First impressions are vital. We have heard it preached many times how important it is to successfully engage people when we first meet them, but the first 90 days of any engagement, a new contract, or job, are equally as important.
The effort is takes to engage your new team, understand culture, and identify actions that will result in positive returns for as many stakeholders as possible is daunting, but crucial.
It really doesn’t matter how friendly or adversarial the stakeholders in question are, if you don’t clearly communicate and engage a clear vision for what you bring and how you will better, well pretty much everyone’s life, you have failed.