Congratulations! After months of networking, interviewing, and sending out resumes, you’ve landed your next role. This is a huge accomplishment!

Celebrate, rest, relax and show your gratitude to the people who helped you achieve this goal.

Then, as day one in your new role draws near, make sure you have everything you need to succeed by following HBS Career Coach Matt Spielman’s five steps to success on the job in the first 90 days.

Despite all the effort that goes into finding the right person, most companies simply don’t finish the job when it comes to new hires. 

When you arrive at the destination, ask yourself, was it where you really wanted to go? Success, how it’s typically defined, does not always yield satisfaction. In part, feelings of malaise stem from ignoring the internal voice. You know… the one asking, what could I do in this situation?

What helps define our clients’ improved performance is generating revenue. Achieving the numbers and sales goals. In our work, we call upon decades of sales experience to empower clients to have a greater financial impact on their firms.

Often in my daily life and work, I pull the quotes out for energy and inspiration. That goes back to some advice my career coach gave me years ago—to identify the things in your life that give you energy and do more of them. For me, powerful words can be a kind of fuel, like the little cups of Gatorade that people hand out to marathon runners as they pass.  Here, take this! Keep going!   

Both on the baseball field and in the work place, I have played on good teams and had the privilege of playing on some great ones. And, like many of us, I have been on poor teams, too. But, this grading system was based on perception and opinion. Good, Great, and Poor according to what my gut told me. In all instances, my feelings were not steeped in quantitative rigor or objective metrics—until now.

I first put this question to one of my classmates back in grad school almost twenty years ago. “What’s your Piano Man?” At the time, he didn’t know what I was talking about. And right now, you might be a little confused yourself. Let me explain.

My ninth-grade science teacher, Mr. Wilson, hung a sign under the clock that read: “Time will pass, but will you?” That year, I must have stared at that sign a thousand times. On the surface, the message seemed obvious: pay attention and do well. Don’t, and you won’t. Simple enough. Right?