Onboarding: How To Get Your New Employees Up To Speed in Half the Time

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 to Mary Vonnegut. And Mary, over the past decades, has been a consultant to CEOs and COOs of private companies. She has launched new businesses, built marketing departments from the ground up, and crafted growth strategies. Today, she's a partner at the executive onboarding and transition acceleration group PrimeGenesis and coauthor of Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time.

Mary, we're really glad that you made the time, and I know you're super busy. The good news is that there is more onboarding going on today than there has been over the last few years. So thank you for making the time.

Mary Vonnegut: Oh, well, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you, Anita, for the opportunity.

Anita Brick: So we had really a lot of questions. So we're going to get to as many of them as we can. But let's start at a really basic level. What is onboarding?

Mary Vonnegut: The word is thrown around a lot now, isn't it? You see it everywhere. Let me give you the PrimeGenesis definition of onboarding. We do nothing but onboarding, so we think about it a lot. We've worked really hard to understand what we think the definition is. Here's the way we define it: Onboarding is everything that an individual or an organization or a group does to transition an individual into a new role and help him or her deliver better results faster.

Anita Brick: One of the questions that came in is, how soon is too soon to start the onboarding process? This came from a weekend student. When should you start?

Mary Vonnegut: Really, really clear how that works. Until you have the offer, you're selling. That's all you need to focus on is selling yourself and kicking that door open and getting the offer. As soon as you have the offer, you switch from seller to buyer, and at that point, your onboarding begins. It's the period between saying yes and actually starting on the job. That's the period when you can get your absolute greatest advantage.

Anita Brick: OK, so what do I do? An alum said, “Not to be naive; I thought onboarding was really done by the employer. I'm in the final rounds with a start date in May. What should I be doing?” Here's someone who's starting a job in a month or so. What does this new employee do to facilitate the ease of transition as they jump into a new job?

Mary Vonnegut: So this alum is actually in terrific shape because he or she has a number of weeks before he or she starts in the new job. Let's back up a little bit and say he or she had not yet said yes—they had the offer, but had not said yes. At that point, what we would recommend is that individual would look at three things very carefully, and that's three of what we call the onboarding landmines.

We would ask that individual, if he or she were working with us, to look at the organization and be certain that the organization that had offered the job has a winning strategy, and that the organization can implement that strategy. In other words, that that organization is viable and has a clear competitive advantage. So onboarding landmine number one to be resolved before saying yes is the organization.

Onboarding landmine number two to be overcome before saying yes is the role landmine. And this is a big one in this environment. because, you know, there are a lot of people out there that are just incredibly talented and experienced. But the job market's been cut. So when they do get an offer, it feels great, right? You know, it feels fantastic. And they may be inclined to overlook that the role is ill defined. So we ask our clients to look at the role. Understand: is there a solid job definition? Is the reporting structure clear? Are the expectations for the role viable and doable? Are there individuals in the organization that do not support the role? Because that has to be overcome. So that's a huge potential landmine.

And believe me, we often start to work with people who have said yes, and when we get into doing their onboarding prep with them we discover that there are major role problems. For instance, sometimes people get into an organization and they've been hired at a high level. If they get in the door and they realize they have no direct reports and that they're going to have to be basically, you know, a general without the stripes—that they're supposed to go out there and forge their own territory.

So really understand that role. And then the third landmine that we ask people to resolve or understand, at least, before saying, yes, this is a personal landmine. So again, we're in a really— we're emerging out of a tough job market. People are grateful when they have an opportunity. They're excited. And it's easy to overlook or easy to not pay enough attention to whether the job and your personal strengths fit very well.

So before you say yes, and certainly if you have said yes, before you enter the door on day one, understand where your personal fit is great for the role and where your personal fit maybe isn't so great for the role and figure out how you're going to overcome that. So before you say yes, overcome three landmines: organization, role, and personal.

After you say yes, which is where our alum is right now, it kind of gets a little easier because at least you're committed and you know that you're saying, yes, here's the broad outline and we can dig in later indeed on wherever you want to dig in. But the broad outline of what we help clients do when they're prepping—in other words, after yes, before day one—is we ask them, and we help them or they get help from HR or whatever, to map their stakeholders in their new organization. That means anyone up, across, down, inside, and outside who will have a huge impact on his or her success in the new role.

