A new COO or general manager usually leaves a job where they were trusted and knew where everything was. On day 1 at your company, they have neither.
The owner controls most of what fills that gap. This guide covers the owner's half of onboarding, from the week before the start date to the 90-day review.
Before day 1
Decide what they own. Write down which decisions are theirs from day 1, which they'll take over by day 90 and which stay with you. Share the list with your leadership team before the start date, so your team doesn't hear it secondhand.
Tell your team why. Your longtime people will wonder what the hire means for them. Tell them yourself, before the announcement goes out.
Set up the basics. Desk, laptop, email, phone, truck and access to the accounting system. A leader who spends the first week waiting on passwords learns something about how the company runs.
Clear your calendar. Block an hour a day for the first 2 weeks. You'll need it.
Days 1 to 30: open doors
In the first month, the new leader's job is to learn. Yours is to give them the access you've built over years.
- Introduce them in person to your top customers, your key vendors, your banker and your CPA.
- Walk them through the last 2 years of financials, bad months included.
- Tell them the history: the decisions you'd make again and the ones you wouldn't.
- Send them into the field. A week on job sites or in the plant teaches more than a month of meetings.
Meet every week. Same day, same hour. Ask what has surprised them and where they're stuck, then mostly listen.
Ask them to hold big changes. A new leader who changes things in week 2 is working from guesses. Ask for a full month of watching first, and tell them the date you'll want their list.
Days 31 to 60: hand over the work
By the second month, the new leader should be running the meetings you used to run.
Give them an early win. Pick a problem that's real and fixable in 60 days, like a slow invoicing cycle or a crew that keeps losing people, and make it theirs.
Move decisions to them on purpose. Use the list you wrote before day 1. When your team brings you something that's now the new leader's call, send them to the new leader. For a founder, this is usually the hardest part.
Back them in public, and disagree in private. If you overrule them in front of the team, the team learns to go around them.
Days 61 to 90: agree on the year
Set the scorecard together. Agree on 4 or 5 numbers they'll own for the next 12 months, such as margin, revenue, a people goal and the 1 thing that has to get fixed. Tie their bonus to the same numbers.
Hold a 90-day review. Block 2 hours. They tell you what they've learned and what they'd change. You tell them what's working and what isn't, and each of you writes down 1 thing you'll do differently.
Ask the people who report to them. Talk with 3 or 4 of them. You're listening for whether they trust the new leader, and whether bad news is reaching the new leader before it reaches you.
Signs it's working
- Your team takes their questions to the new leader first.
- The new leader has told you something you didn't want to hear.
- You missed a meeting and nothing broke.
- They've made a hire or a hard call without checking with you.
Signs it's stalling
- You're still approving every purchase.
- Longtime employees go around the new leader to reach you, and you let them.
- The new leader hasn't changed anything by day 90, or changed everything in the first month.
- Your weekly meeting keeps getting moved.
If you're seeing these, say so at the 90-day review. A stalled start can usually be fixed when both sides name it early.
When the hire is your successor
If the new leader is the person you expect to hand the business to, the first 90 days start a longer handoff. Put the plan in writing, with dates, so your team and your new leader know where it's going. Plan on the full handoff taking a year or more.
Use the plan
The download at the top of this page is a 90-day plan you can fill in with your new leader, with your side and theirs on the same page.
If you're still before the hire, start with what the seat pays: our guides to COO compensation and general manager compensation have the public numbers by industry and metro.
At FireSeeds, we stay in touch with the leaders we place through their first 90 days. If you're getting ready to fill a seat like this, tell us about the role.