Most new CEOs fail in their first 90 days because they do the exact opposite of what actually works.
You just hired a new CEO. Day 1 arrives. They do what every CEO does - meet the team, get access to systems, draft some big vision presentation.
Big mistake.
Here's what Nat Friedman did when he became CEO of GitHub (and why it made him millions).
8 AM, Day 1. The entire company is on a call. No vision speech. No strategy deck.
Instead, Nat screen-shared a list of 100+ customer complaints.
"Today we fix one of these," he said. "Tomorrow we fix another. Next day, another. Until we nail 20+ issues."
I call this the Broken Shelf Approach.
Every house has broken shelves. People just live with them. But when someone new moves in and fixes them first? Everyone notices.
This move did three things that transformed GitHub:
Shock Therapy. The team went from thinking in quarters to shipping fixes same-day. Timeline collapsed from months to hours.
Bottom-Up Learning. Nat discovered which teams actually executed. Where the real problems lived. What customers truly wanted (not what executives thought they wanted).
Instant Credibility. Microsoft had just bought GitHub. Customers were panicking. Would they ruin it? Should we jump ship? But seeing immediate improvements killed the fear.
Here's what happens when your CEO does the typical "vision first" approach:
The team thinks the new boss is out of touch. Customers see no change for months. Problems pile up while everyone argues about strategy.
But when they fix broken shelves first?
Team respects someone who gets things done. Customers feel heard immediately. You learn the business from the ground up.
Your move: Tell your new CEO to skip the vision meeting.
Find your top 10 customer complaints instead. Pick one. Fix it today.
The vision can wait. Broken shelves cannot.
Conrad
PS: I learned this after watching 3 CEOs fail because they spent their first month in strategy sessions while customers kept complaining about the same bugs from 2019.