So number one is stakeholders. Number two is, come up with a leadership narrative. Because here's the bottom line. If you don't write your own leadership story when you start in a new role, somebody else is going to write it for you.

Anita Brick: But how do you do that when I mean, how do you do that without creating a schism in the organization? I mean, how do you create your leadership story until you're actually part of the organization?

Mary Vonnegut: OK, well, that comes to number three, and that's a really great question. Every now and then— you know, all this is a little bit iterative and interwoven. So it's kind of hard to lay it out as a clear path. But still. So the idea is you ID your stakeholders. Then what we like people to do—in fact, we think it's one of the most important things they do—is to have pre-boarding conversations with key stakeholders.

And these conversations are all about learning and understanding expectations. And what happens when a new leader taking on a new role has conversations with key stakeholders before he or she starts on the job—and obviously this has to be facilitated by HR or the hiring manager—what happens is he or she hears themes. He or she collects stories about what works in the organization, what doesn't work in the organization. He or she understands what's not touchable. He or she understands how the organization communicates.

And all of that information, coupled with learning, which is research about the company or the organization that we also recommend people do before day one, all of that together is enough to come up with some very significant thought about how you will lead in your new role and what your leadership narrative should be.

Anita Brick: And who's this leadership narrative, who is the story for? Is it to tell your direct reports? Is it just for you to have perspective? I mean, who is it for?

Mary Vonnegut: Most importantly, it's for you to have perspective. It's your plan. It's your mission. Your personal leadership plan or mission. And this is just you. You at this stage.

Anita Brick: And what element should be in that story?

Mary Vonnegut: OK. So, let me back up two seconds to tell you how the story gets executed. The way that a new leader executes— The reason why you have to have a narrative is because— OK, let me ask you a question. I'm going to wander here a little bit. Have you ever entered a company; thought, you know, you really know why you're there, or maybe you don't know why, but you know what the job is and you're really excited. And before you know it, you've sort of lost control of your positioning. Has that ever happened to you?

Anita Brick: It hasn't happened to me personally. But I did walk into my very first job where three-quarters of the team had been poached by another company, and the person I was hired by was his last day.

Mary Vonnegut: Holy cow.

Anita Brick: Yeah. So it would have—

Mary Vonnegut: If you had done your pre-boarding conversations, you would have known that.

Anita Brick: Yeah, I guess so. Didn't know. Sorry, I didn't know.

Mary Vonnegut: But what you're saying, I guess I'm confused. I'm not sure what you're saying.

Anita Brick: OK, so maybe let's take a step back and say, you know, the reason you have this story is to understand kind of who you are and know kind of what your mark is, but it feels—and maybe I'm missing something, but it feels again, like if you have a story and you execute it, you're insinuating yourself without really being part of the team.

First, how do you resolve … ? You are insinuating yourself without really even knowing the team and really being part of the team. I see leaders fail all the time when they just jump in and say, OK, here's what I stand for, here's who I am. Now you get it, you either side with me or you're out.

Mary Vonnegut: OK. No, that's really that's a really it's a super question and it's a really tough question. And I'm 100 percent in your court that if you go in there and impose yourself, and it's all about me, you know, you're in big trouble and you'll probably fail. And 40 percent of executives fail within the first 18 months. So the risks are really, really huge.

The idea of having a narrative is, the narrative should focus on the team, not on you as an individual leader. OK? So as you craft it, you craft it about your team, about your organization, not about you. It is a beginning vantage point so that when you step on stage—and day one is all about stepping on stage—you already have an established direction that you want to take the team in or participate with the team in getting to.

It's primarily … I'm having a hard time here. The idea of having a leadership narrative is primarily so you know how to behave in the pre-boarding conference, you know how to behave when you interact with people before you start on day one and in your early days—so that you know how you're going to be, what you're going to do, what you're going to say. So you are consistently positioned and focused. That's the concept of it.

Anita Brick: I mean, because when I think of a story, I think of the story or narrative being about, OK, here's the value I bring, but it sounds like what you're talking about is something different.

