When the quick wins run out

How to spot urgent requests masquerading as quick wins and what to do about them

"We have to do it. We need to get this done so we can close the next deal. It will be a quick win", the CEO declares as you toss another unfinished urgent request into the flaming dumpster of quick wins floating down the flooded street.

The flaming dumpster of quick wins.

Sound familiar? The truth hurts — you're stuck in a vicious cycle of delivering on quick wins. Everyone involved, from those requesting them to those ferociously executing on them knows, these quick wins never materialize. They're not quick. They're also not wins. And they don't stop coming. If you were winning, you wouldn't have to be dropping everything to work on every request that came across the desk.

With everyone in this pressure cooker environment it can be downright impossible to see a way out of it. One day, you think to yourself, we'll switch from being tactical and get more strategic — but you know without a real concerted effort, strategy won't magically come knocking on your door with a basket of muffins and market opportunities.

While I'm trying to take a lighter tone on the situation, this feeling is actually terrible, doing whatever you can to just get to the end of the week.

So what do you do?

Spotting the urgent requests we call quick wins

The first thing to do is to start identifying those dangerous “quick wins”. Because they come in all shapes and sizes. These are just a few examples you might encounter:

Low-hanging fruit

Low hanging fruit opportunities use to exist, perhaps in the early days of your product, but you’ve known for a long time there aren't any left. Nowadays, any seemingly small change requires diving into tech-debt riddled systems. Once you start digging, you reveal massive problems that would need to be addressed before getting to the actual improvement.

The only fruit you'd be reaching for now has long spoiled under the tree and not even the squirrels will touch it.

The feature we need to close the next deal

This is one of the most common and most difficult to fend off as it comes masked as the needs of the customer and has the potential to generate revenue for the company. But you're still in the middle of working on the last urgent request for the last deal... what happens to that?

The sad irony is that teams in your organization start to dread the signing of new customers, because they know another wave of delivering on short term expectations is coming.

These requests break down any hope of a partnership between sales and tech teams. "Sales just wants their commission and doesn't care" gets lobbed from one side, and "the developers aren't working fast enough" from the other.

(Don't even get me started on how the compensation in most organizations works around these sales. Someone got their commission cheque and a bit closer to their quota, others got a massive pile of work that they know they can't deliver on.)

Customer support fire-of-the-day

Drop everything! A super important customer needs us to fix this bug immediately!

Your customers notice when you ship unfinished work. The newly onboarded customer that was demanding a feature to close their deal isn't exactly thrilled to see it was poorly implemented.

Existing customers who rely on your product start to notice cracks in the foundation as more weight is added in the form of one-off additions that were rushed through.

You'll start hearing about these through your support channels, adding additional pressures to your already over-burdened teams.

Common traits

You can see how these are all interconnected, how one leads to the other, and how they can create a vicious cycle.

These requests tend to have definitive due dates but little appreciation for the amount of work needed to get them started or to maintain them. It's no wonder they exhaust teams and lead to low morale.

Prioritization goes out the window too. The statement "we have to get this all done" begins and ends the entire conversation about priority. You don’t even hear people push back anymore because there’s no point, and there’s no win.

If there's something people hate doing, it's setting themselves up for failure which is the constant state you might find yourself in. Is there anything that can be done to turn the tide?

Getting out of the rut of delivering quick wins

Spotting the various forms of these urgent requests is just the beginning. Let's be real. There is no magic trick that can erase these problems overnight.

There's a good chance your entire organization has formed it's procedures and processes around delivering quick wins, rather than lasting long-term value. It's a self-defence and survival mechanism that has organically replaced intentional and deliberate strategy.

For those looking for ways to make a dent in the way things are done, there are some approaches you can start try to help get you to a better place — one that is more strategic, forward-thinking, and helps your business and customers succeed.

With any change, you’ll need to build up the momentum and the support of like-minded individuals from the C-suite and on. It also requires more than what I discuss here, but these are some small tangible ways to get things going in the right direction.

