A new CEO’s first few months are best spent gathering unfiltered information directly from employees and customers across the business. Avoid the trap of sitting in an office listening to prepared presentations. Instead, actively listen in the field, then act decisively based on those firsthand insights.

Sears' decline was epitomized by a CEO who felt like a "stranger" in his own stores and pursued abstract corporate strategies. In contrast, Home Depot mandated that every executive spend time on the floor, ensuring that strategic decisions were grounded in the reality of the customer experience.

Brainstorming cannot reveal the true friction in your customer experience. Following JetBlue's example, leaders must regularly become their own customers. This practice uncovers how high-level decisions inadvertently create flaws in the customer journey that are invisible from the boardroom.

In your first 90 days, resist the urge to be the expert. Instead, conduct a "listening tour" by treating the organization as a product you're researching. Ask questions to understand how work gets done, what success looks like, and what challenges exist at a systemic level.

Before officially starting as CEO, Nicolai Tangen interviewed 140 employees with a single prompt: 'What's on your mind?' After about 70 conversations, clear patterns emerged, revealing the three most critical priorities for the organization. This process provides an unfiltered diagnostic and builds early trust.

When you're hired into a leadership role, it's because the company needs something fixed. Conduct a "listening tour" specifically to understand the underlying issues. This reveals your true mandate, which is often a need for more innovation and faster speed to market.

To identify hidden friction points, directly experience your product or service as a customer would. This is exemplified by a Nashville sheriff who slept in a jail cell to test heating complaints. This firsthand experience is the most effective way to build empathy and uncover issues.

Effective leadership requires diagnosing a problem firsthand before delegating the solution. When Amazon had poor customer service, Jeff Bezos physically moved his desk into the department for months to understand the issues himself. This hands-on approach ensures leaders are asking their teams to solve the right problem, rather than just passing the buck.

Leaders often wait for data to diagnose issues. Instead, go directly to the source of the problem—the factory floor, the warehouse, the support queue—and just watch. Direct observation of a process reveals bottlenecks and inefficiencies faster than any report.