Onboarding for Success Make the Most of Your First 101 Days

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking with Alexis Sermeno, who is head of organizational development for the Americas at Abbott. He is a diverse global leader, holding positions in several fortune 1000 companies such as Vice president of Talent management at Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, a global director of Management and organizational Effectiveness at Kind of at All, and an engagement consulting manager at Katzenbach Partners.

Alexis earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and M.A. and Organizational Design and Effectiveness from the Fielding Graduate University, and a Bachelor in Science in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University. Wow, Alexis, you've done a whole lot, and we're so excited that you take the time from your very busy schedule.

Alexis Sermeno: Absolutely. And thank you again, Anita, for the invitation. Happy to be here and excited to talk about a very important topic, also dear to my heart, but also for organizations today I think thrive to accelerate the productivity and transition and more importantly, the success of any new leader, coming on board in 2016.

Anita Brick: Great. Just to start out, there were a lot of questions and evening MBA students said, what are the three most important things that I should be doing in my first 101 days to increase my chances of success?

Alexis Sermeno: Students, but also new employees, have to first assess the organizational context of the situation, which starts signing up for whether there is a realignment, a turnaround they start up. Second, it is all about constantly managing expectations and contracting with your new boss or hiring manager to confirm and deliver both short term and long term. And then also, it is important to understand that you're there for a reason and therefore results are expected.

And having visible quick wins are important ones that matter to your manager. And lastly, you need to really take the time to diagnose and learn as much as you can to be able to build an objective point of view, one that is driven by data around, you know, the specific situation.

Anita Brick: Got it. We know there were two questions, one from an MBA student and the other from an alum. They're really very much the same high. Alexis organizations are expecting more and more, faster and faster. What are some concrete ways to create clear successes that are meaningful and relevant?

Alexis Sermeno: It is around managing expectations. Would you boss in a scanning buy in from Dubai in order to be able to see the right time length at the right pace, with the right deliverables? At the same time, you need to be able to bring others into your team and the rest of the organization along with your vision in terms of, you know, what needs to be done for you to be able to build partnerships, among others, around the strategy that you're trying to put in place, make sure that you're balancing making selling decisions around the risk of making changes that you sequence those. And then, more importantly also, is that you try to go small and test quickly. And if you fail, get up quickly.

Anita Brick: There were two related questions. One is to your point, when do you make the changes? So there was a weekend student who said, what is the best way to quickly understand the state of both the financial and the people side of the business, but more importantly to what we've been talking about, what's the right time to start making changes?

Anita Brick: How soon can you make changes without looking like an ogre?

Alexis Sermeno: Right? You really have to ground yourself in really understanding what type of situations you're getting into. If this is a startup, you're going to seek to make changes appropriately, to build the infrastructure of, you know, whatever you need to do. What station are you talking about? What is the process, right? What is getting to the first customer? Hey, this is a turnaround situation.

Then the situation will be completely different. You will need to align and manage expectations with your boss and charge you know how quickly can you deliver the expected results and if it is sustaining success, you will need to make sure that you are aligning with your manager around the changes and not going crazy outside, and begin changing everything with the understanding that you have to be able to sustain success, and that you will be able to sustain it or to take it higher.

To this end, you need to dine off and take the time to assess in a very systemic way whether you are assessing the right strategy, the structure, the processes, the people, the team, the cultural aspects. And then once you have that, you should be able to sequence and align that against benchmarks that usually come from the outside and also with your manager.

This is mostly an expectations game in terms of managing how quickly and when and how do you deliver on the expected results. Going back to your second question, or the question about learning about the finance and the people aspects, there are other partners. You don't have to take it on yourself. You know, your finance analyst, your right hand going into this in terms of, you know, trying to assess and educate you on the finances for the function, asking them for advice in terms of, you know, what do they see, the opportunities and also what suggested actions or solutions that they have that you need to facilitate. And then you left hand in your left hand, you have your chart or your business resource manager or partner into this piece that can bring you into insights around assessing your team.

Anita Brick: I mean, to me, it's all very fascinating because there's so many moving parts. You've got to do so many things simultaneously. It can be challenging. There is someone who, to your point that you've got to be able to manage expectations. This ExAC MBA student wanted to know how do you manage the expectations on two levels? How do you know how much time to spend on the day to day versus the longer term strategic projects that need to be done, but you're not putting out fires? How do you manage the short term tactical? With the longer term strategy?