Visually track and discuss the requests

Time and again I've seen conversations about new urgent requests take place without the use of a visualization of all the work already piled up in the queue.

I’m not talking about masterfully created roadmaps, or a backlog filled with minutiae. Write these urgent requests down in a simple list so you can show the organization what you’re expected to deliver on, those in progress, and those at risk of never being completed. Use anything: sticky notes, whiteboard, Trello, a Google Doc.

When people see a growing list, it’s hard to ignore. Without the visualization, on the other hand, we resort to a war of words — he said/she said/they said.

It’s easy to throw more work on an invisible list. Make the list visible.

Start thinking in years

The hard reality is that there are so many small requests that need to be delivered "this quarter" that they quickly approach a time scale of needing years to finish.

When you’re adding another quick win to the pile, but the pile is now spanning multiple quarters and years, the conversation has to shift to determining the priority. Do it all is not a strategy.

As you dive deeper you can start to shift the conversation around common themes or objectives to help focus your the organization’s efforts. It’s hard to do that when everything is a fire for the current quarter. Taking a long view provides the space to have these conversations.

Regroup around who you're here for and why they need you

Reacting to urgent requests is often a symptom of losing sight of why you are here as an organization — the customer you are trying to create value for. While you can get caught up in convincing yourself that each customer request is doing what the customer needs, you are likely spreading yourself so thin that you're no longer holding true to your core value proposition.

Discussing and creating a shared understanding of what the customer needs is something that can easily go by the wayside as day-to-day routines take hold. Re-introduce these critical conversations to ground your organization around what matters most.

Get developers on sales calls so they can hear from customers first hand. Shadow your customer support reps to hear what they’re hearing. Run workshops that help communicate what drives your customers and their common pain points. Get people thinking about your customer.

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If you're using the same techniques and are having the same conversations as you did last year when you were in the same grind, then change has to happen now. You can't get yourself out of the barrage of quick wins without doing something different.

Otherwise, retaining customers and employees will become your next big problem.

I'm convinced with the right direction and the right conversations, the cycle can end for the better.

🏁

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The Pit Wall Debrief

If this sounds familiar because you’re currently in the middle of it, or had a previous experience, I'd love to chat about what you've tried to get yourself out of the grind. What worked and what didn’t?

If this hasn't happened to you — amazing! Take this as a cautionary tale from the ghost of quarters future. Take opportunities today to make customer needs central to everything you do. If you have a good thing going with this, I’d love to learn more about how you do it!

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Carlos Perez is an Innovation Strategist and Coach at Purple Sector Strategy. He helps product teams get aligned around a shared vision through facilitated workshops and coaching. 

Defensive Calendaring

A Method For Controlling Your Time

👋 Hi Folks — after a short late-summer break from writing, we’re getting back into the swing of things at Purple Sector Strategy. My first post is actually one that I wrote for the folks at SavvyCal. While the audience for this article is broad, time management skills are critical for any product leader. I hope that these tips prove useful in helping you take control of your calendar.

Cheers,
Carlos

This article was originally posted on SavvyCal’s blog.

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Your calendar shouldn’t give you the Sunday Scaries. A quick review of your upcoming week on a Sunday evening can unleash waves of nausea as you feel you’ve lost control of your own time. The weekend’s mental break is fleeting as you prepare yourself for another week of defeat as you begrudgingly accept dozens of meeting invites. It can be easy to get caught in the mindset that you are at the whims of your calendar, and those who fill it in, especially in workplace cultures where meetings reign supreme. With no boundaries or techniques to push back against that wave, it can be truly demoralizing.

Are you ready to take back control of your time and get out of the rut of endless meetings that are getting in the way of you doing your best work? Taking some evasive actions and being deliberate about defending your time can start to put the control back in your hands. I’ll share some simple defensive techniques that I have employed while working in a grinding, meeting-laden environment. I call it Defensive Calendaring. Turn off that camera, mute your mic, and read on.

