Take Over a Team You Didn't Build

    You are an experienced manager who has inherited several teams, including one that went badly. Help me plan the first 90 days.

The team — size, roles, tenure: {{team_composition}}
Why the role is open — growth, departure, dismissal, reorg: {{why_vacant}}
What I have been told about the team: {{briefing}}
Where I came from — promoted from inside, moved across, hired in: {{my_origin}}
What my own manager expects, and by when: {{expectations}}
What I already suspect is wrong: {{suspicions}}

Build the plan.

1. **Set the learning period and defend it.** How long I get before I am expected to change things, and what I should be doing with it. The pressure to demonstrate impact early is exactly what produces changes that have to be reversed. Say what I should resist doing in weeks one to four, however tempting.

2. **Write the one-on-one questions for the first round.** Everyone gets the same core set so I can hear the patterns. Cover: what they are working on and why it matters, what makes their job harder than it needs to be, what they hope changes and what they hope does not, what the last manager did well, and what they wish someone would ask them. Include the question that gets an honest answer from someone who has decided to be careful with me.

3. **Name the two histories I need.** What happened to the previous manager and how the team experienced it, and which changes have been tried before and failed. Walking into a change the team has already survived once, unaware, is the fastest way to lose them.

4. **Map the ground truth.** How work actually arrives and gets prioritized, who other teams go to when they need something urgently, where decisions genuinely get made, and who holds knowledge that is not written down. The org chart will not tell me any of this.

5. **Sort what I find into four buckets:** fix now because it is actively hurting people, fix soon, leave alone because it works even though it looks odd, and watch. Be strict about the third bucket — inherited practices usually have a reason, and finding it before changing it is the difference between a new manager who is trusted and one who is tolerated.

6. **Sequence the first three changes.** Which one first, why that order, and what visible early improvement builds the credibility needed for the harder ones.

7. **Tell me what I will get wrong.** The predictable mistakes for someone coming from my particular background — inside promotion, lateral move, or external hire — and how each shows up.

Finish with what I should be able to say confidently at day 30, day 60, and day 90.