Alexis Sermeno: It is very hard. There is a risk that you're going to get sucked into doing so much tactical work that you will never be able to serve, because of the higher obligation, objective and strategic work that you need to do to advance your agenda. And therefore it is all about prioritizing that is around prioritizing again, what's important to your boss for 100 days.

Deliverables, what's important to keep that ship moving. And therefore, you know, you might find that, if you're able to contract, right, and put off aspects of the work or areas that need improvement for later, that will help you continue to advance and avoid getting sucked into the detail agenda. The other piece also is that it's also around leading right versus managing or micromanaging.

So it's very important that you prioritize. You understand the landscape as well as you continue to delegate into the other parts of the team and that reduce that time to test the pilot, to validate and to serve and to learn, not be afraid to delegate pilot and to engage others in the team so that you can continue to, you know, stay afloat on the very busy agenda and schedule are overwhelming. So trying to learn, you're trying to incorporate yourself into the new culture. If you're trying to manage expectations as well as you're trying to be productive and demonstrate the value that you bring to the.

Anita Brick: Table, it is kind of fascinating. And there certainly are challenges. And there were two questions completely related to the initial stages and the challenges. One was from an alum and the other was from an executive MBA student. Person said, I'm starting a new role in a new region of the world, and I'm taking over a role from someone very senior to me by experience and age, who won't share key information with me.

What would you advise me to do? Because I feel like I'm really going in unprepared. How do you read someone's mind, especially if they won't share information? So what do you tell someone who is onboarding? No. They need to understand the expectations and the priorities, but they're not getting anything.

Alexis Sermeno: You have to be prepared. There's no question about it. You know, you need to be prepared, strategize and find ways to go around. To be prepared, you need to involve stakeholders. You need to understand who they are and then be able to serve them with regards to what's important to them. And more importantly, they'll form coalition civil partnerships with others so that you're not thinking that you're going at this alone and trying to thrive on yourself.

It's a recipe for failure. And I have seen so many leaders try to do this by themselves, without understanding that they need to build partnerships and align with others in the organization to be able to build their agenda and be successful. Being new to a new organization in their frustrations.

Anita Brick: And that's a really good point. I know you're very passionate about the concept of a formal versus an informal network. We know that the formal network is we know what people's titles are and their roles. There was a question from an MBA student about the informal network and he said, Hi Alexis. How can I become aware of the ingrained and often hidden power centers within the company division department quickly, so I'm not blindsided by them and also can use them to help me succeed, right?

Alexis Sermeno: No, absolutely. It's very important that leaders take the time to do that. Leaders tend to sometimes just focus on the technical aspects of the content of what they have to offer, and they don't take the time to analyze the soft side of the organization, offer the change. And this is a very one that is actually very important. Again, I suggest that the leaders take the time to conduct a stakeholder map and understand their stakeholders will, formal and informal.

What is their sphere of influence and scope? What's important to them? Who influences them? How important are they in helping you succeed in your new role in advancing the business agenda? There are others who can partner with you in helping you do this exercise, i.e. your H.R resource, and then strategize around and and key stakeholders in what's important to helping them advance your agenda and list others, and providing feedback and ideas that will give you a sense of the layout of the map, where it might be some landmines. And trust me, it's better to do that upfront than to find yourself on the line. Mine that explodes on you just because you didn't take time to do the homework.

Anita Brick: Oh, absolutely. It's not that hard to figure out who the formal stakeholder is, but how do you find the people who maybe have power and influence, even though it's not in their job description or job title?

Alexis Sermeno: Well, you know, do you know, by the interactions I do have, asking a lot of questions, taking time to be visible to the organization, both in the informal and the formal settings, take time to go to the lunchroom, touch base with others, two or 3 or 4 levels down who may be able to provide you for feedback by asking them questions relates to who's important, who drives and who influences others.