Mary Vonnegut: OK. Let me give you an example. And that's the best way to approach it. This is difficult stuff, but it's a really important point in a new leader's success. So we recently worked with a guy who was walking in as CEO of a company, and the company has been formed through acquisition. They've never been consolidated. So it's actually, you know, they're looking for a heart. It's a bunch of little businesses looking for a reason why they live together.

This organization has had four CEOs in two years. When this CEO was doing his onboarding, one thing we knew very clearly because of the situation was, number one, whatever his leadership narrative was, he better not walk in there and blast and say, I have the answers and follow me, because this was a very jaded group who had been asked to follow three other people before him.

So that was part of this story that we had to put together. Now, the other part of the story that we had to put together is that there are all these little businesses, and they were all at one time viable, but some of them are no longer terribly viable. And everybody was worried about, gee, will my part of the business go away, or do I have a future here?

So another part of this person's leadership narrative was to assure his team and organization that they would be working together to find a mission and vision, and that they would work together then to protect all that they had accomplished that was working well, and then make changes that would make the business stronger in the future. By the way, the business was losing a lot of money.

He needed to put together a leadership narrative that suggested all of those things. The process of doing that with him caused him to get really focused on what he wanted to communicate. So he got really focused on the idea that he wasn't going to slam in there and say, follow me, but he was going to enter kind of gently on a flat level with his team that he was going to not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

So crafting the story directed his actions—and very successfully, I might add. When we help new leaders craft their leadership narrative before they start, these are the sorts of questions we ask them. Given your new role and given the learning you've done about the organization so far, what you know, what you know about the competitive environment, what you know about customers, all that kind of stuff, what's the platform for change? What change has to happen for you to be a successful new leader? Clearly, if things were going to be better in the future for his organization, the platform for change was we have to start making money and we have to figure out a viable course for the future.

Anita Brick: Maybe this leadership narrative, which seems to be a really important part of the onboarding process, isn't something that you deliver. It's something that you engage with others and you share that just like you would a story. Like if you're going to network, you're not going to share your entire story. You're going to dialogue and learn about the other person and share what you are going to bring as part of a dialogue, as opposed to a data dump. Correct?

Mary Vonnegut: Perfect. I mean, it's not a directive. It's a story. That's why it's a narrative.

Anita Brick: It may be that you share bits and pieces of it over time. You're not delivering it in front of your leadership team behind a podium.

Mary Vonnegut: You're never delivering it. You're dead right. And complicated stuff that is really, really huge. What you're doing with your leadership narrative is you’re being that story. So the way that you act every day, you are doing that story. So the things that you do fit with that story and you're saying that story. So the words that you use fit with that story.

Anita Brick: Your actions and words are the same. They're consistent. There's integrity there.

Mary Vonnegut: Be, do, say.

Anita Brick: It was very, very interesting because a number of questions— there was a full-time student and an evening student, also an Executive MBA student, and they all asked pretty much the same question. And the question was, in one form or another, I understand how to gather competitive analysis, how to understand the products and services of my organization. Where I really need help in the onboarding process is how do I develop those relationships interpersonally during those first 100 days?

Mary Vonnegut: Yeah, that's a great question. OK. So we're still before day one OK. And then we'll get into the afterwards a little bit. But before— Once you've identified your key stakeholders, and you do that with the help of your hiring manager and HR, but you want to actually map out who the people are that are going to be important to your success as a new leader in your organization.

Now, once you have that map of your key stakeholders, you know, obviously those are the people you want to develop some relationships with, OK? So you can get focused and you won't waste your time on other people. Although I don't want to be negative, you really want to focus on the ones that are most critical to your success.

Anita Brick: They may not be the people with the highest title.

Mary Vonnegut: Guess what? One of the things we always ask our clients is, identify who are the shadow stakeholders? Who are the people who are powerful and important, who may not even show up on the org chart? Like the chairman, secretary, or whatever. So you ID your stakeholders. And then before you start, you have these structured pre-boarding discussions with them.

