Your New Executive Will Fail If They Don't Do This During Onboarding

All right, today we are going to talk about how you can onboard senior-level people coming into your company. So these can be managerial people, these can be directors, VPs, C-level people, new people that are joining your company. And so I wanna share a story real quick. I mean, I remember back in the day, I led marketing at a startup. And, you know, I thought me coming from the tech world, I worked in software, I worked in a startup, I was cool, right? This was back in 2012. And I joined the ad agency that I took over, the one that I own now, Single Grain. I came in and I did not build rapport with anybody. I came in immediately and I said, you know, I'm like, man, you know, these guys, this is an agency. They don't really understand. Like I come from the tech world. Like I think I know what to do. And so I came in, I didn't, I interviewed a bunch of people just to see what was wrong, but I thought I was so cool. Like I would, I would sit in a seat with my, With my legs crossed and my arms folded. And then, um, I think I was wearing like a, you know, like a nice sweater as well. I was like one of those just being really arrogant. I would interview people and my tone would be, um, it wouldn't be very friendly either, right? I wasn't trying to be rude, but I was— I didn't sound very friendly at the same time. And so I built— I didn't build rapport with anybody. Okay. I made sweeping changes without consulting anybody. So what I basically did was, um, I said, hey, you know, we're shutting down the San Francisco office. And so, not only did I build rapport, but the only place where I could go to build rapport with people, you know, we ended up shutting it down. What also happened too was I operated in a silo. So I was like, okay, we're gonna make these changes, we're gonna make these changes, and we're gonna change our services to this, without thinking about the second and third order consequences. So we decided to pivot our service line over to— from SEO to content marketing, because it seemed like a logical progression. But I didn't consider, okay, like, okay, but who's going to fulfill the content marketing services? Okay. But SEO is our main revenue line. Like we can't just shut it down completely. I wasn't thinking about, okay, if I do this, what happens next? And then what happens after that? And what happens after that? So I didn't think about those, um, those situations. And then that led to a lot of resentment. Also, when I first came in as well, I laid off 4 people, um, without giving, without really thinking about, you know, their tenure with the company. I didn't think about, um, You know, how to take care of them as well. I had good intentions, but there's a lot of things that I didn't know that I didn't know. Because keep in mind, I'm not trying to make excuses for myself, but I was still very early in my career. I was about 26 years old or so. But I thought I knew everything. And that's the key thing. When you're onboarding new managers or when you're onboarding new C-level people or VPs, they're going to come in and they understand that you've hired them because they're smart and they have a track record and they have experience. So the weird thing here is you're hiring these people and then they come in and they're going to want to make changes. They're going to have a lot of, they're gonna have a lot of input. They're going to have a lot of suggestions as well. But the key thing here is you have to hold them back because you don't want a disaster scenario like me where we dropped the weight down all the way down to one employee because I just made all the mistakes in the world. It's because I didn't ask questions. I wasn't, I didn't come in with a curious mind. I didn't come in to try to understand the operating system first. And because I, I didn't try to understand the company. I didn't try to understand the context. I didn't build connections. What happened was I feel like everybody hated me. Again, that's my fault totally because I didn't know what was going on. I wasn't aware. Just over the years, I would see like, you know, these other, my other friends joining other companies and they would, same thing would happen to them. They would come in, good intentions, they want to make a bunch of changes and then people would just be like, I don't know why everyone hates me. They don't like, they don't want to do my changes. I don't even know why I'm part of this company. And then they start to feel like, you know, maybe they should quit. But if you think about it, you got to look at both sides. You come into a company and then other people are kind of established, you know, from a political standpoint, they're established. They've kind of been doing things already and they have, you know, they might have some influence in the company and then you come in on their turf and you start to make all these suggestions. So it's best to come in with a mindset of curiosity first and then from there, Once you build some rapport, maybe maybe 45 days, maybe 60 days in, you can start making suggestions. Over the years, I've seen people come into come into single grain as well, and they have experience. And then I would tell them, hey, say, hey, you know, take some time, get some context, and understand first before you start to make suggestions. You can ask clarifying questions, but please don't make suggestions. Don't try to start implementing things. Don't try to make these sweeping changes because people are they might not necessarily be. Open to it because you've kind of closed yourself off, right? So our rule now is that when you come into our company, there's a 30 to 60 day cool-off period. There's a cooldown period. You are not allowed to make suggestions. You are not allowed to implement anything new. You are allowed to ask clarifying questions and just take notes of all the changes or all the, all the questions that you have or all the suggestions that you might have. And after the cooldown period ends, You can, you can have at it, right? But what ends up happening too is that you coming in, you're the manager or senior level person, you're going to start to realize that, man, a lot of the things that they're doing actually makes sense. Now I understand, like if I first came in and I started to make this change, like, you know, it might've been, I might've thought I was right, but watching them do it, things their way, it actually makes a lot of sense. And oftentimes what you'll find too is a lot of suggestions that you might have, the team might've tried it already and they can give you the context around that. So getting the context is super important. Understanding the current operating system and then coming in and making the necessary changes, that's what's important. Because oftentimes when you come to a company, sometimes you might need to make sweeping changes. I think that's actually rare. But when you come into a company and what you're looking to do is you're looking to make tweaks, you're looking to make optimizations, and you just tweak like 1 degree here, 5 degrees here, and then boom, you're on track again, right? And that's what you're trying to do. You don't need to try to prove to everyone, you don't need to strut your stuff. When you're first coming into a company. What you do need to do is you do need to have a sense of curiosity. You do need to try to understand and you do need to build rapport. And only when you do those things is it going to be way easier for you to make the impact that you want to make. And trust me, the people that hired you, they want you to make suggestions. They want you to solve problems, right? That's what you're here for. Them just as much as you, because they realize that they're, you know, especially the boss, they're paying you money. You know, nobody wants you to sit around for 30 to 60 days, but it pays off. And that's why I'm more than happy to have people do that. In fact, we require people to do that when they come into— when they come into and work for one of the companies. Whenever you're transitioning somewhere new or if you're hiring someone new, have them watch this video. This video will basically guide you in terms of, you know, what you need to do. And it's fairly simple. Just have a cooldown period before you start making suggestions and implementations. And, uh, you're gonna be in a good spot. So seek to understand and then you will be good to go. All right. So let me know what you think in the comments below. Don't forget to hit the subscribe and the bell button if you want to see more content like this, and we will see you tomorrow.