The 90 Day World
The 90-day world is a concept that Croft & Frost has implemented from our experience with the book Traction written by Gino Wickman. The 90-day world simply refers to the amount of time that someone is able to remain focused on ideas, suggestions or implementations. It may be a group of people having excitement about a new idea or suggestion, but the energy usually dissipates around 90 days. It also helps develop a cadence in your organization of having intentional meetings on a consistent basis.
We implemented the 90-day world in Q3 of 2020. Before this time, we would have leadership meetings and we would leave with the same mission in mind; however we would not always focus on them more than a month at a time. Eventually, this led to our leadership team not offering as many suggestions to issues. It was because we would lose some of our passion that we had in the past. I don’t think anyone could pinpoint what was missing or why our passion had changed, until we learned about the 90-day world. Since we have utilized the 90-day world our energy and focus have improved tremendously. It helps us remain passionate about the work that we enjoy doing. It reminds us of our purpose in the organization and helps us realign our mindsets.
Another important element of the 90-day world is meeting offsite. Making an effort to have these meetings at a location other than our office allows us to hone in on the subject and details of our executive meeting. It helps us to not get distracted by the daily office barriers, it gives other employees the opportunity to develop leadership skills, and it helps them be able to work without being asked questions from our executive team. It allows us to be present and to prioritize this meeting.
The 90-day world helps us develop more accountability with our executive team. When we discuss our suggestions and tasks that we are responsible for by the next 90-day meeting, everyone wants to make sure and get their tasks completed. It does not feel good to come back to a meeting where your teammates have completed their tasks and you have to verbally admit that you did not.
The more we utilize the 90 day world in our organization, the more energy we have as a whole. We know that the next executive meeting will generate a lot of great ideas and suggestions to solve barriers. It provides us an added layer of accountability to get our tasks completed. I am fairly certain that implementing the 90-day world is a huge part of how much we have improved as an organization over the last 2 years because it truly refocuses and aligns our organization.
By: Nic Elliott, Executive VP of Operations at CROFT & FROST