The Relationships New CEOs Must Build in Their First 60 Days
In the first two months a CEO should listen more than act, expand their network beyond obvious stakeholders, and gather ground-level evidence to avoid early missteps.
Useful takeaways from this story.
Treat the first 60 days as an evidence-gathering window: prioritize listening, patterns over volume, and a KPI scorecard before big moves.
Talk to expected stakeholders (board, investors, execs), and the often-overlooked ones (former CEO, frontline employees, recently lost clients, partners).
Watch for cultural red flags: hero culture, “we’ve always done it” thinking, and leaders who deflect with excuses.
# Why the first 60 days matter
# Who to prioritize and what to ask
With the executive team, assess capabilities, spot silos, and identify early adopters who already align with your view. Look for leadership problems such as inability to set priorities, constant complaints about workload, or a culture of excuses. Watch for a "hero culture"—relying on individual firefighting that won't scale.
Don't stop at leadership. Schedule focus groups with mid-level managers and individual contributors to get ground-level views of morale and execution speed. Those conversations reveal how change travels through the organization and who carries culture.
# Relationships most new CEOs overlook Make time for people who are easy to miss but can give honest context: the former CEO (especially if the exit wasn't amicable), partners, recently lost clients, and frontline employees. The former CEO can identify pitfalls and past tradeoffs. Partners and recently exited clients provide outside perspective on how the business performs in market reality. Frontline employees show where processes drag and where innovation actually happens.
# How to listen usefully Prefer patterns over volume. Don't treat every anecdote as representative. Ask where cross-functional friction occurs and map recurring points of handoff failure. Watch for the "faster-horse" instinct—people proposing incremental fixes to old designs when the real need is different.
Build a KPI-based scorecard early. Translate qualitative impressions into measurable baselines you can revisit. This reduces recency and loudest-voice bias and creates objective evidence to guide decisions.
# What to avoid Avoid restructuring too early. A premature reorg often reflects a diagnosis made without sufficient cross-functional evidence. Resist using structural moves to signal change before you've validated root causes through conversations, data, and repeatable patterns.
# Simple sequence to follow in weeks 1–8
- Week 1–2: Executive and board conversations to set expectations and understand definitions of success. Begin building a KPI scorecard.
- Week 5–6: Talk to former CEO, partners, and recently lost clients to gather external context.
- Week 7–8: Synthesize patterns, validate hypotheses with data and cross-functional evidence, and only then consider structural changes.
# Bottom line Use relationships to turn assumptions into evidence. Focused listening across expected and overlooked stakeholders, a habit of pattern-seeking, and an early KPI scorecard give you a clearer, less risky path for the decisions you'll make after day 60.
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