.
A useful rule: in month one, I tell you what we're going to do together. In month two, we decide together. In month three, you tell me.
The thing most new CEOs underestimate
Culture isn't changed by announcements. It's changed by behaviour. Repeated, daily, visible behaviour.
Someone once described this as artefact hunting. What are the artefacts that prove the culture you want to build? It could be a physical symbol. It could be the song that plays when something great happens. It could be something weird and undeniably specific to the business.
Your first ninety days aren't an exercise in communication. They're an exercise in demonstrating: slowly, consistently, what kind of leader you actually are.
UNKNOWN works with agency CEOs at every stage from the hire itself to the first year of leadership. If you're stepping into a new CEO role, or hiring one, we'd like to help.
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