Think Like Faceman: Charm Your Way Through the First 30 Days

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Hey my friend,

Hope your weekend was good!☕️

Last week I shared my thinking around starting a new job inYour First 100 Days. Perfect time to dive into it with me just starting my new role at Capitec recently.

The rough breakdown is:

• First 30 Days: Be Curious and Learn.

• Second 30 Days: Match Strategy to Situation.

• Third 30 Days: Execute Strategy and Secure Early Wins.

Today, we dive into more detail on the First 30 days. 

Your first month can make or break your success in the role.

Advice from the gurus is to be curious and learn as much as you can.

But, what mental model to use for a curious mindset?

What is the playbook for these 30 days?

Grab your coffee.

Let’s chat!

Templeton “Faceman” Peck is all about charm, curiosity, and intuition. He had a knack for building relationships and trust quickly.

This makes him the ideal figure to embody the stakeholder conversations, and curiosity techniques we talk about today.

A. Lead with Curiosity, Not Action

A curiosity mindset in the first 30 days is key.

You should resist the urge to dive into immediate fixes.

You want to be asking, reflecting, and analyzing.

You want to gain insight into:

• How the organization works (culture).

• What problems are holding things back.

• How you can have impact.

How to approach conversations with curiosity? Check out this excellent Zone of Curiosity model from Jeff Wetzler in Harvard Business Review, 2025.

B. The Playbook for the first 30 Days

The playbook I am using is distilled from Michael Watkins “The First 90 Days”, and Niamh O'Keeffe’s “The First 100 Days”.

1. Build a stakeholder map and understand the organogram.

Where do you and your team fit within the organization?

Who are your key stakeholders?

Map these out.

2. Interview your Stakeholders

Approach the interviews with your team, peers, manager and even skip-level manager with a curiosity mindset.

Your goal is to gather as much qualitative data as possible, and to understand the culture you are stepping into:

• What are we exceptional at?

• What's causing the most frustration?

• What obstacles could you help them remove?

Before the interviews, remember to get yourself into the zone of curiosity as per the mental model shared earlier. You want to ensure you are uncovering and absorbing as much information as possible.

Bonus Tip: You should use the interviews to get an idea of the DISC profile of each stakeholder. This can help you engage them in their preferred style of communication going forward.

3. Reflect, Diagnose, and Document

As you start to complete more interviews, and collect more data, you will be in a good position to derive insight into the immediate challenges facing you and your team.

You can use Qualitative Analysis techniques (or plug your notes into ChatGPT 😅 ), and see what problems/themes emerge.

Once you have identified 3-5 key problems, you are in a good position to make early impact within your first 100 days.

4. Summarize and communicate your insights

At the end of 30 days summarize and share your findings. This will serve as input to the second 30 days, where you devise a strategy to match the situation/diagnosis.

Set some SMART objectives to help you achieve this (eg. Complete 80% interviews with key stakeholders. Identify the top 3-5 organizational challenges and opportunities. Share feedback with the team etc).

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Key Takeaway: Your First 30 Days Playbook

Your first month isn’t about proving yourself.

It’s about identifying the issues and where you can have impact.

It's about earning trust, building relationships and gathering input into your strategy.

That’s it for today folks. Hope it was insightful.

Next week we dive into the playbook for the second 30 days: Devising a strategy to match the situation you have diagnosed in the first 30 days.

Till then, have a great week! ☕️ 

Vaugan

Chess Puzzle

Black to play and force mate

Move the pieces and try to solve here.

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