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Truth 1. Hitting the Ground Running Can Get You into Trouble
It’s common when starting a new job to be told that you need
to “hit the ground running.” Experienced people who appear
in the job market after their companies have “downsized”
often hear this. The expectation is that since they bring
connections, experience, and other intangible assets to a
new job they don’t need time to learn the new culture and
the players. The temptation on hearing this is to dive in
with all your energy, ready to make an amazing first
impression. After all, you do need to prove yourself.
Although your boss may be satisfied, that attitude can get
you into trouble in more ways than one.
The main problem with hitting the ground running is that you
don’t know what you’re running into. Will your actions make
waves among your new co-workers, will you rock the company
boat in general, or will you even, in your eagerness,
perform in a way that will have long-term disadvantages
which you can’t see at first? By the time you do, it can be
too late. As a newcomer to the role, you are put in a
vulnerable position where you lack foreknowledge of the
situation, and must rely on your bosses to tell you what
needs doing. However, there is no guarantee that they have
this fully figured out. People see a situation from their
own vantage point and may be unintentionally blind to other
perspectives. You now have the dilemma of how to make a good
first impression yet not step on toes.
Senior management may see the situation from a dollars and
cents viewpoint and not understand what’s happening on the
ground. That’s what happened to Leroy. He was an experienced
oil field manager when he was asked to come in and save
money on an offshore operation. He came into the job and
immediately found big cost savings by substituting work
boats for helicopters to get the workers to and from oil
rigs offshore. What he didn’t do is take the time to check
how the old hands would react to the change. They saw the
change as a loss of almost two days of their “week off” time
with their families since they worked week on/week off. They
were so furious that they staged a work slow down action and
called in a union. The result was a backlash and bad
publicity that could have been prevented by a bit of
groundwork.
Before you dive in, no matter what the pressure, it pays to
take time to do the groundwork: to carefully read the files
and review the situation by talking with people. You are
unlikely to get the chance again. You have to ask for the
perspective of others, not just that of your boss.
Far from impressing your co-workers, coming into a job at a
high pace can actually upset them. Employees on assembly
lines who worked too fast were called “rate busters,” and
factory managers hate the repercussions from the reaction to
them. You may be far from a factory, but you can still upset
people by pushing too hard and too fast without getting
buy-in. Colleagues may fear that you will show them up by
making them appear slow in comparison. You can also miss out
on chances to tap into their thinking about the project.
Without early collaboration, it will be hard to get their
buy-in and support later on. There are few organizations
where it is possible to get things done as an individual
contributor beyond the lowest levels of the hierarchy.
More often then not “hit the ground running” is a piece of
corporate speak masking hidden flaws in the company. Be
particularly wary if the phrase is accompanied by requests
to “get in there and fix things” or “clean things up.” Such
terms hint that there is something lacking organizationally;
if your job is in a state where there is no time for
preparation then it is likely that other things are being
done in a similarly scattergun way. It may be that the
company is looking to you for a quick fix, which is not a
good position for you to be in (unless you are hired for
that reason). “Fixers” become expendable when the dirty work
is done, and are easy scapegoats if things don’t improve. If
you really are entering an emergency, then you should be
paid a premium as any turnaround artist would be.
Unless you’re a time-limited consultant or interim manager,
no matter how much you’re expected to fix things, always put
aside time to get feedback and guidance from others and
think about the long-term as you start a job. Those first
months are crucial for coming up to speed, and for creating
a lasting partnership with co-workers, subordinates and
others. |
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