Here's a trick to— before you start on day one, I don't know why it is, but there's a magic that happens and the magic is people tell you stuff they're not worried about. They're not competitive with you, they're open. So the reason to have the pre-boarding conversations before you start is you're a little bit immune from some of the problems, the communication problems you might have after you start.

Another reason to do these conversations ahead of time is we explicitly ask our clients to gather stories during those pre-boarding conversations that are company stories—that are stories that belong to other people—so they can then weave those stories into their own leadership narrative, which is a great way to use examples of your new company's success. Instead of having to refer back to old companies and old experiences.

One way that you can share out what's going on in the company is to have these structured pre-boarding stakeholder conversations. Now, after you start, if you want to build your relationships within your organization, one way to do that is to try to get on cross-functional project teams. Join the informal networks in your organization. Maybe you bowl well—is there like a bowling group?

Make sure that you participate: whenever you can participate, however you can best participate.

Anita Brick: What if there's a difference? Like for example, relationship building, managing the political landscape. Really important. This actually came from an Exec MBA student. The client buildup is also important because of issues around revenue. How do you balance the external role with the internal role?

Mary Vonnegut: If I were helping that individual identify stakeholders before he or she started in the job, I would ask, who are your internal stakeholders? And those would be the people who are part of the political landscape. And I would also say, who are your external stakeholders? In the case where somebody is entering a role where there are really, really critical client or vendor relationships, those people are your stakeholders as well.

Anita Brick: Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. That— how do you balance the two? How do— there's a lot of demand internally because if you don't set up politically you're going to be an outsider, but you're also there to be operational from day one. How do you make sure that you're doing both, especially if the role takes you out of the office a good deal of the time?

Mary Vonnegut: We're going to come back a little bit there to your story, your leadership story. What's the main reason that you're there? What is your vision of a better future? You're going to have to make those decisions in the context of what you're trying to create through your leadership role. If your leadership narrative is an agrochemical company that loves its customers, that's how you're going to drive everything that you be, do, and say.

My guess is you're going to spend more time with your customers, perhaps, than you are on the internal politics. Now, there's a risk to any decision to take a course, isn't there? In this current environment, there's a lot more risk to not committing to a course because you will not succeed at being everything to everybody. It just won't happen.

Anita Brick: So if you sit on the fence, you're kind of doomed. You have to really put a stake in the ground.

Mary Vonnegut: Bingo. Because you need results. Bottom line: 40 percent of executives, according to a recent Heidrick & Struggles survey of thousands of companies, 40 percent of executives fail in the first 18 months, which says to me it's all about results. So your leadership narrative, your vision of what you want to be and do as a leader better tie to results and tie to the right results for your organization.

Anita Brick: There was a weekend student and actually an Exec MBA student who asked very similar questions about how do you make sure that your colleagues perceive you favorably and that you are worthy of the role that the company brought you in for?

Mary Vonnegut: That's a really big question.

Anita Brick: It's a challenging question.

Mary Vonnegut: And it's a little broad.

Anita Brick: Let's put some details around it. So each person is in a probationary period. They know that they're going to be vulnerable during that time. They're both brought in with the expectation that they're going to get promoted relatively quickly within a couple of years to a fairly senior position. So the question around this is, number one, how do you make sure that you set a good first impression?

I mean, you could have the conversations before you got there. Everybody plays nice. Once you get on the job, the demands, the day to day demands of the job will definitely take over. How do you make sure that you are perceived positively and that you're getting things done to enhance that positioning over time?

Mary Vonnegut: Well, I think again, it all comes back to your pre-boarding stakeholder discussions. And I'll tell you what. And anyone who wants to know how to do these things, buy the New Leaders 100 Day Action Plan, and you'll find one of our forms in there. It’s sort of a simple form, but it'll get you going in the right direction.

Anita Brick: We actually have copies in the career resource centers around the globe.

Mary Vonnegut: Well, there you go. Pick it up, have a look at pre-boarding conversations with your stakeholders. I apologize, I don't know the exact form number right now, but it'll be very clear in the book. The bottom line is what we'd like you to do when you speak with a stakeholder is ask things like what needs to be done to be successful in this role, and then sit back and listen.

