How I Work

7-30-60-90

In my opinion, how any person, especially a leader, onboards can make or break their success in the role and the efficacy of their team. Understanding how I handle the first 90 days will hopefully provide a clear picture both of how I think and how I bring my core values of human connection, empathy, and analytical, data-driven decision-making to an organization.

7 - First Week

Meet Everyone on the Immediate Team

• Connect as Humans - Especially with globally distributed teams, I’ve found it imperative to ensure that everyone is meeting one another both as professionals and as humans. I want to know what my dev’s hobbies are, as well as what my director’s children are doing for sports this year. I want them to know what my favorite food is and why I take the most PTO in July. Without that human connect, the team is much less likely to be open about the what’s working great and what the areas of opportunity are.

• Mind the Gap - I need to hear everyone’s work stories. How long have you been here? What do you love about it? What sucks? Who do you work with the most? What are you most proud of from the last [insert time frame depending on how long they’ve been in that role]? What I’m really searching for is this - what story is this individual willing to tell someone they don’t know about this company and their role?

• Work Love Language - The third piece of these intro 1:1s is asking every team member how they prefer to work. Do they prefer Slack over email? Calls over Slack? (Yes, these people do exist!) Camera on or off for meetings? Do they want a “hi” every time we message or do they want me to cut to the chase with a question? These questions will establish the foundation of how we’ll work together and help reduce the friction of my onboarding.

Chase Down Access

• All the MFA/2FA - Everything from all the Slack channels to SharePoint and intranet folders to Jira/Confluence/Bitbucket to QlikSense/Tableau/Mixpanel to ServiceNow, I want access to it all by the end of the first week. If that’s not possible, I at least aim to have all the tickets submitted.

• All the Meetings - Align with senior leadership and the immediate team on what meetings I need to be added to and make sure it happens. Not the forwards, since those become insanely problematic. Actually being added to the meetings and getting access to the latest minutes from them.

Meet the Stakeholders and Cross-Functional Partners

• Make Lists - I start off with making a list of all the teams everyone has mentioned in our 1:1s and bump that against a list of all the meetings I’ve been added to. What’s the overlap? Where are the gaps? What teams are mentioned? What teams did I expect mentioned but never are?

• Be the Seeker - Using the above lists, I reach out and schedule meet and greets with stakeholders and cross-functional partners or ask my director/manager to kick off the process. Sometimes this looks like more 1:1s and sometimes it’s more like team:team, but these initial connects can either make or break the success of the first 90 days and beyond.

30 - First Month

Learn the Lingua Franca

• Acronym Soup for the Soul - After being added to everything, I start documenting and learning acronyms. Without that, I’ve never been able to get into the data and understand what I’m seeing. Some orgs I’ve been in already have an acronym doc, which is super helpful, but most don’t.

• Formalities - Understanding how formal or casual the general org or team are is critical for me. Despite getting a sense during the interview process, it’s still good to keep a pulse on and make sure there is no tension cross-functionally or amongst the team from a disconnect here.

Gap Analysis

• OKRs, KPIs, and Roadmaps - After the first week, I should have access to what the objective and key results are for the org, what key performance indicators the team is driving towards, and what the current roadmap looks like both for the team and the cross-functional org. Really, what I’m looking for is:

1) What are overarching goals for the organization and how does my product fit in?

2) Does what I’m seeing make sense from the 10,000 foot view? What about 5000? What about the next 3 sprints?

• All the Small Things - After seeing all the objectives and indicators and getting access to all the knowledge repositories, I start digging into the available information, making notes, and asking questions. I want to know everything from “Are we compliant with our accessibility scores?” to “Why are there no integration diagrams for this API?” to “Where is the data for why this feature has been prioritized for this product?”. My goal is to understand how all the small things add up to the big things.

• Outputs vs Outcomes - By the end of the first month, I should have a decent draft of a gap analysis. I aim to have a picture (even if it’s hazy) for what the org is doing, how the team is contributing, and what are the real outcomes of these activities. Without this, moving forward and making changes is a guess, not an educated step forward.

60 - Month Two

Build on the Foundation

• Nurture the Buds - Building on the first month of getting to know people and nurturing those budding connections is the main focus for month 2. By now, I should have learned some basics about what makes my immediate team and cross-functional partners and stakeholders tick. Nurturing those relationships and working to understand more about who they are as people and how we can all best work together is the objective.

• Ask for Feedback - With these new relationships and a fuzzy gap analysis, I start asking for direct feedback. What I want is to see if and how what I was told initially changes or doesn’t and how much more people are willing to open up. This, too, goes into the gap analysis along with the data-driven outputs vs outcomes.

Play the Long Game

• Share More - With my slowly growing relationships and my fuzzy gap analysis, I start sharing ideas and tidbits as opportunities arise. Yes, I really DO try to wait until 2 months in to stat make suggestions unless I see something glaring because I want to observe and learn more than I want to let others know how many thoughts I have.

• SWAT - Towards the end of month 2, I start working on a team SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). This analysis will help me understand where we need up-skilling, how we can leverage our strengths, what needs to be addressed ASAP, and what needs to be addressed long-term.

90 - Month Three

Time for Action

• Add Structure - By now, between the gap analysis and the team SWOT, I should have enough information to start working towards goal setting and more structured 1:1s. My director at Sling introduced this method to me and it’s been invaluable. This is how I prefer to do my 1:1s with my manager as well, so this goes both ways along the vertical.

  • Brainstorm with the person what they want to improve on in the next quarter, making suggestions based on the analysis and SWOT.

  • Pick 5 goals together that will benefit the company, org, team, and the person.

  • Every other 1:1:

    • Have the person give themselves a rating on their progress and explain why.

    • You give them a rating and explain why.

    • Discuss how how you can help unblock, provide support, and determine next steps.

• Strategize - With a clearer gap analysis, start working cross-functionally and within the team to align on next steps. This includes everything from changing meeting cadence to updating PRD templates and deck formats to implementing a team happy hour to boost morale. The key here is to bring people along, utilizing all the data I’ve gathered and the relationships I’ve been building.

Iterate

From Day 1 through the last day in a role, I iterate. Connect with people, grow relationships, ask for feedback, make suggestions, enact changes, look at the data, try again to make better changes. There is no sitting on our laurels and still being effective product or people managers.