The first 90 days should be a guided path through relationships, not a solo sprint through tasks.
Promotion without preparation isn’t development; it’s abandonment with a title change.
In 2009, I made a move that looked like a step backward. I left Romano’s Macaroni Grill, where I had been a Managing Partner, to take a GM role at Ruby Tuesday. On paper, it was a demotion. In reality, it was a calculated decision. The plan was to fast-track back to Managing Partner, but I knew the first 90 days would determine whether that plan had any chance of working.
So I did something most people stepping into a new role never do: I prepared like it was a campaign, not a job change.
I studied the brand. I secret shopped the locations I might be placed in. I researched the culture, the leadership style, the market dynamics. I compared what I was walking into with what I was walking away from to understand where the friction would show up. I mapped out not just who I would report to, but who I needed to build relationships with across departments. Operations. Marketing. HR. Finance. Not because those relationships were required—but because I knew those relationships would determine how fast I could move.
And I made a decision that was harder than all of it. I put my pet peeves on the back burner. I stopped leading with what I already knew and started opening up to what everyone around me could teach me.
That first 90 days was not about proving myself. It was about positioning myself.
Years later, when I became Director of Operations for Lime Fresh Mexican Grill, a division of Ruby Tuesday at the time, I used the same approach to onboard my team. It was not about completing assessments and checking boxes. It was an intentional path through people. Not through job duties. Through relationships.
Most organizations never give new managers that kind of structure. And most new managers never think to build it for themselves.
Why Most New Managers Fail Fast
The restaurant industry promotes people constantly. It has to. Turnover is high, growth is demanding, and the talent pipeline is always thinner than it should be.
But promotion without preparation is not development. It is abandonment with a title change.
Here is what typically happens. A strong hourly employee gets noticed. They are reliable, sharp, maybe a natural leader on the floor. Someone decides they are ready for more. The promotion is announced. There is a congratulations email, maybe a short training module, and then silence. Within a few weeks, the new manager is expected to perform at a level they have never been coached to reach.
Joey Coleman, in his book Never Lose an Employee Again, calls this the gap between orientation and onboarding. Orientation is where the bathrooms are. Onboarding is a managed, structured series of contacts designed to create a warm, welcoming experience over weeks and months. Most companies, Coleman argues, confuse the two. They give people a full agenda on day one and then expect them to figure out the rest on day two.
Research supports this. Somewhere between 20 and 60 percent of new hires leave within the first 100 days. Only about half make it to their one-year anniversary. The cost of replacing an employee can run 100 to 300 percent of their salary when you account for recruiting, interviewing, training, lost productivity, and cultural disruption.
In restaurants, where margins are already thin and managers are already stretched, that math is brutal.
Coaching Is Not a Reward for Performance
Here is the part most organizations get wrong. They treat coaching like something a new manager earns after they have proven themselves—as if support is a privilege rather than a foundation.
Imagine if the 2014 New England Patriots had operated that way. Imagine telling a rookie, “Prove yourself first, then we will coach you.” Or imagine the 2015 Golden State Warriors waiting until a player had a few good games before offering any development.
It sounds absurd because it is. In sports, individual success is designed before the player arrives. The coaching staff already knows what they want that person to become. The development path is mapped. The reps are scheduled. The feedback is immediate.
Restaurants do the opposite. We wait to see how someone performs before deciding whether to invest in them. And then we wonder why so many new managers wash out before they ever find their footing.
The first 90 days should not be an evaluation period. It should be a development period. The question is not whether this person can survive. The question is whether we have given them what they need to succeed.
What Intentional Onboarding Actually Looks Like
When I built onboarding programs for new managers, I stopped thinking about checklists and started thinking about people. Not just the people reporting to the new manager. The people around them.
Who in the kitchen needs to trust them early? Who in the front of house has influence they need to understand? Who at the corporate level can help them navigate systems they have never touched before?
The first 90 days should be a guided path through relationships, not a solo sprint through tasks.
Here is what that looks like in practice.
Before day one, the new manager should know what success looks like at 30, 60, and 90 days. Not vague encouragement. Specific outcomes. What should they be able to do? Who should they know? What should they understand about the business that they do not understand yet?
In the first week, the focus should be on connection, not correction. Introduce them to every key relationship they will need. Let them observe before they direct. Give them permission to ask questions without feeling like they are being tested.
In the first month, pair them with someone who has done the job well. Not a training video. A real person. Let them learn by watching, not just by reading. Create space for them to debrief what they are seeing, what confuses them, what excites them.
Through the full 90 days, schedule regular coaching checkpoints. Not performance reviews. Conversations. Ask what is working. Ask where they feel stuck. Ask what they wish they had known sooner. Make the development feel continuous, not conditional.
This is not hand-holding. It is structure. And structure is what turns a promising promotion into a lasting leader.
The Real Cost of Getting This Wrong
When a new manager fails, the damage spreads. The team they were supposed to lead loses confidence. The location they were supposed to stabilize gets more unstable. The district manager who promoted them now has another gap to fill. The cycle repeats.
But the deeper cost is cultural. Every time a new manager flames out, the team learns a lesson. They learn that promotions are risky. That stepping up might not be worth it. That leadership in this company is something you survive, not something you grow into.
Over time, that lesson calcifies. The best hourly employees stop raising their hands. The ones who do accept promotions start guarded, expecting to be left alone. The leadership pipeline that every restaurant brand needs quietly dries up.
All because we treated the first 90 days as a pass-fail test instead of what it actually is. The most important development window a manager will ever have.
A Different Standard
When I walked into Ruby Tuesday in 2009, no one handed me the structure I built for myself. I created it because I had learned the hard way what happens when you step into a role unprepared. I knew the transition would be hard. I also knew that hard was not the same as impossible, as long as I had a plan.
Most new managers do not have that instinct yet. They are relying on us to give them what they cannot build for themselves.
The question is whether we will.
Coaching Question for the Week
What does the first 90 days actually look like for a new manager in your organization? Is it a development path or mostly a survival test?
Jason E. Brooks is a hospitality coach, author, and consultant with more than thirty years of industry experience. He has worked with six of the top one hundred restaurant brands in the United States, helping leaders and operators boost profitability and build high-performing teams through coaching-driven systems. He writes the Coaching Connection column for FSR magazine and is the author of Every Leader Needs Followers, Every Team Needs Coaching, and The 48 Laws of Coaching. He is also the founder of CoachLens.ai, a leadership platform for multi-unit operators.
