Onboarding a High-Profile Hire

Guesswork Unveiled, Issue #5

Onboarding a High-Profile Hire

Guesswork Unveiled, Issue #5

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time & brain space thinking through an onboarding plan for our new Operations Manager hire. I really want to get this right — it’s a crucial hire, and one that could dramatically change the trajectory of my business.

To that end, my mindset has been focused on “how do I make this person most effective 3-6 months from now, as opposed to right now.”

That mindset recognizes a few key elements of success:

• I want the Operations Manager to feel confident in the scope of their role’s responsibilities (and what is not within scope).

• I want the Operations Manager to feel amped to be here, and really see a longer-term vision. I want them to feel excited to be my thought partner in building the business.

• I want the Operations Manager to viscerally understand the cultural norms that I want our business to reflect — I want them to see how I manage both them and the rest of our team. I don’t expect them to mimic that, but it’s a helpful way to let them into my way of thinking.

• I want the Operations Manager to build trust with the rest of the team — this is a crucial underpinning to any future change management they will oversee.

• I want the Operations Manager to learn how to work with me — how to set priorities in tandem, how to define success for initiatives, how to give me feedback, etc.

Below, I dive into a couple practical elements of onboarding that I constructed to hopefully meet the above objectives.

Onboarding Timeline

I worked with my business coach, Rory Tyer, on various frameworks for how to set up an onboarding plan for an important hire.

He explained the “Know, Do, Feel” model of onboarding, in which you chart out what you want the new hire to know, what you want them to be able to do, and what you want them to feel — based on each time period in the onboarding timeline.

I modified this slightly and created an onboarding plan that had the following end dates: Day 1, Week 1, Week 2, Week 4, Week 6, Week 8, Week 10, Week 12.