The First 100 Days: From Presidential Suites to Product Suites
Why your greatest leverage comes when you're still learning the ropes
Welcome to Frank Takeaways. I'm Frank, writing the notes worth keeping from decades at companies like Slack, Etsy, and Google. I run a coaching practice dedicated to guiding leaders through the tricky stuff of building products and high-performing teams.
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Setting the Stage: The Power of First Impressions
The first 100 days of leadership: a corporate yardstick borrowed from politics, now used to measure success at breakneck speed. Whether you're leading a ten-person startup or inheriting a sprawling product empire, it’s a sprint to map the roadmap while unraveling why the last three sprints derailed. Every decision is a signal; every meeting, a chance to inspire or sow doubt. After all, dear leader, they didn't bring you in because everything was humming along perfectly.
Let’s be clear: The first 100 days isn’t a grace period — it's Speed with a corporate twist: the moment you slow down, everything explodes. But instead of Keanu on a bus, it's you in meetings, and instead of a bomb, it's your political capital with a countdown timer. The clock is ticking, and your honeymoon period is your best shot at making a difference.
The Honeymoon Advantage
Here's the truth they don't tell you in onboarding: your first 100 days are your easiest opportunity to make substantial changes. While everyone else sees this as a "learning period," smart leaders recognize it as their moment of maximum leverage. You have a fresh mandate, you're filling a leadership void, and crucially, everyone is expecting change (more on this later). The same proposals that would face fierce resistance six months from now will find receptive audiences today.
Think about it: you can ask the "naive" questions that challenge long-held assumptions. You're the corporate equivalent of a toddler asking 'why' to everything — except your questions can reshape entire departments instead of just exhausting parents. You haven't accumulated any political baggage, haven't had to say no to anyone's pet projects, and haven't had any initiatives fail. Your political capital may never be higher.
Plus, everyone is jockeying for your support. Teams are actively trying to win your favor rather than defend their turf. Use this dynamic because it won't last forever.
Your honeymoon period is like a startup's seed funding — everyone's excited about the potential, nobody's asking about burn rate yet, and you've got a limited runway to prove you're not the next WeWork.
Of course, this power comes with risks. Move too fast without understanding the ecosystem, and you might break critical dependencies or alienate key allies. Make decisions based on incomplete data, and you could set the wrong direction. The key is to balance the urgency of the honeymoon period with enough due diligence to ensure your changes will stick. Don’t finish early, use the full 100 days.
The Numbers Tell the Story
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, he established the "first 100 days" benchmark by pushing through 15 major pieces of legislation that essentially rewrote the rules of the American economy. Since then, presidential approval ratings reveal patterns that any leader should note:
First, your initial rating tends to be sticky. Looking at presidential approval ratings since Carter, most leaders see their peak approval stay within 15% of their first 100 days rating. The only dramatic exceptions came from external crises: George W. Bush's ratings soared to 90% after 9/11, and George H.W. Bush hit 89% during the Gulf War victory.
This pattern holds a crucial lesson for product leaders: barring a major market disruption or a breakthrough innovation, your team's initial perception of your leadership tends to anchor their long-term view. You can shift it incrementally, but dramatic improvements are rare.
The data also shows that Bill Clinton was the only modern president whose final approval rating exceeded his first 100 days score. It's a powerful reminder that while first impressions matter, they're not always destiny, just usually.
These presidential approval trajectories mirror what many product leaders experience: The initial excitement of new leadership (your first 100 days), the reality of execution (peak performance), and the long-term results (final numbers). The key is understanding which metrics truly matter for your context.
From Oval Office to Corner Office
For a newly minted VP of Product or Product Management Director, it might look something like this:
The Listening Tour (Days 1-30): Spend the first few weeks meeting with every team member, key stakeholder, and anyone who'll give you five minutes of their time. Document these insights in a summary report to share with the team — use these findings to highlight quick wins, debunk myths, and gain trust early. It's part anthropology, part corporate espionage, and entirely crucial.
The Product Strategy Blitz (By Day 50): Roll out a comprehensive product strategy that addresses key pain points and sets a clear vision. Think less "we're committed to excellence" and more "here's how we're going to eat our competitors' lunch." Focus on one or two bold goals, like cutting churn by 15% or improving time-to-market for the next release. Don’t be fooled — you don’t need to come up with new initiatives. You can champion existing plans.
The Quick Win (By Day 75): Identify and execute a high-impact, low-effort product improvement. This could be something like optimizing an existing feature that users find frustrating—a small change that yields noticeable results. It's your way of saying, "See? I don't just talk a good game; I deliver." Here again these can be long-standing pain-points or an opportunity to flex your “fresh pair of eyes”.
The Team Realignment (By Day 90): Reshape the team structure to better align with your strategy. This might mean breaking down silos, creating new roles, or gently showing the door to folks who still think "agile" is just a word in the dictionary. Wait until Day 90 to do this — while the team might be primed for organizational change early, you first need to understand this organization before making changes. Make the change and explain the why. Iterate that organization structures are in service of our plans and need to be revisited as our plans evolve.
The Future Roadmap (Day 100): Cap off your 100 days by presenting a detailed product roadmap for the next 12 months. This is your "mission to Mars" moment—ambitious, exciting, and just crazy enough to work. It’s likely tactics of this plan are missing and/or will evolve over the next several months. You’re auditioning for the role of 'Product Leader Who Actually Gets It', a rare species in an ecosystem crowded with feature factories and "move fast and break things" wunderkinds. This roadmap is a campaign for hearts and minds — for igniting and inspiring the team and reminding them why they wanted to join the company in the first place.
The Product Management Parallel
In the product world, your "approval rating" might not be splashed across the headlines, but it's just as crucial. Smart leaders track it through specific metrics:
Team Health: Track sprint velocity trends, team participation in planning sessions, and completion rate of action items from retrospectives
Stakeholder Alignment: Measure meeting attendance and engagement, track follow-through on cross-functional commitments, and monitor response times to requests
Vision Buy-in: Survey team confidence in the roadmap, track voluntary attendance at product demos, and measure the quality and quantity of bottom-up feature suggestions
Customer Confidence: Monitor NPS trends, support ticket sentiment, and customer advisory board participation
Just as political capital gives presidents the mandate to push through major legislation, strong early performance metrics give you the leverage to drive significant product and organizational changes. But unlike approval ratings, these metrics give you actionable insights before problems become crises.
The Bottom Line
The first 100 days are not just a corporate construct—they're your chance to rewrite the rules, inspire your team, and set the tone for the future. Like a president entering office, your leadership begins with a mandate to create meaningful change. Be bold, but deliberate. Listen deeply, act strategically, and focus on momentum-building wins that align with your vision.
Leadership isn't about preserving the status quo; it's about driving progress. Your honeymoon period is fleeting, but the impact of your decisions can echo far beyond those first three months. Embrace the opportunity, lead with purpose, and set the stage for a legacy of lasting success.