Justin was leery about his new manager. This was the second time in three months that he had filled this position. “I don’t know what got in to the last guy. He had the experience, but by the second week on the job, he had managed to get on the bad side of most all his team members. By the third week, the team was silently plotting his overthrow. With his new processes and control systems, he created more mutiny than efficiency.”

I was curious, “In his first few weeks, what kind of orientation program did you run him through? What were his assignments?”

“Well, we went over his job description. He seemed eager to get to work, said he had some changes he wanted to get started on right away. Of course, it took him a week just find out where the men’s room was.”

The first days on the job are different at the manager level. With technical roles, the point is to get new hires productive quickly. With managers, orientation, getting to know team members and learning existing processes are critical first steps. In the first week, a new manager should be required to report short biographical thumbnails of all team members and create fundamental work flow charts documenting existing systems. To do this, the new manager will have to meet people, ask questions and listen. The reporting assignment will require analysis and thought. The new manager should NOT think they have something smarter to introduce without a thorough understanding of both the work and the people that run the work. So give them the assignment. -TF