The First 100 Days

Dear you,

If you’re new here, a warm welcome to my corner of the internet and thanks for inviting me to your mailbox. If you’d like a physical print of this letter let me know because I wouldn’t be opposed to starting that.

💯 100-Day Plan

Having now crossed the first 100 days at my new job, I thought I’d share what I found interesting after reading into Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first 100 days which has been used as a yard stick by US presidents and corporate executives ever since his turnaround of the US economy post-depression.

I first heard about this benchmark when working at Strategy& and recently my boss referred to it jokingly as I closed my first end-to-end deal. Over the last 100 days, my main focus was to connect and introduce myself to people that I was keen to learn from across the organization. I also managed to get my first award which to my surprise had nothing to do with my actual work but instead for simply organizing the first sponsored team social ever since covid slashed the budgets. Apparently I’m persuasive and economical but more importantly I aspire to be known for getting things done. Obama says it himself, don’t ask for the plum assignment just do whatever you’re assigned however big or small and say “leave it with me, I’ll get it sorted.”

Here’s 3 things I’ve learnt about succeeding in your first 100 days:

1. When starting out a new role, perhaps the most important task is to start a professional CRM which tracks who to reach out to for what and set cadences for how frequently you should be touching base with key contacts

2. Whilst there’s a push to get up to speed in 90 days, on average stakeholders give a new CEO:

   1. 9 months to develop a strategic vision and win support from employees

   2. 14 months (~1 year) to build the right team

   3. 19 months (~1.5 years) to increase the share price

3. Decide what you will own, delegate and track because you can’t do it all

⚖️ This past week in numbers

📲 Screen time: 5.5 hours down by 12% (~2 hrs social, 50 min productivity) and 140 pick-ups up by 10% (that’s almost every 7 minutes…)

🍎 Step count: 7,614 (above 2024 avg: 7,056 and 2023 avg: 5,412)

💬 Made you think

The Economist has perhaps my favorite styling for visual charts. The chart below was from an edition a couple weeks ago and I thought it was interesting that whilst the S&P 500 has been up more than 25% in the last 18 months, there are really 4 companies alone in that index which went almost 2.5x in value across the same time period. Of course this is probably skewed heavily by Nvidia’s bull-run.

With another set of quarterly results coming up in the next couple weeks, I’m keen to share what I hear after dialing into some calls.

I hope you had a lovely Easter long weekend and for those fasting, good luck with these last 10 days of Ramadan. Stay blessed.

Till next time,

Azam