And pretty soon you begin building a map and understanding who those informal leaders are. Take a look at who's speaking out loud in the teams and how that is being perceived by the team. We'll give you another data point in front so you know who's being influenced or not influential, and build that map. Build out a list of those people who have a luncheon meeting that are not structured or welcome breakfast so that you can begin tapping into the organization in a more informal way. And that will help you begin building an understanding of what those leaders are and who those people might be that might be aligning with your agenda.

Anita Brick: How do you ask questions without being offensive? This is a little nuanced, and I think that sometimes people either ask very assertive or even aggressive questions, and then their reputation is sort of squashed before they even get their foot in the door.

Alexis Sermeno: Right? First, don't bash the test. There are so many leaders who go in there, and the very first thing that they begin to do is get smashed to pass and how bad things are run. They don't strategize around who and how and when they communicate. If the speaker aspects of performance are specific issues of performance that leaders are having, or what's your view of the world versus the view of the world of the new internal team?

So that is kind of rule number one. Rule number two, answer big questions. Ask open ended questions. You're trying to position yourself that you are in a learning mode. If you're asking questions with the interests of the screen that you're trying to learn, versus charts that will build yourself a better trusted environment for people to open up. If people perceive that you're there to audit, to judge versus learn and appreciate and give praise for the good work that was done before, you won't be able to be successful because you're completed, right? You know you need to build trust and confidence in the people, in what you're asking questions, so that you can actually diagnose and objectively collect data in a way that is transparent and aligned with what you're trying to do.

Anita Brick: Well, absolutely. And I guess if you're not getting the information that's a big red flag. You're probably asking the wrong questions. That might be the time where you go talk to you, HR, or you come and talk to us. We have people call and say, I'm in a new situation or I'm in an old situation, and now it's changed.

So we can always be a sounding board, but it's a good barometer. There's one other question about relationship building. It's a little bit different. This is from an exact MBA student, and she said, I've recently started working in a senior position at a tech startup. I've opened our first office in London, where I work by myself while the headquarters is in Switzerland. Do you have any tips on how to build good relationships from a distance? Because I know remote relationship building is certainly challenging for me. Any advice?

Alexis Sermeno: Appreciate it. Operating remotely. You know, it is very hard. My advice would be if possible, make an effort to be face to face. Throw it to Switzerland at least maybe once a week doing the first, you know, one of these every other week so that if you're trying to make big changes, take the time to build the business cases.

Why is this important? Why is that change going to cables and returns and securing a list? Others and ask others for help, you know, with the change. But again, very hard unless you take the time to invest. I have seen so many leaders that they don't take the extra time or extra effort, or commit themselves to arriving early or before a leadership meeting or leaving later. Can you know them for a day after doing the informal networking in the morning, at night, during lunch, dinner, try to build those relationships, especially, you know, in the first 100 days. They're so critical.

Anita Brick: So, so true, because it's hard to undo what happens in the first 100 days, good or bad. I mean, if you make a really good reputation, that will be your reputation. That's why it's so important to listen. I love the fact that you were talking a lot about questions and how when you listen and people believe that you're listening, you're going to get a lot more cooperation.

Just to switch gears a little bit and a couple of things. Okay. So now there were a few questions about how they're doing now. And an evening student said, what advice would you give a first time manager taking over a team of individuals that are not strong performers and are clearly struggling. We don't always get to choose our team. What advice would you give to someone who is given a team that really needs a turnaround?

Alexis Sermeno: First question that we need to answer is someone who's a first time manager. For them to be able to understand the differences between managing and then kind of being maybe an individual contributor. It's a huge shift and we have seen so many new managers and they are not successful managing the transition. They have to begin behaving as leaders and start doing the individual contributor task or micromanaging.

So that's the very first one, right before even trying to assess their team, whether they're high performance or not, high performance, if they don't make that shift, it doesn't matter whether they believe that their teams are high performance or not performing or currently struggling, you know they will not be successful as a leader for the team. The second aspect to the question around expectations, since many times leaders are brought in to make shifts in performance, make changes and to raise the bar, you know, it's very clear and it's clear in today's world, it is very important that we clarify what are the new expectations of performance.

With transparency to the team, you take the time to leverage others to gather the feedback from around the performance of your existing team. Number three is that you provide the opportunities to these employees under the new set of expectations and parameters for them to be able to test and sell side pilots with them, assign them special tasks, right, so that you can begin testing capabilities to see them in action.