This past year has already been challenging for most, and what hasn’t helped is a familiar pattern of days run ragged with back-to-back-to-back meetings. There’s plenty that is going on outside of work that might have you burnt out, never mind that every single minute of the day seems to be accounted for. The frustration of never feeling like you have the time to make the impact you know you’re capable of is, in no small part, to the fact most of your time is spent on calls. The concept of focus timecan feel like a pipe dream when all you’re looking for are a few minutes to rush to use the bathroom. The bar is low. By the time some “free time” rolls around you’re probably already too tired to put anything that resembles energy into any project or task. We’ve all been there, and you’re not alone.

The trick with making some changes to reclaim control over your calendar is acknowledging you’re stuck in a vicious cycle of meetings that must stop. While I can’t offer calendar nirvana, these techniques will put you on a path to reclaiming control of your time.

Scheduling Personal Time

Scheduling time for yourself can be as simple as setting aside short blocks to grab a snack, eat lunch, or go for a walk. Larger blocks can allow you to carve out focus time during the times you know you’re most productive — Mike Bromley has a great post on time blocking you should check out.

It can already be hard enough to take the time you’ve reserved for yourself, but it’s nearly impossible if you aren’t obtusely deliberate about it. Seeing these blocks booked in your calendar serves as your own reminder that you need that time to be successful in your day. To up the effectiveness, name those scheduled blocks for what you intend it for. I literally have Snack Time in my calendar because I know if I miss that, I’ll be a wreck before I get a chance to have my next meal. If I just saw it as Busy in my calendar, I could find a million other ways to keep myself busy and still forget to get that snack. Be intentional.

I’ll admit it — this sounds easy enough, and you’ve probably already tried this. The problem is that these are the blocks of time you’ll easily want to schedule over. Guilt can set in when someone asks if you are available, or if you can move things around. It’s you that has to take a firm position to protect it. What if you were in a meeting with your company’s CEO or your biggest client? Would you book over it all willy-nilly? No, you wouldn’t. You know this time is just as critical to your success and your organization’s. You don’t only deserve it, it’s what’s expected. Protect it fiercely.

The Delayed Meeting Start

Here’s an easy tip on shortening meetings by delaying the start time by a handful of minutes. While this won’t reclaim swaths of time, it will inject short breaks into your schedule when you need them. Even if it’s not time away from the computer, it can be a chance to catch-up on some messages or notes. The idea is to simply start meetings 5 to 10 minutes after the typical start time. An hour-long meeting for 10:00am becomes a 10:10am start…a 30 minute meeting normally starting at 2:30pm becomes 2:35pm… you get the picture.

While you can set the shifted start time manually when you’re scheduling events, some calendar apps let you set these rules by default. This saves you from maneuvering awkward inputs when scheduling a meeting. Microsoft Outlook even let’s admins set organizational defaults so all meetings follow these rules.

You’ll notice I’m not recommending an obvious alternative — the early end to a meeting. Google Calendar’s Speedy Meetingssetting, for example, allows you to shorten your meetings by default. While it looks like a meeting ending 5-10 minutes would be equally effective, in my experience, it doesn’t result in the same breaks. 11:50am easily becomes 12:05pm before people are filing out of a Zoom call. Starting late, rather than ending early, forces attendees to find something else to do before a meeting, rather than continuing a conversation that has already started.

This might throw off some of your meeting attendees at first, as people aren’t typically used to meetings starting 5-10 minutes later than usual. This can be missed even if the time is clearly set in the meeting invite. Once they get used to it though, don’t be surprised that people will thank you for it as they’ll start to take advantage of those breaks as well. Let’s be human to each other!

Book Long, Meet Short

One of my favourite defensive techniques is switching the long meeting for a short one, but keeping the original time booked. It’s something I stumbled upon as a clever way to protect my time while still making myself available to those who need me. While we would love to have our calendars free all the time, we know that isn’t practical, and we do need to meet with others to get work moving forward. This is how the technique works: say someone wants an hour of your time — if you have the availability in your calendar, have them book it. When the day comes around for that meeting, send a simple message to the scheduler: “Do you mind if we try to wrap this up in under 30 minutes? Let’s keep the full hour booked just in case.”

A few things will happen with that simple question. Firstly, you’ve set the expectation that you can accomplish the meeting’s goals in less time, giving attendees the nudge to get to the point. Chances are they’re also dashing between meetings and will appreciate it. Secondly, you’ve also kept the full hour booked, signalling to others that might be trying to fill your calendar that you are unavailable. Now that pesky project manager that is feverishly refreshing your availability won’t be sneaking in to snag that time (sorry project managers, I love you too). And thirdly, in the event you actually need to use more of the scheduled time, you already have it booked, and saves you from scrambling to find time elsewhere.

This might appear to be counter to the very solid best practice of scheduling shorter meetings to begin with. After all, you don’t want to spend more time than you need to in meetings. If that just means you have more time slots available for more meetings, though, that time will typically get filled unless you’re proactive in blocking it off.

Tag Team Meetings

Ted Lasso's Guide to Product Leadership

What we can learn from this optimistic soccer coach

Carlos Perez is an Alignment Strategist and Coach at Purple Sector Strategy. He helps product teams get aligned around a shared vision through facilitated workshops and coaching. Book a free consultation to learn more.

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Happy days folks, happy days! The new season of Ted Lasso kicks off later this week and Meredith and I couldn't be more excited. In anticipation of the premier, we're tearing through a rewatch of the first season to catch ourselves up. If you haven’t watched season 1, you should!

If you're rechecking the description of this newsletter, let me assure you — yes, this is still a newsletter for product leaders. And no, I'm not getting a kickback from Apple to promote one of their shows (though I'll happily take one if it can be arranged). There's a whole lot any leader can learn from Ted Lasso's style of coaching, but there are lessons that are particularly relevant to product leaders.

There is something that really struck me about Ted Lasso, the experienced American football coach who finds himself thrust into leading a run-of-the-mill team in a new country, for a sport he has no experience with — soccer. He's not phased by the fact he's never coached a soccer team before, let alone watched a game — but he has the confidence that he can turn the team around. Why's that? Let's look at what makes Ted Lasso a successful leader and draw some parallels to the product world.

You don't have to be an expert

Ted Lasso barely knows a soccer formation from a Marmite sandwich and doesn't pretend to either. He's open about how little he knows, and is willing to listen and learn from those who are more knowledgeable. He knows faking it doesn't build trust, doesn't make you look smart, nor does it work.

Great product leaders know they don't have to be experts in a particular subject matter to be successful. That's why you see product leaders move comfortably from one industry to another, because the relevance isn't in the subject, but the understanding of the process and the people that make it work. When expertise is needed, they turn to those with the know-how.

Run experiments to help you make decisions

Ted's no dummy. While he seeks feedback and advice from others, he's not willing to bet the farm in one shot, no matter how good an idea sounds. On a new idea he's quick to hear it out, but he needs to evaluate it before committing to it.

"We're gonna try it on and see if it fits. It might not." — Ted Lasso

Creating a culture of experimentation is a corner stone of a successful product leader. Blindly saying yes or no to ideas without examining evidence gets many organizations into rough waters. Testing doesn't have to be slow or expensive, and nor does it go against progress or innovation. It's the path to it. It's also just a smart use of resources.

Plan for outcomes and be flexible on how you get there

Ted Lasso has a goal to build a solid team. To achieve that goal he is continuously adapting his approach as more information is made available to him. The more he learns, the more he fine tunes his approach, or realizes he has to try a different angle altogether. To do this successfully he reminds others that change is worth embracing, even if it's uncomfortable.

Product leaders know that getting too attached to a solution can blind your judgement in achieving the outcomes that matter most. This means accepting that some things won't work out and that it can be more useful to alter course than to keep going in the wrong direction. A comfort with flexibility is necessary and will make you stronger.

Teamwork makes the dream work

We've been over the fact Ted Lasso is no soccer expert. If his expertise isn't in the knowledge of the game, then what is it? It's understanding people. His processes and methods all revolve around understanding people so that he can create a unified team. He goes beyond individual motivations, diving into how a group functions together — where it is strong and where it is weak.

We often overlook the people side of product leadership. We stress the need in understanding customers and users, but great product leaders understand their teams to a greater degree. You are there to guide a path forward to a successful product and to do that you need to guide the people who will actually make that happen. Product leadership has nothing to do with sitting in an ivory tower that others aspire to one day join. It's about creating a culture that promotes transparent acknowledgment of strengths and weaknesses so that the entire team can work together towards a common goal.

Be vulnerable and show others you're human

Ted Lasso's optimism isn't impervious. It cracks, and he lets others see it. Rather than it being something that shocks his team into seeing a great person fail — it does the opposite. It makes Ted more human, and makes them like him more. In Ted, they begin to see more of themselves.

To be a great leader, you need to show you don't always know the path forward. You can't always have the answers. Creating the expectation that you do is one that is doomed to fail, and yet, some try. If you want to truly build a connection with your team and with your customers, showing your own faults and weaknesses can go a long way into building meaningful relationships.

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If there's one thing that you can take from this post, it's that you should watch Ted Lasso. If there are two things, then the other is that product leadership requires us to embrace our imperfections. Ted Lasso has a quiet confidence to him that can be easily misinterpreted as blind confidence. It's a confidence found in someone that has a proven, yet adaptable process, is excited and optimistic for the outcomes, and is accepting of setbacks as a natural part of any journey.

We are imperfect beings. Rather than using that as a disadvantage, it's actually our super power. Accepting the imperfection, the need for change, and the difficulty that awaits us, means we'll be better prepared for the curveballs that will undoubtedly come our way. As much as we want to control outcomes and anticipate all scenarios, we can’t — so we need to seek the help of others, be adaptable, and believe that we can do it.

And remember, as Ted Lasso says:

“Hey, takin’ on a challenge is a lot like ridin’ a horse. If you’re comfortable while you’re doin’ it, you’re probably doin’ it wrong.”

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk (groan, sorry, I had to).

🏁

Hope and the stuff we read in books

How to take the concepts we read and put them into practice

Carlos Perez is an Alignment Strategist and Coach at Purple Sector Strategy. He helps product teams get aligned around a shared vision through facilitated workshops and coaching. Book a free consultation to learn more.

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To the chagrin of my past self, I'm a big fan of a good business book — especially those related to driving positive change through innovation. Although the Carlos from 1997 (who had Radiohead's OK Computer on constant repeat) didn't know it, I would wind up finding my passion in understanding how great teams work. Pair that with a propensity for geeking out on tech, and I found working on product and innovation teams something I truly enjoyed, at least, when they worked well.

In defence of present-day Carlos, who still often listens to Radiohead, I don't mean I like those old stodgy business textbooks, but rather, those that share stories in relatable ways. They inspire you to change the way you think about work and fire you up to realize that positive change is possible. Amongst some of my favourites include Good to Great, Competing Against Luck, Escaping the Build Trap, and Alive At Work. Check them out if you haven't had a chance.

We spend an incredible amount of time at work. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I think you should be able to, on the whole, enjoy the time you spend there. These books promise a pathway to a better way of working by sharing stories about cultures of experimentation, purpose-driven mindsets, and collaboratively driving towards great results.

Having gone through countless reads, though, I've noticed a familiar pattern with my relationship with these books. It's more than just a pattern, really, it's an emotional rollercoaster. You love them, you resent them, rinse and repeat.

