Page 99 - Successful Onboarding

88 • Successful Onboarding

Confused, Jessica sheepishly sat back down at the board table. Her boss
pulled her aside after the meeting to discuss what had happened. “Fred
has been with the company for 15 years. He practically built the logistics
function from the ground up. Your presentation was spot on, but it called
his management skills into question in front of the other VPs. That’s why
he cut you off.”
Jessica was upset. She wasn’t boorish or untactful. In fact, she had long
been noticed as someone who knew how to get along with others and col-
laborate productively. At a post-crisis meeting with her mentor, Jessica learned
that she had misread her new organization’s culture. At her old company, the
culture encouraged constructive debate, regardless of level or stature, and
nobody felt like fingers were being pointed—it was the norm. The mantra
“best idea wins” was plastered on the wall of every conference room of the
manufacturing operations headquarters and at each facility. Jessica had mis-
takenly assumed that this same culture prevailed at Luccia. She had never
even considered the possibility that the two organizations would possess such
different cultures. Unfortunately, nobody had coached her about this. Now
she had gotten an abrupt and disturbing wake-up call.
Jessica’s experience is hardly unique. For most new hires, understand-
ing a new company’s culture is a difficult, nuanced, and gradual process.
It’s also mystifying, since so much of the company culture remains under
the radar. New hires learn about the culture through osmosis over the
course of numerous interactions with other employees. Gaffes and mis-
cues are the norm, leading to frustration and sub-par performance. Often
a company’s professed culture taught during the initial orientation pro-
gram doesn’t reflect realities on the ground so much as the culture desired
by management (unlike Jessica’s previous employer, where the mantra was
the culture). In other cases, companies do not spend much time at all
orienting new hires to the culture, either formally or informally. This omis-
sion amounts to a huge error made by some of the greatest organizations.
With adequate instruction, the manager can help prevent these gaffes in
the first place, or at the very least, apply damage control for the new hire
and turn the gaffe into a helpful learning experience. The sooner new
hires understand the organization’s unwritten rules, the more risk we can
take out of the system for them, and the more quickly they can make an
impact and feel gratified by their contribution.