You also ask questions like, gee, what's the most important thing that needs to get done? What's not so important? Where are the key resources? What meetings should I be aware of? What reports should I read? And you ask things like, gee, as I go forward, how would you like me to communicate with you? Do you like me to call you, interact with you by email, leave you alone?

By asking these questions—and again, they're all structured on the form, so you can have a look at those. By asking these questions, you learn a lot about individuals and how you should behave with individuals. So you actually can give them what they want and treat them the way they want to be treated, going forth. And you also get a strong sense of what you really need to accomplish in your new role and how that's going to be measured.

There are also other questions that we ask our clients to ask of their stakeholders. We do these onboarding discussions, and one of the really important ones is, gee, Anita, if I ever disagree with you, how would you like me to handle that?

Anita Brick: Oh good question, good question. And people are much more likely to answer that when you come in than when you actually do disagree.

Mary Vonnegut: Absolutely. Because they—at this point, they want to help you. At this point everyone's feeling great. You're a new employee. You're excited. They're excited. They'll be open to that. And so what we recommend is that you take these pre-boarding discussions and you write your notes and you stick them in a binder. And when you get lost because you're overwhelmed and you don't know what to do, you just review what you learned.

And by reviewing what you learned and looking at your stakeholder map, you know, you'll feel pretty grounded again and you'll know where you're going. That's why that time between saying yes and starting is a gift. It's a huge, huge, huge gift. You should be working really hard during that time to get everything done you can possibly get done. Does that help?

Anita Brick: It absolutely helps. Does this change if your team is virtual?

Mary Vonnegut: It doesn't change if your team is virtual. Funny, I just did a prep with somebody who started yesterday, in fact, and has a very complicated job and has a very, very virtual team. And so what we had to figure out, and this was more moving to day one and week one, we had to figure out how this person could have the appropriate interaction with team members—if possible, face to face, but if not possible, what else could be done?

What I would say is, when you have a virtual team, you have to really focus on that question of how should we interact? You know, how do you like to hear from me: email, voice, phone, whatever. But you also have to give an awful lot of thought to crafting your first day and week on the job to figure out how you can make sure you solidify those connections right from the start.

Anita Brick: Got it. Do you have time for two more questions?

Mary Vonnegut: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Anita Brick: There was one question from the employer's point of view, and this was from an evening student. And he said in my company, we approach onboarding from a framework perspective: what programs, activities, and trainings can we offer our new employees? However, the title of the CareerCast implies that successful onboarding is as much a responsibility of the employee as of the company, and I certainly agree with this perspective. What advice can you give us to think about onboarding as a shared responsibility with our new employees?

Mary Vonnegut: It is a shared responsibility. When we think about onboarding, we think about it from the organization. We think about four tranches or four phases, if you will. We think about acquiring the right person for a role. We think about accommodating that new leader in the organization. We think about assimilating, and then we think about accelerating performance.

That's the organization point of view. The new leader's point of view is exactly the same except that there's no acquiring. New leaders should be concerned with accommodation, meaning getting set up. Get set up at home; get set up at work. One of the things that we encourage everybody to do is make sure you're ready to do real work on day one. Make sure the computer is set up, you’ve got your mobile phone, you've got your logins, you've got everything.

Don't wait. If your HR department in the organization hasn't gotten you set up before day one, or you don't think they're going to, you take charge.

Anita Brick: From the employer standpoint, because he's asking what the employer can do, it sounds like make sure that the person is set to go, but maybe it also sounds like they could help facilitate or pave the way for those dialogues, for those pre first day conversations absolutely take place.

Mary Vonnegut: And in fact, that's what our book Onboarding is all about. Onboarding is our book that takes the employer's point of view, the hiring manager’s point of view, and The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan takes the leader's point of view. And they're fully coordinated. If onboarding is done really, really well, it is a hand-in-hand venture between the new leader and the organization.

Anita Brick: So it sounds like from what you said, I as the new leader, I need to ask someone who is my manager or someone who is kind of on my peer team or someone I'm going to be interacting with how that person prefers to be communicated with, but maybe something that the employer, from this standpoint of the evening student who is asking this question, maybe you ask the same thing of the new employee.

