The first 90 days have a trap: the urge to prove yourself immediately makes people ship before they understand, and break things that had reasons. The winning order is learn → connect → deliver — compressed, overlapping, but in that order of emphasis.

Days 1–30: learn the terrain

• Alignment conversation in week one. Ask your manager: "What does great look like at 90 days? What's the one thing that, if I nail it, makes this hire a win for you?" Write the answer down; it's your actual job description.
• Map how work really flows: where decisions get made, where things get stuck, who unblocks what. The org chart is fiction; take notes on the real one.
• Consume before producing: docs, past projects, recorded meetings, the codebase/campaign archive/account history of your domain.
• Keep a "fresh eyes" log. Everything confusing or apparently broken goes in — most entries will turn out to have reasons, and the rest become your improvement backlog with credibility attached.

Days 31–60: build the web

• One conversation per stakeholder beyond your team: what do they need from your role, what has annoyed them about it before?
• Find the informal historians — the people who know why things are the way they are. Their context prevents your future mistakes.
• Start delivering visibly small: pick items from your log that are genuinely safe — a doc improvement, a fixed papercut, a tightened process. Small, finished, and visible beats large and half-done.
• Check in at 60: "Here's what I've learned, delivered, and plan next — am I aimed right?" Mid-course correction is cheap now, expensive at review time.

Days 61–90: land the win

• Ship the meaningful thing — ideally the one from the week-one conversation. Scope it to be genuinely finished by day 90; done-and-solid beats ambitious-and-slipping.
• Close your loops: fresh-eyes log triaged, stakeholders you promised things to updated, your onboarding notes turned into a doc for the next hire (a classic quiet win).
• Have the 90-day review before your official one: bring evidence — what you delivered, learned, and propose to own next quarter. You set the narrative instead of receiving it.

Habits that compound all quarter

1. A weekly {{Friday}} note to your manager: done, next, blockers. Nobody asks for it; everybody remembers it at review time.
2. Ask questions with your homework attached: "I read X and tried Y — here's where I'm stuck", never the bare question.
3. Praise publicly, question privately — you're building your reputation for both competence and judgment; the second one is set in these 90 days too.