If you’re just joining our MOOC with Me series:  Power Onboarding, you’ll want to start here.  

Week 2 - Part 2.

Only one article this week.  And a couple of videos. Again - much of it aimed at students, but enough here to keep me interested.

This is what stood out for me this week:

Article: Managing Your Boss

It’s more than a little dated, but a few great points.    

New to me was thinking about the pressures your boss is facing, especially from their boss.  I’ve always advocated understanding your boss’s goals, metrics, priorities. But completely missed this.  This concept is a keeper for me.

Your new boss is going to have a few quirks.  And this article lists some tough ones. Lack of clarity.  Indecisiveness. Hates bad news….. What to do? If you want an easy option, watch what your peers do.  What works? Modify that to fit your style.

Trust:  It’s not about lying, as the article discusses.  It’s about getting to that point in your relationship where your boss knows you’ll follow through.   When he'll no longer need to even think about keeping an eye on you. You know how great that feels....... because you want the same from your team.

Choose your battles:  It’s the frantic pace of everyday that can make this tricky.  What seems so important in the moment is not mission critical in hindsight.  So appreciate that asking your boss to cash in some chips - well that's an option that's available only a few times.   Make it count.

Style:  This article touches on adapting to your boss’s style.  For a deep dive, check out Chapter 4 in The First 90 Days series.  

Videos:

Video 4.0:

Of course you’ve been learning about the company.  Reading, google alerts set. How about talking to people who’ve worked there?  LinkedIn makes them easy to find. Add in learning about customers, competitors and industry information.  This could get overwhelming, so you’ll need to be quite selective.

Any skills/knowledge to brush up on?  You’ll want to live up to your resume & interviews.

Are you clear how your business unit contributes to the organization’s success?  And how you’ll ensure your team is clear on this too? Honestly I’ve worked with so many teams that haven’t a clue.  It can really mess with productivity.

Video 4.1:  

These first few months are all about learning and adapting.

• There’s some basics:  communication habits, meetings, how people react & interact.  

• And a few higher-level issues: decision-making. Influencers. Power centres.

Information Gap:  Were you kind of blown away by the Kelly study?  That info gap is …. A lot. 50% of the info you’ll need to complete projects comes from outside your little corner of the company.  You’re gonna need to build some relationships to make this work. Getting a jump start on this could be invaluable.

So how about a meeting or lunch with your boss before your start date?  Discuss the info gap concerns. Find out who you’ll need to work with. And see if you boss can introduce you to these people before the overwhelm begins.  

While you’re there - how about asking for tips on navigating this new corporate culture. And I’m sure you’ll have lots of additional questions too.

If you do meet with your boss, follow up on what he recommends.  And let him know. I know you’ll mean to, but it can get so crazy busy.  This is something I’d nag my clients about. So allow me to nag you a little too.       

Discussion / Other Resources:

Discussion Prompts: Time to work on the ideas from above.

• Define your plan for learning about the company.

• And your plan to learn about the culture too.   

Other Resources:  Nothing for me on the Tip Sheet.   And of course I’m waiting til the end of the program to work on the Personal Onboarding Plan (POP).

Conclusion

You know, I’m kind of glad this course is set up for students.  Even though a lot of it doesn’t apply for my work, there's more than enough to keep me busy.

We’re more than halfway through the course.  Next week we start Week 3.