Latest / New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: First 90 Days, Managing Former Peers, and Leadership Basics / How New Managers Can Get Early Wins Without Overpromising
Transcript
- Lucas: There's a moment that trips up almost every new manager, and it usually hits around week four or five. You've started building momentum, you've solved a couple of nagging problems, and someone senior says something like 'great work, what's next?' And suddenly you feel like you have to promise the moon. Luna: Yeah, and the pressure is real. You want to prove you were the right hire. So you say 'we can double that' or 'we'll have a prototype by next month.' Lucas: Exactly. And that's the moment this episode is about — how to get early wins without painting yourself into a corner. I want to anchor on a specific case I came across recently. A first-time marketing manager at a mid-size B2B software company. Let's call her Priya. Luna: Okay, what happened with Priya? Lucas: She took over a team that had been drifting for about six months. She identified one quick fix — a neglected email nurture sequence that was sending the wrong content to warm leads. She cleaned it up, ran an A-B test, and within four weeks got a 15 percent lift in engagement rate. That's a real win. Her VP was thrilled. But then he asked, in a quarterly review, 'can we make this 30 percent by the end of the year?' Luna: And Priya said yes, didn't she. Lucas: She did. Because she was happy, she felt confident, and she didn't want to seem cautious. But that 15 percent came from low-hanging fruit — the worst-performing emails. Getting another 15 percent would require rebuilding the entire nurture logic, integrating new data sources, and getting engineering time. She'd essentially committed to a project she hadn't scoped yet. Luna: This is the classic anchoring trap. The VP latched onto that 15 percent as a baseline, and Priya's own success became the benchmark she's now measured against. Lucas: Right. Behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman would call this the 'planning fallacy' meets 'anchoring bias.' You anchor on a best-case number and then plan as if that number is the floor. Priya's mistake wasn't the early win — it was how she framed it. She presented it as 'I achieved this,' instead of 'we ran a pilot that suggests this range of possibilities.' Luna: So what should she have said instead? Give me the concrete language. Lucas: I think the smart move is to frame early wins as exactly what they are: experiments. She could have said: 'We tested one variable on a subset of the list and got a 15 percent lift. That's promising. Let me run two more cycles to see if it holds, and then I can give you a range for what full rollout might look like.' Luna: That buys her time, and it sets the expectation that the number might compress. The VP hears 'promising' not 'guaranteed.' Lucas: Exactly. There's a phrase I like: 'promise in bands, not points.' Never say 'we'll hit 30 percent.' Say 'we think the range is 15 to 25 percent, and we'll know more in six weeks.' That way if you land at 22 percent, you've outperformed the midpoint. If you land at 15 percent, you're at the low end of the forecast, not missing a promise. Luna: And that also protects you from your own overconfidence. Because early wins are often non-linear — the first 80 percent of improvement takes 20 percent of the effort, but the next 10 percent takes 80 percent. Lucas: That's the principle behind it. The other thing Priya could have done is separate 'quick cycles' from 'fixed sprints.' Quick cycles are the first few weeks where you're exploring and fixing obvious stuff. Fixed sprints are longer, with a clear scope and a deadline. If you mix them up, you end up treating a discovery phase like a delivery date. Luna: Yeah, I've seen that happen. A new manager gets a quick win in week two, then suddenly the whole team is on a death march to replicate it by quarter end, and everyone burns out. Lucas: Right. And the burnout is real. So the discipline is: when you get that early win, explicitly call it a 'pilot' or an 'initial signal.' Don't let anyone — including yourself — treat it as the new normal until you've validated it with more data. Luna: I want to push back a little, though. Some bosses will hear 'pilot' and think you're being cautious or slow. Especially in a startup culture where speed is everything. How do you handle that? Lucas: That's a fair point. The key is to reframe prudence as professionalism. You say: 'I want to make sure this isn't a fluke before we invest serious resources. Let me run one more iteration to confirm the signal, and then I'll come back with a concrete plan.' That shows you're thinking about resource allocation, not just covering yourself. Luna: So it's about managing up while managing your own risk. I like that. Lucas: Yeah, and honestly, one of the reasons we can dive into these kinds of real-world dilemmas is that this show is listener-supported. No ads, no sponsors. A handful of people chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's what lets us spend time on cases like Priya's instead of filling time with ad reads. Luna: Yeah, if you've ever found yourself in a similar spot — feeling that pressure to overpromise — and this show has helped you think it through, that's the kind of thing that keeps us going. