Restore confidence.
Build retention.
My first 90 days leading a high-touch team: protect customer outcomes, remove hidden work, and make ownership visible.
108% → 94% over the last two quarters.
Q−2: prior quarter · Q−1: most recently completed quarter.
Three problems.
Three management responses.
I would protect urgent accounts now, improve Mid-market handoffs with Implementation, and coach newer CSMs in parallel. The packet does not quantify each driver’s contribution to NRR.
Days 1–10: reconcile cohort starting ARR, churn, contraction and expansion with Finance / RevOps. Segment NRR cannot be averaged without starting ARR weights. The five-row handoff log is a sample, not the full transition cohort.
Make the next customer
commitment credible.
I would personally unblock the response process while keeping the CSM accountable for the customer relationship.
Prioritize by impact and time
In 48 hours, review upcoming 120-day renewals, revenue exposure, blocked workflows, customer confidence and recovery feasibility. Treat material access failures urgently, even if ARR is smaller.
Define an exit from risk
An account moves out of red only when the customer verifies the critical workflow, agrees to a success milestone, and confirms a credible commercial path. A closed internal ticket alone is insufficient.
Support Jordan.
Reset the expectations.
A strong performer can be overloaded and still need direct feedback. I would address both in the first week.
“You have been carrying an unresolved customer issue without enough support. I will own getting a decision from our partners. We also need to repair the missed QBR commitment and talk about how we describe colleagues.”
Suggested language, not a quote from the case.
Days 1–7 · Listen and rebalance
Ask about workload, the missed deadline and what support would help. Review Jordan’s 14 accounts and $2.1M book alongside peer-help time. Agree a revised QBR deadline today; I own cross-team escalation, Jordan owns customer updates.
Weeks 2–4 · Coach observable behavior
Twice-weekly 15-minute check-ins initially. Review one customer update and one escalation together. Replace blame with impact, a specific request and a decision deadline. Protect focus time and time-box peer support.
Day 30 · Assess the change
Look for on-time commitments, early blocker escalation and constructive collaboration. Recognize progress. If misses continue after support and clear expectations, document a focused improvement plan with HR guidance.
Sofia and Devon need a ramp system that does not depend on Jordan.
One product workflow, one risk review and one customer-call observation per person each week. Assess demonstrated skill rather than tenure alone.
Pair Sofia with Alicia and Devon with Priya, subject to capacity checks. Reserve a defined weekly mentoring slot and reduce competing work.
Manager reviews the first two risk escalations and success plans. Expand independence when each CSM can diagnose a blocker, name an owner and agree a customer milestone.
Agree the operating rules.
Make tradeoffs visible.
I cannot assign Engineering priorities or Implementation capacity. I can bring evidence, seek explicit agreements, and escalate unresolved business decisions.
Implementation partnership
Meet the lead with the handoff sample and measured cleanup hours. Ask where their process and capacity break down; pilot a shared acceptance checklist on the next three transitions.
- Verify critical configuration, integrations and customer workflow.
- Document success outcomes, customer, open exceptions, owner and due date.
- CSM acknowledges readiness; exceptions get a named remediation owner, not silent cleanup.
Proposed agreement: acknowledge gaps within two business days; review overdue exceptions weekly. Negotiate jointly before treating this as an SLA.
Engineering partnership
Replace repeated ticket chasing with a concise impact brief: reproduction steps, affected workflow, customer deadline, renewal timing, workaround and known revenue exposure.
- Request a named technical owner and a triage decision within two business days.
- Agree a weekly update even when there is no ETA.
- If the decision stalls, escalate manager-to-manager with options and capacity tradeoffs; ask for a decision, not an automatic P1.
Product / Engineering retain severity and scheduling decisions. I own communicating the decision and next checkpoint to CS.
A 90-day plan.
A decision every 30 days.
Deliver the initial plan to my manager by day 14. Establish the baseline before committing to a numerical retention recovery target.
What I would preserve initially
Keep account ownership, compensation, core systems and effective customer cadences stable. Avoid a blanket QBR increase, broad book redistribution or a new health-score tool before understanding capacity and signal quality.
How I would introduce change
Explain the problem and the one behavior changing this week. Co-design the handoff changes with two CSMs and the Implementation lead. Involve Engineering or Product leadership where their ownership is needed. Pilot on a small cohort, remove redundant reporting, and expand only when the pilot reduces rework.
Leading signals now.
Retention proof over time.
These are proposed operating targets to validate with the team. They are not outcomes already achieved or a forecast of Employ’s business.
Visibility and ownership
100% of identified red accounts have a CSM, next action, customer milestone and review date.
Baseline cleanup hours, handoff completeness, blocker age and ramp proficiency. Present the revenue bridge and renewal exposure.
Proof the pilot works
100% of pilot handoffs have a documented success plan and accepted configuration or an owned exception.
≥90% of agreed partner updates on time. Report sample size and exceptions; decide whether to expand or revise.
A repeatable system
Aim to reduce median cleanup hours per comparable handoff by 25% versus the day-30 baseline.
Show renewal results for the matured cohort, forecast accuracy and Jordan / new-hire progress. Agree next-quarter GRR and NRR targets with Finance.
Learn. Connect.
Create value.
My first 90 days are a continuous loop: learn the business, build the relationships to act, and use measurable outcomes to sharpen the next decision.
Learn → align → act → measure → learn again.
All three elements run throughout days 1–90. Their emphasis changes as I learn; these are interconnected responsibilities, not three sequential phases.
An adapted discussion visualization inspired by Michael D. Watkins’ The First 90 Days, published by Harvard Business Review Press, and the supplied reference graphic. This three-part diagram is a presentation adaptation, not a reproduction of an official Harvard model.
The questions I would expect.
Why not promise a return to 108% in 90 days?
The decline is 14 percentage points, but we lack the churn, contraction, expansion and renewal calendar bridge. I would commit to the operating changes I control, report the matured renewal cohort and set a defensible financial target after reconciliation. Retention results may lag the 90-day intervention.
What if Engineering cannot prioritize the export defect?
I would accept an explicit prioritization decision, seek a technically validated workaround and agree update ownership. First confirm what happened to the board cycle referenced in week 3; it has already passed in this seven-week thread. Confirm the next reporting deadline, protect customer data, and test any manual export with the customer. If no safe workaround exists, discuss commercial risk and approved options with leadership without inventing a fix date.
How do the named handoffs change the plan?
Reyna’s SSO issue is still open: verify customer access and escalate an owned remediation now. Brightline’s three-week cleanup and Fenwick’s unreturned escalation are completed-work evidence for rework and process failure; verify customer outcomes rather than reopening resolved tasks. Calloway’s minor gaps were resolved and Tildon had a clean handoff: use both to learn what worked. The sample contains three incomplete configurations, one partial and one complete; it does not establish a portfolio-wide failure rate.
What would make me change the diagnosis?
If the ARR bridge shows contraction from hiring-volume reductions or weak expansion rather than onboarding failures, I would adjust the commercial response and forecast. If new-hire account mix explains their results, I would avoid attributing the gap to skill. Validate hypotheses through customer conversations, activity evidence and cohort comparisons.
What are the leadership asks by day 14?
Endorse the shared handoff pilot and a manager-level escalation route. Protect time for new-hire coaching. Sponsor a capacity decision before the configuration-validation scope expands. Align Finance / RevOps on cohort definitions and target setting. I would bring a proposed owner and decision date for each ask.
I will make risk visible,
ownership clear, and progress measurable.
Customers get a credible plan. CSMs get support and clear expectations. Leadership gets evidence of what is improving and where a decision is needed.
Back to the beginning ↑