Page 204 - Successful Onboarding

188 • Successful Onboarding

Front-line, customer-facing employees; back office/administrative; pro-
duction; management, etc. With the second type of examples, you should
demonstrate how the individual worker’s actions went beyond their ordi-
nary roles and responsibilities, how this worker included others in their ini-
tiative (including gaining buy-in), and how this worker’s actions made a
real difference for the company and its strategy. Stories about “aha”
moments might prove most interesting and make the biggest impression,
yet examples depicting everyday activities will pay off, too.
Here is an example of the kind of story you might share: At a mid-sized
company, the leadership team regularly engaged employees in strategy
discussion regarding the key areas of focus for the firm. At one of these
meetings in early 2008, the president shared key strategies the company
would pursue for revenue growth as well as some of the activities that were
being taken to reduce costs in non-strategic spend categories (i.e., the com-
pany was happy to cut costs in areas that were not going to drive revenue
growth). Not long after this meeting, one new employee had an idea to
help with the cost-cutting strategy. His roommate was a computer pro-
grammer and worked for a firm that provided outsourced IT support. In
swapping stories about their respective days at work, the employee real-
ized that outsourcing IT might well work for his own company, lowering
costs and providing better service. The firm had grown so large that its IT
staff could not serve everyone’s needs; when something went wrong, it
always took too long to fix. The new hire recommended his idea to the
leadership. After some additional investigation, the company determined
that it should indeed outsource IT, resulting in material cost savings as
well as service improvements. To make your stories successful, all you need
to include is the strategy set-up, idea, actions, and outcome.
Learning about stories like this, individual employees will imagine them-
selves in the position of the entry-level employee. They will understand in
concrete terms how they can make a difference. They will be more moti-
vated to share creative thinking so as to help push the strategy further.

Best Principle #3: Incorporate periodic formal strategic
insight interviews.
Your system should implement a formal process to capture your new hires’
insights around strategy. This process might begin during Week One with
an initial welcome interview similar to one we advocate around culture.