Here's how we typically communicate. What communication avenues do you prefer? Maybe it's more of a dialogue as part of the conclusion of the offer from the employer standpoint?

Mary Vonnegut: Absolutely. The bottom line is when you go to work for a company or a company hires a new leader, I mean, it's the ultimate partnership, isn't it? The more communication there is, the better. The whole point is, if you work together towards a common vision of the future, you both have a much greater chance of success.

Anita Brick: That's absolutely true. And if the employer thinks about it as a partnership, as opposed to an acquisition of an asset, that could change the entire dynamic.

Mary Vonnegut: Your words are perfect. I'm going to. Can I steal those? That's exactly right.

Anita Brick: Credit is good though. Credit is good.

Mary Vonnegut: That's good. I'll give you credit. I didn't mean to say no.

Anita Brick: It's totally fine.

Mary Vonnegut: No. Absolutely right. Because when you hire somebody, you're not acquiring them. You are engaging with them in a joint venture business strategy. Right? This is great because that's exactly what we're trying to communicate about what onboarding is. It's everything done to transition an individual into a new role and help him or her deliver better results faster.

Anita Brick: Well yeah, and that's kind of where we started. And that's where we've kind of come full circle because it's just the same thing when you— and this is an acquisition. But when you acquire a company, everything hinges on whether the integration takes place. And what you're saying is that the same thing is true when you're bringing on new individuals into your organization.

Mary Vonnegut: Absolutely right. When you are a new leader or you're in an organization bringing on a new leader before that one, it's all about the leader. It's all about the leader getting prepared. It's all about the leader understanding his or her stakeholders. It's all about the leader getting his or her leadership narrative put together. It's about the leader doing all the learning he or she can, so he or she can enter on day one in the best possible way to accomplish the results that everybody wants.

And after day one, can immediately transition to thinking about the team. So before day one, it's all about the leader. After day one, it's all about the team. By going back to that whole leadership narrative discussion, that's the reason why the leadership narrative has to be we centric, not me centric, because it carries the leader forward with the team.

Anita Brick: That's really great. So let's say I accept an offer today and I'm starting in six weeks. I'm going to take a two-week vacation in the interim. And all of that. What are three things I absolutely must do from the candidate standpoint at the moment? I say, yes, I'm going to say yes this afternoon. What do I need to do immediately, taking into account that out of that six weeks, I'm going to be gone two weeks and be out of the country?

Mary Vonnegut: Well, number one, I tell you, shift your priority and you say the most important thing is that I prep for my job even though I'm going to try to work in a vacation. Get yourself an HR partner so that you have an established relationship with HR starting right then and there. Make sure your hiring manager sets that up for you.

Number one: ask the HR partner and your hiring manager to work with you to map your key stakeholders. Number two, ask your HR manager and hiring manager to help you line up your pre-boarding stakeholder discussions. Number three: work with your HR manager and your hiring manager, your HR partner and your hiring manager to craft your day one. So on day one you're being, doing, and saying your leadership narrative.

On day one, everything is amplified. On day one, everything communicates. On day one, everything you do, everything you don't do, everything you say, everything you don't say. If you're going to do three things after yes, before you go on vacation, work with your hiring manager and your HR partner to ID stakeholders. Arrange your pre-boarding stakeholder discussions and craft day one, including your leadership narrative.

Anita Brick: Got it. That's great. That's great. So we all have a lot of work to do.

Mary Vonnegut: If it's worth it, huh?

Anita Brick: Absolutely, it sounds like. Thank you so much. This is great. I know this is an area where there's a lot of interest. There's not a lot of consistency about how companies do it. So this gives us some really good guidelines. So thank you so much.

Mary Vonnegut: It was my pleasure. I hope— you know, it's pretty weighty stuff. And there's an awful lot of material there. But I hope that I've been able to give people a few actionable things.

Anita Brick: Well, and the good news is that this is recorded, and so people can go back and listen again. Thanks a lot, Mary.

Mary Vonnegut: Thanks, Anita.

Anita Brick: And if you want to take a look at some really great things that they have on the PrimeGenesis site, it's PrimeGenesis.com. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast.