The 30-60-90 Day Landing Plan
Listen for 30, align for 30, execute for 30 — and negotiate the listening time with your manager up front.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 95%
Liu's template for landing well in a new role, built when she joined Ancestry after eleven years at Facebook and decided to be a student of onboarding. The structure is listen and learn first, then align, then do. It hinges on a listening tour that produces a written state-of-the-union reflected back to the organization, a negotiated 20% time carve-out so listening survives contact with deadlines, and a reciprocity move — asking each team for one thing you can do to help them this week.
Origin
Deb Liu created this on joining Ancestry as CEO, having not started a real new job in 11 years. She read widely on onboarding, synthesised it into a summary, then ran it live on her blog — writing what she planned to do, what she actually did, and a look-back at the mistakes. She stresses the template is for anyone joining a team, not just executives.
Core principles
- 01Listen and learn first, then do. Diagnose before you treat.
- 02You have something to contribute, but if you don't understand the language and culture you can make huge mistakes.
- 03People want to hear that you hear them — listening is itself a trust-building exercise.
- 04The 'new person card' expires in a month or two; after that every problem is your problem, whether you understand it or not.
- 05You're joining a dance already in motion. Step wrong and you trip other people up.
- 06Nobody assumes they should trust you. Trust is earned in the first two or three months.
How to run it
- 1
Negotiate the plan with your manager before you start
Share the 30-60-90 plan with your manager and with as many people as possible, so everyone can see what you're trying to accomplish and what your output will be. Explicitly ask to carve 20% of your time for listening while doing the work the other 80%.
Pro tip Make it concrete and small: 'every morning 9-10 I want to talk to someone in the organization.' Frame it as risk reduction — 'I will do a better job and have more impact if I have this time so I'm not accidentally making mistakes.'
Watch out If nobody knows what your output is supposed to be, they will assume you're not delivering.
- 2
Days 1-30: run a listening tour
Talk to as many people as you can and take extensive notes. Liu talked to over 60 people in 30 days. Listen behind what people are saying, not just to the words.
Pro tip Take extensive notes and keep them. Liu closed out one colleague's five-item wish list a year or two later and told him — he couldn't believe she remembered.
- 3
Offer one concrete reciprocal act to each team
When meeting a new engineering team for the first time, ask: what is one thing I can do to help you this week? Scope it deliberately — one thing, this week — so it's real. Fifty new headcount is not going to happen.
Pro tip This starts a reciprocal relationship rather than a directive one, which is what buys you the right to be listened to later.
- 4
Reflect it back as a state of the union
Summarize the listening tour and publish it: here's what I'm hearing, here are the challenges people feel we're facing, here are people's wish lists. Liu says this reflection was one of the biggest things she could do — it proves you heard them.
Pro tip You don't have to be a manager or CEO to do this. Team members often feel there is no outlet for what they want to say.
- 5
Days 31-60: align on the vision and the problem set
Move from what you heard to agreement: do we agree this is the set of problems we want to tackle? This is the alignment phase — the vision for the future.
- 6
Days 61-90: execute
Agree how we want to move forward, then start actually getting things done. Having gone through listening and alignment first, you're executing on a problem set the organization has already endorsed.
Pro tip The plan also protects you from the pressure to have impact before you're ready — deliver small give-backs early so people see you moving, without committing to the wrong thing.
In the wild
Having not started a new job in 11 years, Liu decided to become a student of landing well. She read widely on onboarding, adapted it into a template, and then ran it in real time on her blog — writing what she planned to do, then what she actually did and how it worked, then a look-back on all the mistakes she made. Her first 30 days were a listening tour of over 60 people, summarized into a state-of-the-union she reflected back to the company.
→ A reusable 30-60-90 template that Liu says many people now use, and a landing built on trust rather than early, uninformed action.
During the listening tour one person gave Liu a wish list of five things he wanted to see. She took extensive notes. It took a year or two to finish all five, and when the last one shipped she sent him a note pointing out that the five things he'd asked for at their first meeting were now all done.
→ 'I can't believe you remembered.' The listening tour became a durable commitment ledger, not a formality.
Common mistakes
Skipping the listening phase because things are on fire
If you don't understand the language and the culture, you can make huge mistakes. Liu's rule: diagnose before you treat. Negotiate 20% listening time rather than abandoning it.
Keeping the plan to yourself
Liu insists you share it with your manager and as many people as possible. An unshared plan means nobody knows what your output is supposed to be, so they judge you against an invented one.
Assuming trust is granted with the title
People don't assume they should trust you — you're just a person who arrived to tell them what to do. Two to three months of trust-building is the actual first deliverable.
Rushing to visible impact you're not ready for
The plan exists partly so you don't feel rushed into premature action. Do something small and reciprocal so people see movement, and save the big commitments for after alignment.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone joining a new company or a new team — from a PM landing on an existing engineering team to an executive taking over an organization.
Not ideal for
Genuine turnaround or crisis mandates where the company hired you specifically to act immediately and the diagnosis is already agreed.
From the transcript
“and so for the first 30 days I did a listening tour listen to you know I talked to over 60 people in 30 days”
“diagnose before you treat”
“with your manager say okay I would like to carve 20% of my time listening and I'm happy to do this work 80% of the…”
“actually ask them like what is one thing I can do to help you this week”
“people give you kind of the new person card for maybe a month or two and then suddenly it's all the problems are your problems”
From the episode
Succeeding as an introvert, building zero-to-one, and why you should PM your career like you PM your product
Deb Liu (CEO of Ancestry, ex-Facebook, PayPal, eBay)