Page 139 - Successful Onboarding

126 • Successful Onboarding

Let’s examine these four kinds of networks one by one, as well as their rel-
evance for new hires.

Internal professional networks

Internal professional networks are relationships a new hire develops within
a firm that bears directly on his or her fulfillment of job functions. Mem-
bers of these networks include peers, subordinates, and bosses, all the way
up to a company’s senior leadership. They include key support staff in
other functions, such as marketing, HR, business development, or finance,
or in the same function but across an organization’s business units. If you
are an engineer at a firm like Mitsubishi with many kinds of technical
businesses, you might want to network with other engineers who work in
different business units but perhaps on similar problems or with similar
technologies (i.e., Communities of Practice), or who work for your busi-
ness unit at different sites around the world.
There is significant long-term value to establishing a peer network.
Peers typically serve as the new hires’ colleagues as they progress simulta-
neously through the organization. Having a strong peer network and con-
sciously developing it as a priority can make an enormous difference in
establishing and expanding one’s influence over the long run. Not having
a peer network can limit not only the new hires’ happiness and provide
trusted and helpful perspective and support; it can also lead to not being
“known” well enough later on, especially in cultures in which collabora-
tion and a “one-company” culture is important.
We have already evoked some of the ways internal relationships can help
new hires adjust to their jobs and work more productively. Here we observe
that firms need to pay special attention to helping newly hired middle and
senior management hires build internal networks. Unlike lower level hires,
middle and senior manager hires have job descriptions that essentially
revolve around connections with people. Whereas a customer service rep-
resentative’s primary job involves performing a particular task, members of
a company in managerial positions perform by interacting with and influ-
encing others. Today, when every initiative involves a “cross-functional”
team, new hire managers rely even more on the right network and rela-
tionships, and these relationships become even more mission-critical the
more you ascend—or the higher you enter—the corporate ladder.