Your 30-60-100 Day Plan for a New IT Leadership Role

Starting any new position comes with its challenges and opportunities. Whether you are a seasoned executive taking on a fresh challenge or recently promoted into your first senior IT role, getting the first few months right is critical. The pressure to demonstrate value quickly is real - but so is the risk of moving too fast before you fully understand the landscape.

As Abraham Lincoln put it: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." The same principle applies here. Focusing on strategy and understanding before execution is almost always the better approach for achieving sustainable success.

This guide draws on Wavex's experience working alongside IT leaders across London and the UK, and sets out a practical framework for your first 100 days. Download the full whitepaper using the button above for a more detailed breakdown including checklists and templates.

Why the IT Leadership Role Has Changed

In the past, an IT executive's background was typically 80 percent technical and 20 percent business. That ratio has increasingly reversed. Boards now recognise both the value and the risk of technology, which means IT leaders are expected to be business leaders first - communicating clearly with non-technical stakeholders, influencing strategy, and demonstrating measurable impact on the bottom line.

This shift has significant implications for how you approach your first 100 days. The days of arriving and immediately auditing the server room are over. Your first priority is to understand the business, its people, and its goals - before you start changing anything.

Days 1-30: Listen, Learn, and Assess

The initial 30 days are critical for building a genuine understanding of the organisation. Resist the temptation to make changes early. Moving too quickly risks alienating the key stakeholders you will need to deliver your future strategy. Instead, use this period to listen, observe, and gather information.

There are five areas to focus on during this phase. First, understand the organisational structure - map departments, their core objectives, and the key stakeholders within each. Reviewing existing KPIs at this stage will help you contextualise what you find later. Second, capture business outcomes - your engagement may have a very specific goal, or you may be replacing a staff member where success is less clearly defined. Either way, starting to capture what business outcomes look like is critical from day one.

Third, document current issues - but frame them as opportunities for improvement rather than personal failures. Assessing how IT is perceived across different departments is equally important, since perception can vary significantly depending on how involved those departments have been in past IT projects. Fourth, assess resources - consider what skills and capabilities will be needed to deliver your future strategy. Interview your third-party providers to understand their full capabilities; more sophisticated managed IT service providers will have invested in technology and processes you can leverage directly.

Fifth, understand board and governance dynamics - find out how IT engages at board level, how the business expects to see success, and what governance structures exist. Establishing the right recurring meetings early - with your team, third parties, and the board - will pay dividends throughout your tenure.

Your 30-Day Checklist

By the end of day 30, you should have: created an issues log; interviewed all department heads; obtained an up-to-date organisational structure; documented board approval processes and example business cases; listed information repositories and data sources; determined your strategic filters; listed available resources and skills; and established recurring meetings with your team, third parties, stakeholders, and the board.

Days 31-100: Strategy, Governance, Performance, and Operations

From day 31 onwards, the focus shifts from listening to acting - but in a structured, prioritised way. There are four pillars to address during this phase, and the order matters.

1. Strategy

You may not own the overall business strategy, but you can facilitate it with the right processes and people. Start by creating a one-page IT strategy that identifies priorities using the strategic filters you defined in your first 30 days. These filters - typically covering revenue and growth, agility, profitability, client experience, and staff experience - help you prioritise objectively rather than responding to whoever is shouting loudest. Get board buy-in early and ensure you are communicating your strategy to the right people. A good IT strategy is not a technical document; it is a business document that happens to involve technology.

2. Governance

Good governance ensures decisions are made by the right people, with the right information, at the right time. Define your governance model - which bodies exist, who needs to be involved - and establish a decision framework that keeps meetings focused on action rather than informal sharing. One common mistake is populating governance forums with people who lack the authority to make decisions, which turns them into information sessions rather than decision-making forums.

3. Performance Management

The right metrics are those that demonstrate business impact, not IT activity. Review your existing scorecards and KPIs, link them to core business objectives, and define clear reports that show momentum and value to stakeholders. Tools like Power BI can make sharing data with the board significantly easier. If you are working with an outsourced IT support provider, ensure they are reporting against business outcomes rather than just ticket volumes and resolution times.

4. IT Operations

Consider whether the IT function is set up to produce the desired business outcomes. Many organisations have IT operations focused on stability when the business actually needs innovation, agility, and flexibility. Consolidate your standards, policies, and standard operating procedures - check whether they are followed and understood, not just documented. Many businesses outsource core parts of their IT operation, which means you may not have direct access to all documentation, but any reputable provider should be willing to discuss their processes openly.

Identifying Quick Wins

Identifying quick wins relatively early is important for building trust and demonstrating momentum. These do not always need to be solutions to problems - mining existing datasets can often uncover previously unknown trends that help underpin your IT strategy and achieve board buy-in. Ensure that individuals who contributed to or suggested quick wins are acknowledged; this builds the spirit of transparency and collaboration that will define your tenure.

Post 100 Days: Managing Against Strategy

By day 100, you should be managing against your strategy rather than still defining it. Provide regular updates to the board and key decision makers on progress, highlighting what has been completed and what the current focus is. The cadence and depth of these updates will depend on the pace of change within your organisation, but maintaining visibility at board level is non-negotiable.

The Role of Your IT Partner

One of the most important decisions you will make in your first 100 days is whether your current IT provider is the right partner for the strategy you are building. A good managed IT service provider should be a strategic partner, not just a support desk. They should be able to provide you with data on your current environment, contribute to your governance forums, and align their service delivery to your business priorities.

If your current provider cannot do these things, it may be worth exploring your options. Switching IT provider is less disruptive than most organisations expect, particularly when the new provider has a structured onboarding process. You can find out more about what a smooth transition looks like on our Switch IT Support Provider page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Download the Full Guide

The full whitepaper includes detailed checklists for each phase, Gartner's eight key IT team skills framework, and a strategic priorities template. Download it using the button above, or contact the Wavex team to discuss how we support IT leaders across London and the UK.