And lastly, you can also use benchmarks. So bring our third party who can help them see the reference points so that you can begin helping people understand these. What are the new expectations against performance? And only after that you are able to really begin assessing capabilities and being able to gauge a more objective assessment. You will be surprised. You know what you find in terms of the biases that you might have had at the beginning, and how do biases change or shift?

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right, because when you think about it, I'm sure you've seen this. I've seen this where there was a team and people were just in the wrong roles. They were very capable. They were just in the wrong roles. And when a new leader came in and looked at, you know, what are the strengths and weaknesses, etc., etc., and rejiggered the roles, it went from a struggling team to a fairly high performing team, and it was just a matter of the right people, but in the wrong roles.

Alexis Sermeno: Right. And therefore these very important rights are to be addicted to yourself, to be addicted to the team in terms of really assessing performance and really assessing the team's capability without any perceived perception.

Anita Brick: When someone tells you, oh, this person is really great, you're looking for things that shows are great and vice versa. Limiting your expectations before you have the time to form your own opinions is really crucial, because you could get people to walk out the door that you would never want to walk out the door. Depending on how you treat them.

Alexis Sermeno: Absolutely. I go back to what I mentioned before. It is an expectation game and it's all the man managing and contracting with your new boss and your leader on contracting on the actions that you're going to take is educating your new leader, and he's aligning with him or with her around. What is your view of the world around what, how, when, who the changes are going to be?

If you listen to your manager or your new boss into that plan for you to be successful. And I have seen leaders who do that very well, and I have seen leaders who don't do that very well because they think that they're trying to prove themselves right, and therefore they're not going to have those type of conversations with their respective leader, thinking that they might look weak or thinking that they might lose credibility.

And sometimes it is completely opposite to those leaders that come in there thinking that they're going to do this work by themselves and try to prove themselves and showcase themselves without doing the proper alignment with their bosses. We don't engage in their teams properly, interrogating their teams, you know, not being successful and those who are poor got it.

Anita Brick: There is a question from an alum who said, okay, so now you have your team and it's a good, solid team. How do you go about building an incentive plan for your team? You'll most likely have some team members who are overpaid and some who are underpaid. I tell people that compensation is a lagging indicator of performance. What advice is there on managing your teams? Comp expectation?

Alexis Sermeno: Are we all right? You'll never get a blank piece of paper unless you are through it, through the real start up. And even then you know, you have so many stakeholders and commitments that you have to make around that. Again, I advise you first. You know, you have to work with the chart in compensation to really understand, you know, what the overall compensation strategy is for the company.

Second is you need to minimize productivity disruptions to the change that you are expecting. To do that, you need to plan for it. And in planning for it, you need to have the right design of the right incentive program, one that really aligns with the new strategy and hopefully involve key members in your team and provide feedback. What will work well and what I have seen work well is that you run incentive schemes or new incentive plans in parallel, right?

You think? Time to introduce a new incentive scheme and you do it in parallel. So what do I mean by that? You still keep the old incentive scheme and you mirror the new one against the old one in that hopefully the new design will give you higher and better performance, ones that align with recognizing and rewarding those who are driving and that are striving to help you achieve your plan.

And that is hard. But it's hard because you don't have a lot of time and you're trying to make the changes on the shift, and you are also trying to mitigate the risk from losing some key talent that might be at the hiring based compensation scheme. And therefore companies usually have creative ways of systemically aligning or transitioning someone with a higher salary into a new scheme. But it also comes with the risk of losing people.

Anita Brick: So you keep the old one and then you pilot the new one. How do you do that simultaneously?

Alexis Sermeno: You execute the old one. That's you. Would, you know, the normal basis? I mean, you work with your compensation team to report out or your sales effectiveness team, whoever they are supporting the new incentive scheme. And you show side by side the outcomes of what you have gained with the old incentive scheme. And this is the one that you actually are executing and paying out. And then secondly, what will you gain in the immune cells scheme against these performance indicators? So you try to basically mirror so that people can get adjusted and work towards the new one before you actually make the switch.

Anita Brick: Got it. So speaking of incentives and compensation, we have to have a budget. And there was an alum saying I understand how important it is as a new leader to know how much I have to spend. Is there any advice on budget management? In other words, should I try to increase it, cut it, etc.? And I know there are differences, but is there any framework for decision making that you think would be useful for me?