From the moment you first crack the spine of your new book, there's the initial high you ride thinking of all the ideas you want to try with your team. This time, you think to yourself, this time, I'll find the clue that makes it all come together. As you blast through the pages faster than you would the Da Vinci Code (or the Twilight saga), you're lapping up all the great ideas. What really lands are all the spot-on examples of what you shouldn't be doing as an organization. Snort, that's so us... we totally do it wrong! This book really gets me.

Naturally you'll start suggesting the book to colleagues (heck, you even buy them copies!) so they too can see the brilliance and get caught up in the euphoria of all the good that will soon come. That strange sensation you might feel at this stage is hope. Hope that change is possible, hope that a better way of working is within reach, and hope you're not alone in getting your organization to that better place. We don't want to be miserable at work and we don't want to keep repeating the same processes that deliver the same uninspiring results. We hope that we can realize our potentials.

If you're an avid reader of these books, this feeling is familiar, as is what commonly comes next. You search for signs that others feel that same hope you did. Riding the high, you ask others what they thought of the book, you even start dropping references to it in meetings. But all you get in return are blank stares. As it turns out, no one read it. Yet, they promise. Sure your colleagues have the book, some even downloaded the audiobook, but other things are in the way so they haven't gotten around to it. What gives? I read this book over the weekend, you think to yourself. The onslaught of deep discussion and exchange of opinions and ideas you thought would come isn't materializing. It's not even on the radar. Some though, one or two, did take the plunge and read it. And yet, they're still waiting to take their cues from you. OK, I've read the book. Now what?

This stage can be demoralizing. I've been there. The hope wanes. It's now coming straight up against a wall of fear, disinterest, or simply against the inertia of how things have always been done. This isn't the fault of the authors and their books, they had good intentions. It's not your fault, the dreamer, for hoping for better things. And nor can you fault your colleagues, they were just going about their business until you made them read something. They wanted to watch Red Bull challenge Mercedes for the F1 championship this weekend, not read a business book... bleh!

The truth is you're hoping that someone else be as excited as you are, and more importantly, that they'll be the ones to tell you how to take the theory and turn it into action. Because this is the hard part. You can't expect your colleagues to do this for you. Yes, you can ask for their help and participation, but to see it through, you have to find ways to introduce new concepts and approaches to the organization yourself.

Now this is where a lot of people give up. I know I have. And then you wait until the next great read comes along and the cycle repeats itself. But what can you do to break this cycle? How do you carry that initial feeling of hope forward? How can you make it infectious? While it is easier said than done, it requires you to take the first step. It doesn't have to be sophisticated and it doesn't even have to be right. But it needs to be intentional. Honesty and transparency helps too — "hey folks I read a thing, we're going to try it, it might make a positive impact on how we work, it might not. What's worse than it failing, though, is not trying at all".

Many of these books are heavy on the great aspirational outcomes and sparse on the details of how to get started. But there are always clues if you look hard enough. Spot a question, an exercise, or even online materials that are referenced in these books and just try it. In the absence of those clues, work backwards — start at the end result and ask yourself what it would take for your organization to get there. Hint: it generally starts with understanding your customer. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

By taking action and showing others that change is possible, you are opening the door to more experimentation and improvement. Maybe others have ideas they're holding back. In my experience, being the one that takes the leap to turn concepts into practice is met with more support than resistance. Sure, you'll find the naysayers, but they are generally in the minority. Change goes against the grain, so it's natural for it to feel uncomfortable at first. But the more you try, the more likely new practices will be adopted.

Doing this requires a comfort in taking chances, making the attempts purposeful, and knowing that it still might fail. In my experience there is an appreciation for someone trying new things — people are grateful for them putting themselves out there. They want to rally around something, but might not know how to do it themselves. The more you can demonstrate that through action, the more they are encouraged to find other ways to improve. If you let the hope wane on your way to your next read, you're missing an opportunity to energize those around you. The hope you felt when you first cracked open that book can become infectious.

