Dedicated onboarding (lack of), what to do...
Typical onboarding consists of a morning filling out the benefits paperwork and then a lunch with your new manager or perhaps your team.
If you are lucky, your company has some sort of onboarding process and perhaps your boss has created a short plan of who you should meet and key meetings to attend.
By contrast, every time a US Army officer changes jobs they get 4 to 6 weeks of dedicated education which covers:
Current top challenges the Army faces overall (context for the new job).
Technology changes (new weapons, new enemies, cyberwarfare, etc.).
And everything the officer needs to take on the job successfully.
3 things you can take from this:
Read The First 90 Days if you are changing roles.
Ask your new boss about the onboarding plan and prompt them for help.
If you are hiring, consider what more you can do to onboard your hires. Tacos alone are not enough!
If you want a framework for rapid career growth, read my Magic Loop guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter.
If you find yourself with an unsupportive manager, I shared my advice on what to do in this post.
Audience Insights
I have consolidated additional ideas worth considering from my LinkedIn audience, including:
As the new hire onboarding, proactively provide your manager a 90-day plan to kickstart ideas, feedback, and the process. Saying "Doing XYZ will help me get up to speed faster" helps the manager move faster and unlock blockers (e.g. you need to meet with ABC, I'll intro you now).
Utilize the knowledge around you (e.g. peers, team, manager peers) because they’ve all been doing it longer than you in that specific setting. Never take the information shared for granted and value those who give it freely.
A reader shared that their onboarding experience was “Here is a backpack full of rocks and there is the pool. How long can you tread water?”
If your boss already has a plan, great! Seek alignment. If they don’t, they’ll probably be very relieved to review yours.
Retain and update detailed documentation. A reader shared “When I was still at EA, I maintained a 3 week onboarding plan for new hires. They would study, do some light work while audited by a more senior employee, and then were expected to hit productivity by week 4.”
Learn to manage up effectively
Part of enhanced productivity is the ability to manage up successfully. I created an on-demand course that provides the context and practical tools you need to build strong relationships with leaders at any stage of your career.
The class also addresses deeper challenges, like maintaining trust while disagreeing with a boss, or how to build relationships with skip level leaders and distant peers.
Below is the course introduction video to see what you get.
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Level Up is a free newsletter from retired Amazon Vice President Ethan Evans that breaks down how he succeeded and how you can get to the next level.