Four P's for your first month in a new role
My tried and tested guide to starting a new role
As a few folks might be aware, I recently started a new role. I thought it might be useful to others if I shared how I go about planning my first few weeks when working with a new organisation.
Starting a new role, particularly in a new organisation, can be overwhelming. In some cases you will be flooded with onboarding tasks, in others you might be struggling to know where to look for help. To add to the chaos, you have the secret pressure of trying to demonstrate that you were worth hiring and deserve that first pay cheque!
I find that having a plan makes the first month much less stressful, gives me a clear set of goals to achieve, and gives a great first impression to my new employer.
Week One: Prepare
GOAL: Build a working knowledge of the systems that power the business and ensure you have access to everything you might need. Create a work environment that is comfortable and enables your future productivity.
Your first week in the company will hopefully be relatively light. You will have some mandatory tasks that need completed, but the temptation is dive straight into every single onboarding activity - reading reams of documentation and watching countless hours of training videos.
Instead, I like to focus my first week on understanding the resources that are available to me, and configuring my laptop just the way I like it.
Like a mechanic entering a new garage, spend an hour taking a walk around to find out what tools you have available to you and what each does. You’ll likely recognise some immediately, and others you’ll need to find out what it does and what type of job it can help you with in the future. You don’t need to become an expert in them right now, you can dig into them as/when you need them.
Setting up your laptop might feel like a waste of time, but skipping this step now will harm your productivity later. Abraham Lincoln is quoted as having said, “If I had five minutes to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first three sharpening my axe.”. You use your laptop every day, so it’s important that you’re comfortable with it. I’ve made this much easier on myself by automating much of the installation of applications, tools and documenting my common configuration tasks.
Week Two: Processes
Goal: Understand how the organisation is structured, and how teams contribute towards the common goal. Gain experience with the processes related to your role.
Organisations are incredibly complex systems and it can take a long time to fully understand your role and those that will help or hinder you. When you start a new role, it’s immediately overwhelming trying to understand who does what, who reports to whom, what exactly you’re meant to be doing, and the route you’re expected to follow to get there!
Your first priority should be to understand the purpose of your team and how it relates to other teams in their immediate vicinity in the org chart. I would recommend writing a “cheat sheet” where you can summarise the purpose of each team, their relation to one another, and the names of any important people.
There are three routes that I would suggest you follow:
Begin with your new team, then work directly up the org chart. In addition to recording the names of each manager in the hierarchy, you will hopefully begin to understand how the company has divided and cascaded its goals.
Whilst you’re looking at the top of the org chart, look at the executive team and how the company has chosen to define business units. This can provide valuable insights to how different teams are motivated / rewarded.
Finally, look in detail at teams adjacent to yours. In most organisations, these are the people you will spend the most time working with, at least in the short/medium term.
Once you understand what it is you and your team are there to do, the next challenge is to understand how you go about achieving that. Hopefully your company will have documented processes that you can dive into. You’ll want to explore those that relate to doing your work, but also ancillary processes like payroll, travel, expenses, etc. These are the things you’ll need day-to-day, so it’s worth spending time to understand them in depth.
Week Three: People
Goal: Build a network of people that can help you achieve your goals. Leverage the experiences of others to refine your understanding of the business and it’s challenges.
By the time you reach your third week, you will have learned a lot, but you’ll be aware that there are gaps in your knowledge. Now is a great time to begin building your network. Building a strong network is critical to your on-going success, and spending time now whilst your calendar is empty is a great investment.
If you haven’t done so already, be sure to set up 1:1 meetings with your peers.
Write a short bio that you can share on Slack/Teams in channels related to your role, skills, interests and locations. You’ll want to include what team your joining; your previous role; and ideally give some personal background.
Based on your explorations of the org chart, reach out to a broad spectrum of people from across the parts of the organisation that relate to your role. If it’s appropriate, set up calls with team managers.
Track down any recurring team / dept / product meetings that might be of interest to you. In my experience, many useful meetings are missing from onboarding and you’ll need to specifically ask people what meetings/channels they would recommend that you’re part of.
When you meet with people, try not to make it all about work. Your goal at this stage is simply to have a nice conversation and begin to build rapport. It can be useful to ask them about their role, and what if any interactions they’ve had with your team. You should be approaching these conversations with curiosity - ask lots of questions and listen carefully to the answers.
Straight after your call, be sure to give yourself some time to make some notes. I’ll generally record a summary of what we spoke about, along with any personal snippets they offered, like where they’re based, if they have family or pets, etc. It’s often remembering these smaller details that will help build stronger bonds.
Finally … customers are people too!
It’s time to use some of the tools you learned about in previous weeks to understand more about customers. Who are the top 10 customers? What were the latest deals in your region? What are the top challenges where your product helped? If you’re moving into a backend role, then apply similar questions to your internal customers.
Week Four: Produce
Goal: Identify an area where your specific skills and experiences enable you to add the most value. Deliver something small. Build an 8-week plan on how you will deliver something big.
In this last week, your aim is to deliver something small. For example, as someone who has just been through the onboarding journey, you are ideally placed to improve that process for the next person! The important thing is to deliver something that helps you move from a passive “absorption” of information to a more active, engaged role.
By spending a few weeks learning about the organisation, you’re now in a much better position to understand where you, personally, can add the most value - prioritise areas where you have an unfair advantage. Define a goal and finish your onboarding by putting together an 8-week plan.
Remember - the learning never stops; continue to approach each month and year with exuberant curiosity! Good luck!