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Totally optional, but genuinely appreciated. Lucas: Alright, back to Priya. So she's now in a tough spot. She promised 30 percent. What should she do? Luna: She needs to go back to her VP and reset the expectation before the quarter ends. It's awkward, but less awkward than delivering 18 percent in December. Lucas: I agree. She should schedule a brief check-in and say: 'I've done more analysis on that 30 percent target. The initial win came from a quick fix. To get to 30, we'd need to rebuild the whole system, which I now estimate would take four months and require engineering support. I think a more realistic target for this quarter is 18 to 22 percent, and here's the plan to get there.' Luna: If the VP is reasonable, he'll appreciate the transparency. And if he's not, well, better to know that early in your tenure. Lucas: Exactly. The cost of resetting expectations early is much lower than the cost of missing them later. And this isn't just about numbers. It's about trust. When you consistently deliver what you say you will — even if it's a smaller number — people learn to trust your estimates. That's a career-long asset. Luna: So let's talk about the team aspect. Because when Priya promised 30 percent, she might have also committed her team to something they didn't agree to. Lucas: That's a huge hidden cost. If she goes back to her team and says 'we need to double engagement by year end,' without checking with them first, she's undermining her own credibility as a manager. The team knows the data. They know what's realistic. If they feel she's overpromising on their behalf, they'll lose trust. Luna: So the better approach is to involve the team in setting the target, even for early wins. 'Here's what we achieved. What do you think is realistic for the next quarter?' Lucas: Right. That's the coaching mindset we've talked about in earlier episodes. Instead of solving it yourself, you ask the team. And that also protects you from overcommitting because you get their ground-truth perspective. Luna: What about the opposite scenario — what if the early win is actually repeatable and you're being too cautious? How do you know the difference? Lucas: That's a good question. I think the test is: can you identify the specific mechanism that caused the improvement, and can you replicate it without diminishing returns? If Priya's 15 percent came from fixing a broken email trigger, that's a one-time fix. If it came from a new segmentation logic that can be applied to other lists, that's scalable. You need to understand the 'why' behind the number. Luna: So the analysis is as important as the result. Don't just celebrate the win — understand it. Lucas: Exactly. And then communicate that understanding when you present the result. Say: 'We think this worked because X. To scale it, we'd need Y and Z. Here's what I recommend for the next phase.' That's the difference between a manager who delivers numbers and a manager who builds a strategy. Luna: And the strategy includes being honest about what you don't know. That's a sign of confidence, not weakness. Lucas: One more tactic I want to mention: the 'two-track' approach. When you get an early win, you immediately set up two tracks. Track one is a short validation cycle to confirm the win is real. Track two is a scoping exercise to understand what full deployment would cost. You run them in parallel for a few weeks, then you present both findings together. Luna: That way you never have to give a premature commitment. You always have more data coming. Lucas: Right. And it forces discipline on you. Because the temptation is to run with the win and promise everything. But that's how you end up with the overcommitment hangover. Luna: So, to wrap it up: early wins are great, but frame them as pilots, promise in bands not points, involve your team in target-setting, and run parallel validation and scoping tracks. Lucas: That's a good summary. And one last thought: the best new managers I've seen don't try to impress with big numbers. They impress with consistent, reliable delivery. That's the long game. Luna: Yeah, and it's a lesson that applies way beyond the first 90 days. Alright, thanks for the conversation, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks, Luna. Talk to everyone next time.