Pressler recognized that it would be premature in the first hundred days to develop a comprehensive strategic plan - and even if he did, it might be wrong. But he knew that in an organization of 165,000 employees, he needed to find a way to set a direction and motivate the people.

You cannot possibly have enough insight yet to craft a detailed plan or an in-depth strategy. But you should certainly have a clear idea of what you believe, the key issues that you are going to be focusing on, and some form of organizing framework for the key actions you will want to take.

So the art is to find the right balance between setting a direction and keeping practical.

Many leadership transitions are made more turbulent than necessary because of misconstrued or misaligned expectations. We can’t stress enough how crucial aligning expectations is to getting off to the right start. Making sure everyone agrees on the important issues and priorities is literally the foundation to building the first hundred days pyramid - and your future success.

Ten Guidelines for Crafting Your Strategic Agenda

1. You have more time than you think. You don't have to deliver a fully baked strategic plan on day one… or even in the first hundred days. Find the right balance between creating a compelling picture of where you want the organization to go and not becoming prematurely locked into your plan.

1. In developing your agenda, diagnose the company’s (or department’s) problems starting with the customer perspective and continuing with a grounded view of what the company stands for.

1. Strictly limit the number of themes and priorities so that they can be easily remembered by the organization.

1. When crafting your short-term agenda, always endeavor to underpromise and overdeliver.

1. Build the strategic agenda in a joint effort with your team versus in a silo.

1. Incorporate an explicit plan to address cultural issues and barriers to change.

1. Define the operating mechanism / process - the meetings, documents, and report formats to conduct the day-to-day business.

1. Secure some early wins; look for obvious flaws in the organization and fix them quickly to establish your credibility as a leader.

1. Expect pushback on your agenda, but rather than resist, coalesce that input in a positive way to maximize buy-in.

1. Don’t be a perfectionist; your strategic agenda is by definition a work in progress. Use it to help you and the organization make decisions, see how they work, and make adjustments as necessary.