Every week, The Management Lab lands in the inboxes of new managers, 0-5 years, across Africa who are figuring out leadership in real time; without a manual, without a mentor, and often without anyone telling them the truth about what the role actually demands.
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(Drawn from insights in The Next 90 Days)
Dear Reader ,
This is how it typically starts...
You get the email, “Congratulations on your new role.”
Your title changes, the announcements are made, the congratulations roll in, and after these voices have quietened, a thoughts with a quieter message starts looping in your head:
“I have to prove they didn’t make a mistake.”
That internal pressure, plus the external expectation that you’ll “hit the ground running” is what pushes many new managers into the most dangerous pattern of their first month: doing too much, too soon, in a system they don’t yet understand.
Today’s MGT Lab note is about that panic to prove yourself, and how to handle it differently.
The Invisible Script That Drives Premature Action
Most managers carry an invisible script into a new role: They step into these roles thinking and believing that
- “Real leaders move fast.”
- “If I don’t change things quickly, they’ll think I’m weak.”
- “Everyone is watching, I need a big visible win. or low hanging fruit (like we often say)”
So you start hunting for things to fix.
- You tweak the reporting line that always looked odd from the outside.
- You tighten an approval process.
- You change a meeting rhythm that “supposedly” wastes time.
From the outside it looks like you’re being decisive, you're making moves, doing things; but from the inside of the system? You may be:
- Breaking things that were working for reasons you haven’t seen yet
- Alienating people who already feel unheard
- Creating resistance that will fight you quietly for months
- Spending your initial credibility before it has had time to grow
The painful part is this: the system won’t give you immediate feedback that you’re making a mistake. People will nod, comply, and then go back to their group chats to process what just happened.
By the time the consequences surface; such as missed deadlines, quiet non‑cooperation, “we tried that before” energy, you’re unfortunately, already in recovery mode.
Your First Job, When You Become a Manager is not to “change things”
One of the strongest arguments in The Next 90 Days is that your primary job in the early phase of a new role is not to change the system. It’s to understand it.
That sounds soft, but it isn’t.
Understanding means, at minimum:
- Knowing the history behind the current structure (what was tried before, what failed, what scars people carry)
- Knowing who actually makes decisions and who just signs documents
- Knowing which informal relationships keep things moving when process breaks
- Knowing which “bad” practices are really compensating for a deeper constraint you haven’t touched yet
Taking action before this kind of understanding is not performance, it is gambling.
An Important Emotional Pivot
The big psychological shift a new manager has to make is;
From “I need to prove I deserved this job.” to “I need to learn this job’s reality faster and more honestly than anyone else.”
That shift does two things:
- It slows your body down making you less likely to spray decisions around just to feel productive.
- It helps you realize that your first 30 days should not be measured by “How many things did I change?” but “How deeply do I understand what I’m about to change?”
NOTE THIS: Your early “win” is not a new process. It’s an accurate, shared picture of how things currently work, and don’t work.
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A Simple Check for any Change You’re About to Make
If you’re in your first 90 days and you’re about to make a noticeable change, pause and run it through three questions:
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History check
- Who put the current setup in place?
- What problem were they trying to solve?
- What happened the last time someone tried to change it?
-
People check
- Who will feel this change the most?
- Have they had a chance to tell you how the system feels from their side?
- Is there at least one person who will privately tell you, “This is a bad idea,” if it is?
-
Credibility check
- Have you shown enough listening, presence and fairness that people will trust your intent even if the change is uncomfortable?
- If this change goes wrong, do you have enough credibility in reserve to recover?
If you can’t answer these clearly, the problem is not your courage. It’s your information. Delay the change. Go gather more truth.
A 7‑day “panic‑proof” plan for new managers
If you’re in a fresh role right now and you can feel the need to prove yourself, try this for the next seven days:
- Name the pressure
Write down the specific sentences in your head (e.g. “My director needs to see I’m different from the last manager”). Seeing the script stops it from secretly driving your behaviour.
-
Trade one “quick win” for five deep conversations
Instead of launching a new initiative this week, book five conversations with people who’ve been in the system longer than you. Ask them:
- “What was the last big change here? How did it land?”
- “What do you wish previous managers had understood before they acted?”
- Show your work
Tell your manager and your team explicitly:
“In my first month, you’ll see more listening than big changes. I want to make sure we really understand how things work before we start moving pieces around.”
That sentence alone can reduce some of the external pressure you’re carrying.
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Choose a “learning win” for week four
Instead of a flashy change, aim for a clear output like:
- a one‑page map of the team’s work and constraints
- a stakeholder map with their priorities and pain points
- a documented list of “things we’re not touching yet, and why”
This kind of artefact looks quiet, but it’s what real strategic action rests on.
For managers in their first 90 days
If you’ve just been promoted, the urge to make an obvious, visible difference is completely human. But the system you’ve entered has a memory, a power map and a logic that existed long before your offer letter.
Your first real act of leadership might not be a decision.
It might be restraint.
In The Next 90 Days ebook, the opening phase is treated less like a sprint to prove yourself and more like an intentional season of diagnosis.
That frame has a kind of calm urgency to it. It tells you your time to act is coming but if you burn your credibility in the first month, you’ll have much less room to work with when it counts.
So here is your Management Lab experiment for this week:
- Identify one change you were planning to push quickly.
- Delay it by two weeks.
- Spend those two weeks understanding the history, the people and the hidden constraints around it.
When you finally move, you’ll be acting from knowledge, not panic and everyone around you will feel the difference.
Still learning,
Eyitemi