Alexis Sermeno: Very, very hard because it's around expectations. Again, it's managing expectations. It's aligning against your strategy whether do to start up this is a turnaround and whether there is one that requires a lot of resources, a lot of money, or to one that requires a balanced resources, that is one who is around benchmarks and expectations, benchmarks around what can you do with X number of resources and dollars, and what did the expected outcome benchmark from turn is around managing the expectations of your boss.

My advice is you have to be able to quantify, validate as well as on track expectations. So you probably get x number of headcounts here's what they're expecting to do and produce. And here are the expected outcomes of those headcounts. And that will probably be, you know, a push and back conversation between you and your manager. If you're planning to seek resources for managing your budget or vice versa, if you're trying to reduce the headcount, helping your manager or your leader understand he or she will not be able to deliver as you're giving out headcount, it's really a fine line of really control acting between what should be your budget and what are the expected outcomes of that budget. Otherwise, it just becomes a mismanagement of expectations between you, your manager and the organization in terms you know, what can be delivered against the resources of that budget.

Anita Brick: And that's a very good point, because whether you grow your team or shrink your team, it's knowing what the objectives are, because sometimes you have to say, well, if we reduce this, then we may have to backburner this project. That takes a lot of courage, especially in a new organization for you to say, well, yeah, this seems impossible. And I think it is based on the budget as opposed to, oh yeah, I'm going to jump in and make that impossible thing completely doable. All of this takes courage.

Alexis Sermeno: Oh, absolutely. And it goes back to the relationship that you have with your new leader. You have to build a really strong relationship with your new leader or your new manager for you to be able to take that courage forward, you have to enlist and engage your new manager because the biggest support and biggest champion of your agenda, if you lose that credibility, you are really in an uphill battle for everything that you will be doing for.

Anita Brick: Got it? You're absolutely right. Do you have time for one more question?

Alexis Sermeno: Oh, absolutely. Good.

Anita Brick: When we think about someone who is beginning an onboarding process, what are three things you would advise that person to do today to have a successful onboarding?

Alexis Sermeno: First of all, do not take for granted that you know it all and that because something works before it's going to work. So take the time to leverage the resources that are out there, whether it's the first 90 days like Michael Watkins, whatever that references whatever and meets your style and makes sure that you're doing the research on some really good materials that will provide some tips and guidance to is you have to enlist others into your transition, whether it is a coach and mentor, someone who can objectively provide you with feedback to be able to hold the Admiral in front of you and help you stay honest for yourself.

And third is be able to really commit yourself to doing the proper, what I would call the organizational effectiveness assessment, to evaluate what type of situation you're getting yourself into based on that situation, to determine what are some common actions are taking, whether this is a turn around, whether there is a startup and then do a diagnostics of the strategy, the structure, the processes, the people right, the behavior of the culture against that situation so that your going after this with data and objectively, of course, trying to jump on preconceived solutions or ideas or what needs to be done, or to ramp up productivity from what you have done in the past, may be good to making mistakes or an affordable mistakes that will hamper the ability to be successful.

Anita Brick: Great advice, and it sounds like to go in with an open mind, ask a lot of questions in an appreciative way, of course, and then listen and have an open mind so that maybe your mind will be changed about the situation, about the people, and so on, so that you can then have the reputation where people know they can come to you. But you gave some really excellent advice. Thank you very, very much. I know that you're always flying here and there and so busy, so the fact that you could devote some time to us was really terrific. So thank you.

Alexis Sermeno: So absolutely. And likewise. Fine. Thank you. Happy to help everybody who you know is in a transition role. First congratulate them on the new role in the new job. Make sure that they don't forget about the old role. They still have to exit and transition that wisely and productively, you know, by leaving a legacy and then as well as, you know, taking the time and investing the time that they need to do to be successful in the new role.

Anita Brick: Excellent point, Alexis. Thank you so very much. This is really terrific. It's always great to talk with you. And you are just a wealth of wisdom and information and perspective. So thanks again for making the time.

Alexis Sermeno: Absolutely.

Anita Brick: Thank you and thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.