How to do more in 100 days than ever before
Nick Sherrard on the fast changing world of innovation
“What’s your plan for your first 100 days?” – this is perhaps the only classic interview question for a standard management job that doubles up as an evaluation metric for Presidents of the USA. What did you get done in your first 100 days? What do you plan to accomplish in the next set? In many contexts, 100 days is the defining test period for any leader.
It’s now a much more interesting question than it used to be. At least in the sense that there is technically very little that cannot be built in 100 days. The days when a new product idea, a new app, or a new advertising campaign required months, or years, of development time are numbered – or they may already be gone.
The first Visa card was created in 90 days, and signed up 100,000 customers too. Amazon started to implement the first version of Amazon Prime in late 2004 and launched it on February 2 2005, six weeks later. Tony Fadell was hired to create the iPod in late January 2001, and Steve Jobs greenlit the project in March.
As part of my work at Label Sessions, I help CEOs, CMOs, and CTOs in a range of Scottish organisations put together their 100-day plans and then accomplish far more in the next 100 days than they ever have in the past. That work has helped me realise a brutal truth.
In modern corporations these stories of an accelerated AI future, or even the development of the iPod, seem like a fantasy from an alien land. Innovation in big companies has developed BSE – it has become big, slow, and expensive.
In seeking to manage out the risk of innovation, modern brands are starting to realise that they could be exposing themselves to something much worse. We now live in a world in which new entrants can design and build new products at pace – even within 100 days. And, so, the question becomes how will your business manage the risk of being left behind in the next 100 days?
I’ve learned that three things are important. First, you need ambition because where you have clarity on opportunities or changes that need to be made, time is now of the essence. You need to deliberately create projects and teams that have the environment around them to build launch-ready products, using the latest tools and at a new pace.
At the same time, you also need honesty – transforming institutions is a team sport and cannot be done alone. It may be that the launch-ready product you build still needs to go through some internal processes before you get it in customers’ hands. Focusing on making some proposals simply board-ready in 100 days could be the first priority, bringing the right people with you on the journey.
Finally, you need humility too because so much is changing. The evolution of technology grabs the headlines but the shifts in consumer behaviour, supply chains, and even regulation each need to be understood. Research and listening have to be a big part of the 100-day plan, as well as a bias to action.
Today’s leaders need to realise that they can accomplish more in 100 days than any leader before them. None of that will come automatically, though – the right steps need to be taken in the right order, within that timeframe. So, the question is really this: in the next 100 days, will you do what it takes to win?
Nick Sherrard, CEO of Label Sessions
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