Milhad for Unsplash+
Dearest Gentle Reader… did you miss me?
I came back from the break with one belief quietly overturned… and a newfound Bridgerton addiction.
When I started my role, I thought the first 90 days were about proving I was the right hire at senior altitude. Showing competence. Having the plan. Demonstrating momentum.
Hindsight is 20/20.
I treated those early weeks like a performance. I over-prepared. I powered through The First 90 Days with a highlighter, post-its on every page, convinced that if I just absorbed the right frameworks, I’d get it right.
What I was really doing was chasing a quiet form of validation… proof (for myself) that I was being useful. The motion felt productive but it wasn’t. It pulled my attention away from the one thing that actually mattered: understanding what was real versus what was assumed.
The best idea from that book was this: a new senior hire is like an organ transplant. The body either accepts it or it doesn’t. What I’ve now realized is that acceptance isn’t something you can manufacture through effort. It’s determined by the system itself through its rhythms, its incentives, its tolerance for new “organs”.
You can connect the valves perfectly and still be rejected. Activity never overrides incompatibility.
Which is why the most important decision a senior Chief makes isn’t what they do in the first 90 days. It’s where they choose to land in the first place.
Interviews are the only real leverage point you get. Everything after that is adaptation. No onboarding plan can compensate for a system that doesn’t value judgment or a leader who isn’t prepared to be taught how to use you.
Selection matters more than performance. Fit determines whether your thinking ever has a place to land.
Once you’re in, the real work is observing, which requires a different kind of discipline. This requires listening without planning your response and letting go of the urge to ask the next smart question.
When you decide you’re not going to speak, all your attention has to move to understanding what’s actually being said and how it’s being said. Tone. Timing. What people return to. What they skip over. I learned this the hard way, catching myself more focused on how the conversation had gotten to where it was, than on the substance unfolding in front of me. That kind of mental drift feels analytical, but it blocks the very signals you’re there to catch.
The pressure to move quickly in those early days is usually about something else entirely. It’s the urge to be seen as useful. But acting to anticipate approval weakens judgment.
You weren’t hired to guess what your principal wants. You were hired to see what’s actually happening and decide what matters. At senior altitude, acceptance isn’t earned through performance. It’s earned through restraint and calibration. And it really helps if you choose the right system to enter in the first place.
Affiliate Link Disclaimer: Some of the links in this email are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.