Waiting Room

First 90 Days, Part 1

I am a patient boy / I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait
—Fugazi, “Waiting Room”

Last month I started a new job. I have opinions. I’m not acting on them.

This might be wisdom. It might be cowardice. I genuinely don’t know yet.

The Context

The team I inherited has had a rough year. One of the developers told me I’m her fourth boss in twelve months. There was a deployment in February that didn’t go well—the lab, our internal customers, weren’t happy with what they got. There’s been turnover. There’s been churn.

I came on board during the holidays, which gave me time to watch and listen without the pressure of immediate deliverables. I’ve been vocal about encouraging people to actually take their time off. That’s not nothing, but it’s also not much.

When I talked to my boss about the year ahead, I told him my focus was going to be psychological safety and team building, not specific deliverables. He’s been supportive. But we don’t work in a vacuum, and I don’t know how that commitment holds up in month three, six, or twelve when there’s pressure to ship.

The Opinions I’m Not Acting On

They have sprints. I hate sprints. They do story points. I hate story points.

These are opinions I’ve developed over years of watching these practices turn into cargo cult rituals—the form without the function, the ceremony without the purpose. My boss agrees with me. If I wanted to walk in and tear down the sprint board on day one, I’d probably have the backing to do it.

I’m not doing that.

Partly because I need to understand if my priors are wrong here. Maybe, for this team, in this context, the sprints actually work. Maybe the story points serve a purpose I haven’t seen yet. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that “this didn’t work at my last three companies” doesn’t mean “this can’t work anywhere.”

But mostly I’m not doing it because they don’t need the new guy stomping in and putting his stamp on everything before he even understands what they’re doing.

Fourth boss this year. Think about what that means. Every few months, someone new shows up with their own ideas about how things should work. New processes. New priorities. New ways of running meetings. And then they’re gone, and someone else shows up, and it starts again.

In that context, the most radical thing I can do might be to not change anything. To be predictable. To still be here in three months.

The Space I’m Trying to Create

Mark, two weeks ago you asked me: what are you doing to create this space for your teams? What fights are you picking, and which ones are you not touching?

The honest answer is that right now, “creating space” looks a lot like doing nothing. I have power I’m choosing not to exercise. I have opinions I’m choosing not to voice. I have changes I could make that I’m deliberately not making. I’m trying not to make things worse while I figure out what “better” would actually look like for these specific people.

I wait. I wait. I wait. I wait.

But here’s what I don’t know: how long should this last?

There’s a version of “wait and build trust” that’s wise. There’s another version that’s lazy. The song ends, eventually. You can’t stay in the waiting room forever.

I don’t know where the line is. I don’t know what signals tell me it’s time to stop watching.

Mark,

You’ve been inside organizations long enough to see this from both sides—the new leader trying to find the right moment, and the team wondering if this one is going to be different.

How do you know when it’s time? When does patience become the right call, and when does it become comfortable stalling? What should I be watching for?

This is the first installment of the “First 90 Days” series, documenting what’s visible with fresh eyes. We’ll check back in at weeks 7 and 11.