Are you up for a chat? Do you have a particular book that has inspired you but has also frustrated you because you're not sure about what to do next? Let's find a time to talk! At best, we'll share some ideas on how to create change; at worst, we'll exchange some more titles to add to our already heaping backlog of unread books. Either way, I think it would be a great way to spend some time.

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The Great Onboarding

While people are leaving jobs in droves, we'll start welcoming new employees. How prepared are you?

Carlos Perez is an Alignment Strategist and Coach at Purple Sector Strategy. He helps product teams get aligned around a shared vision through facilitated workshops and coaching. Book a free consultation to learn more.

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We have already started seeing signs of employee upheaval in our organizations. The "great resignation" has arrived. As the pandemic wears on (and hopefully winds down), waves of employees are taking a hard look at their lives and seeing how work fits into their new realities. Many are deciding to leave their roles in search of new challenges and opportunities. The attrition, while painful now, will lead to new opportunities and growth in our organizations. Leaders can't dwell on what was lost and need to prepare for the future. Will this exodus result in the Great Onboarding? If so, once we’ve attracted new talent how will we effectively onboard them so they can make meaningful impacts in our organizations?

While new employees can bring sparks of hope and optimism with fresh ideas and perspectives, it can be challenging to enable your organization to realize that potential. Inertia, scepticism towards new ideas and people, and lack of structure can easily derail best intentions. It's no wonder that onboarding can often go sideways. When it does, it's common for the prevailing organizational norms to suffocate the chance of new ideas from taking hold. More than just losing out on meaningful contributions that you need sooner rather than later, poor onboarding can cause that new hire to seek a different opportunity, leaving you to deal with significant costs.

A common pitfall is treating onboarding activities as a haphazard series of meetings. Typically, this looks like inviting new hires to existing meetings so they can learn hands-on and meet peers. While this isn't completely off-base, those meetings don't actually exist to onboard people. Sometimes this might be aided by a to-do checklist, often pieced together by HR, that focuses more on HR processes than it does on what matters most to the business. Through these laissez-faire attempts you can see how easy it is for the newcomer to get sucked into existing organizational norms, focusing on putting out the fires of the day, rather than bringing change that will extinguish the fires once and for all.

We want our new employees to succeed. We want to learn from them and we want them to learn from our existing teams. For a product team, there is a lot of information about customers, users, revenue models, roadmaps, team processes, let alone the product itself, that needs to be transferred to the new employee (and that's just scratching the surface!). The more effective we are in transferring this knowledge, the sooner we are allowing that newcomer to contribute in meaningful and impactful ways. This is too important to leave to chance.

As we build habits that drive alignment across our organizations, a natural side effect is being able to have meaningful conversations with new employees. You would be amazed at how much this can help to accelerate someone's onboarding. This gives them the chance to learn about the organization — the knowledge that exists, as well as the gaps. They also learn how their teammates speak about and react to the direction and goals of the business. As I've mentioned in previous posts, starting with the big picture is a great way to initiate these conversations. Moving from the landscape, to the business model, and a review of its customers and users are great areas to ground and structure these critical conversations.

At Purple Sector Strategy, we've seen the effects first hand of helping a new hire accelerate their onboarding as we align teams around a shared vision. They are able to absorb a lot of information in a structured way that helps them retain it. With a solid foundation of the critical components that drive the business it highlights where the newcomer can make the most impact and where they need to focus their efforts.

As we see turnover increase over the next months, know that it's an opportunity to find resets. With your investment in new people helping to drive your business forward, you will need to take the necessary care to ensure their success for their benefit and yours. Don't let the existing processes and norms dictate the outcomes of your onboarding. With intent and a little elbow grease you can make large strides in how you ensure the successful onboarding of newcomers, while levelling up your entire organization.

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