4 Risks During On-Boarding

by Rick Stomphorst

Excelling at on-boarding at a new job is a skill as it’s common to change roles every 2-3 years. Here are four areas of risks when on-boarding.

1. Aligning your Strengths & Vulnerabilities to the New Role

While it’s typical to blame an on-boarding failure on the new person, failure is never all about mistakes they made. New hires who have been very successful in past roles, can still fail in a new role. A strength you had a previous role may become a weakness in a new role. Failures occur when:

• a new person doesn’t understand or refuses to accept the true situation they find themselves in (reality may have been portrayed differently during the interviews)
• the preexistence of time bombs
• failure to adapt appropriately to the given situation

2. Failure to Build Sufficient Momentum to Establish your Credibility

Failing to build momentum could result in your credibility being eroded during each interaction or meeting. We either gain credibility or lose it.

As the human body treats a virus, so can an organization treat a new hire. The organization’s immune system instinctively could whip into action to isolate then destroy the potentially killer infection (i.e. You).

3. Not using a Systematic Method in your On-boarding

While every on-boarding is unique, there is a high degree of similarities between them. Make on-boarding a repeatable successful process by creating a framework. Each time you switch jobs, your plan will get stronger.

4. Not Aligning your On-boarding to the Current Phase of the Business

The book The 1st 90-Days introduces the STARS model. Companies, departments, products and/or processes exist in one of four phases of existence:

1. Startup mode
2. Turnaround mode
3. Accelerated Growth mode
4. Realignment mode
5. Sustaining success mode

STARS model allows you to identify and differentiate between the business cycles you’re in, and its related unique characteristics and challenges. The key is to match your on-boarding strategy to the STARS phase of your company.

Assuming a transition takes between 3 – 6 months, over the course of your career you’ll be immersed in on-boarding for 3 – 8 years. A good practice to get good at it.

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On-Boarding? The Clock is Ticking

by Rick Stomphorst

As a new employee you need to progress to the point where you’re giving back more to your employer than you’re costing them. In fact, your job may be a risk if you don’t get to the break-even point fast enough.

The actions you take in the first 3 months often dictate your fate: you either succeed or not. You are vulnerable during the first 3 months. You need to build momentum or you will be faced with a mounting up-hill battle.

While transitions and on-boarding’s are fraught with risk, they’re also an important business necessity. Introducing new people to an organization introduces new ideas, preserves vitality, and enables a company to grow.

Feel you’re over your head in your new position? You’re not alone. Some 25% of Managers enter new roles and/or companies each year in Canada. All those transitions will not go well.

The risks are that the new person is unfamiliar with the culture, politics, informal lines of communication, systems and processes, products, markets and the know few people. You are under a microscope.

You’re not the only one transitioning. If in a Management position, your direct reports, in-direct reports, peers, managers and clients are all also in in-direct transition. Additionally, it’s not uncommon to have more than one person in transition or on-boarding at a time within a business, representing an even greater percentage of the staff who are also experiencing in-direct transition and whose performance may be negatively impacted because of it.

Failing an on-boarding or transition is a blemish on your resume. It is also expensive for the hiring company. Some sites note that it can cost a company 24x base compensation for a failed hire.

Value Proposition

Consider how many times in your career you’ll be switching jobs and/or companies. Imagine if you would reduce the break-even point of your on-boarding by a few months each? Best to get good at on-boarding and transitioning.

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Systematic Approach to On-boarding

by Rick Stomphorst

You need to determine what to learn and in what order or you’ll be quickly overrun with information.  You need a systematic approach.

What do you need to learn cannot be accomplished via adhoc meetings.  You will be dragged into enough meetings as that’s the nature of business.

But is that the best approach to on-board yourself?  Finding time to learn in a new job is difficult.  From day one you are motivated to start contributing 100%.  You can expect people will be pressuring you for your time and others will be assessing your authority.  Be conscious of what and who you say “no” to.

High-level On-boarding Plan

1. Get yourself known, connect, and start building your credibility
2. Assess your business situation and strategize accordingly (STARS blog)
3. Determine what to learn when (this blog)
4. Establish conditions for success (this blog)
5. Land early wins
6. Assess the company’s alignment with its strategy
7. Assess your team and plan any changes to it
8. Find and build supporters
9. Find the balance between learning and doing
10. Recognize that everyone associated with your job is also now in transition, not just you

Failing at anyone of these items may result in you failing overall.

Where to Start

Learn the following of the organization and learn fast. Your tenue may depend on it

• Culture
• Politics
• Lines of communication
• Systems and processes
• Products and/or Services
• Markets
• Uniqueness or differentiator of product(s) and/or services
• Your new staff (if applicable)
• Peers
• Management

Tip: Learning in a Start-up or Turnaround situation is fundamentally technical: products, markets, projects, technologies and strategies.  In Realignment or Sustaining Success situations, immerse yourself in to the organizational culture and politics.

Establish Conditions for Success

While you feel the obligation produce at 100% from day-one, avoid this instinctive act.  Doing so comes at the expense of being poorly prepared for the greater picture.  Even if you were brought in to turnaround a situation, where they want to introduce new ways of doing things, you still need to learn the culture and politics or people won’t accept the change you will propose.

From the company’s side, you may be expected to be past the tipping point very quickly, especially in a start-up or turnaround situation where the luxury of time is not on your or the company’s side.

Determine how much emphasis will you place on learning as opposed to doing.

Determine what can you do to get early wins.

Create a learning plan.  Exceptionally few people do, to the determent of their overall on-boarding process. A learning plan doesn’t mean heads-down learning for 12 months.  It may mean concentrated learning for the first X weeks then spread out over a year.

Depending on your situation, determine what questions need asking to aid in building your systematic learning plan.  For example, “How did the company get to this point?”  By asking this basic question, you avoid the risk of undoing something a revered former manager put in place, is working well and represents a source of pride for the staff.

By taking the time to learn what you need to learn, you will be able to make better decisions earlier and reach the break-even point earlier.

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