5 Strategies for Effective Meet and Greets

No one in any of the organizations that we talk to would disagree with the importance of building relationships as part of a new leader's onboarding process. They nod their heads and add that in their organizations it is not only important, but critical, for a new vice president to get to know and build real relationships with the people (sometimes called stakeholders) who can make or break his/her success.


But what is the plan to create those relationships? How does the new person know who the important players are and how they affect their function's objectives? What does the organization do to support these budding relationships? If your organization is like most, there is little formal support and the new leader is often left to "figure it out" on his own. After all, you pay them alot of money to know these things, right?


The Research

In a March 2007 study by RHR International, they found that the biggest challenges for onboarding new leaders are--

Adapting to the culture 45%

Building relationships 29%

Role clarity 19%


One out of three new leaders said that meeting the right people and building the relationships that help them achieve their objectives is their biggest challenge.


The Typical Stuff
A pretty common way that organizations handle the "relationship-building" part of a new leader's onboarding is by making a list of several (or a lot!) of people with whom the person needs to meet in his/her first few weeks or months. Unfortunately, this list is not always reviewed strategically and the participants are not chosen with purpose. The other mistake that is made is that there is little or no structure given to these conversations; there is poor communication about the meeting's purpose and usually no follow-up actions are required. This is a recipe for failure and both the new leader and his or her stakeholders are frustrated and off to a rocky start.

Missed Opportunity
The impact of these weak "meet and greet" meetings is really missed opportunity. Missed opportunity for the new leader to experience the organization's culture through its people. Missed opportunity for stakeholders to get to know the new person and his or her thoughts and observations about the organization and how they could work together. Losing that window of a new leader's first few weeks can make it extra difficult for both the new leader, his or her team and the other stakeholders to form solid working relationships.

5 Strategies for Effective Meet and Greets
Here are five strategies that you can implement in your organization to avoid the pitfalls of ineffective or non-existent "meet and greet" meetings:

1. Gather information from the hiring manager.
-Why was this person hired?
-Whom should they get to know and why?
-Consider their own team, internal and external stakeholders.

2. Create a strategic list of stakeholders.
-Shrink the list to the critical few.
-Determine action items and follow-up strategies for each.

3. Schedule the right meeting at the right time.
-Ensure that the meeting is timely with the business cycle.
-Calendarize the meetings so that the new leader has context.
-Too much too soon, can be too much too soon.

4. Consider the audience.
-Who are the key people in each area?
-What influence do they have over the new leader's success?
-What demographic do they represent?

5. Develop and implement a communication strategy.
-Tell participants what is expected and when.
-Send separate anouncements with suggested agendas to participants.
-Encourage that meetings be kept as scheduled by holding participants accountable.

With the implementation of these 5 simple strategies, you will see your new leaders and their key stakeholders benefitting almost immediately. Although this process is largely intuative, most organizations do not take the time to implement a formal strategy.

The numbers don't lie. Relationships are critical, and developed the right way, lead to not only individual success for the new leader, but the organization.



For more information on how to put together a comprehensive leadership onboarding process, email us at info@connectthedotsconsulting.com

Five Steps to Shape-Up Your Onboarding Process

This time of year always seems to be that time when the topic of “fitness” is everywhere. Magazines, newspaper articles and morning news shows are crammed with ideas for getting our bodies into shape for the New Year. Increasing concerns for health and well-ness tend to drive this focus, but so does the looming swim suit season!

Borrowing from the fitness frenzy, it is also important to take a look at our business processes and identify where they can be improved and “shaped up” as well. If your onboarding program has not been reviewed in the last year and updated, it is one of those processes that can definitely benefit from a shape-up.

If your organization is like most, you have had some type of process to integrate new leaders and new associates that has been developed over the last 2-3 years. The Aberdeen Group, in its August 2006 report on onboarding states that in 2005, 60% of all organizations did not have a formal onboarding process, compared to 24% who do not have them today. So the good news is that more companies understand the need for a more deliberate integration process and are actually doing something about it. But, most are probably not reviewing their metrics and results from their onboarding processes and making the appropriate adjustments. The original program may no longer be meeting the needs of the organization, and possibly may not being used or followed at all!


Five Steps to Onboarding Shape-Up:

Step One: Find out what is working and what isn’t. Ask some of your newest hires about their onboarding experience, and if it was timely and relevant. Take care to include those new hires that are in your target audience for onboarding. If your process is fairly new, you may want to include both new hires who have participated in the onboarding program and some who have not. You will get data about the impact of your process on the individuals as well as on the organization. Validate that each participant in the process is fulfilling the roles that were outlined. Check out simple things like making sure that all the new hires’ logistical needs were met. Document this information, or send out a simple email survey to capture the data.

Step Two: Review current best practices. Do some research on-line. There are a number of websites and blogs that give information about what companies are doing and what thought-leaders are saying about current trends and practices in onboarding. It may also be helpful to contact peers at other organizations to ask what they are doing. Articles in trade journals often include the author’s email address, so it may be beneficial to drop a note to one to get more information on the topic. Onboarding is also a popular conference topic these days, so there may be some information out there from conferences that have already occurred, or some upcoming events that may help provide more best practices data.

Step Three: Make recommendations for changes based on data. This cannot be overstated. Too many organizations decide to implement changes to a process or program with anecdotal information and not hard data. They may respond to one or two individual’s experiences without regard to the whole population affected by the process. By making changes based on real data, you also have a much greater chance of having a larger impact with those changes. For example, if you find that most of your newly onboarded associates are not feeling connected to the new community and are having difficulty finding personal transition support, you may recommend adding these resources. However, if you have isolated incidences of these issues, you may not want to take the time or commit resources to a change that could have little impact.

Step Four: Balance the three critical components for onboarding success. Look at your onboarding process to make sure that it includes and balances the critical three components for success:
1. Knowledge
2. Relationships
3. Feedback
Many onboarding processes are “knowledge-heavy”. They bombard their new leaders and new associates with information about the organization, its history, its purpose and immediate goals. Some do a good job of extending that knowledge to include functional and role information like, “how does my role fit within this company?” while others leave that piece a bit more to chance. It is important to continue to “hone” the right amount and right type of information that a new associate needs in his/her first months on the job.

Secondly, providing a method for building key relationships is extremely important to successfully onboarding someone, regardless of level. In a recent study by Deloitte, titled “It’s 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is?” reports that people learn the most (67%) when working with a colleague on a task. The report continues with “people also learn from those they trust: bosses, subordinates, peers and mentors.” So it is critical that the organization create a structure to support such relationships if they want to see these results.

Thirdly, the organization’s ability to give timely feedback to a new hire and create a process to support acting on that feedback is essential. This is the most common missing component of the onboarding process. Without such feedback, a new hire (and particularly one with leadership responsibilities) can be making serious cultural mistakes without knowing it and creating damage to him or the organization that may not be repairable. Timely feedback, given in a way that the new hire can understand, process and create a plan to address is what sets apart a great onboarding process from an adequate one.

Step Five: Measure, Measure, Measure! Both quantitative and qualitative data are important to collect from your onboarding process. It is fairly easy to track the number of new associates and how many have engaged in onboarding. It can be a little more challenging to measure the effectiveness of the process, but it’s not impossible. Ask the same questions to each person or group—that way you will have consistent data. Use existing measures like retention information and employee engagement information to augment your results and show impact. Tracking the “time to performance” will be easiest while collaborating with your hiring managers and pre-determining a success profile for each position. That way you can benchmark the new hire’s performance against a standard. Comparing this data for those associates who were on-boarded versus those associates who were not, gives you impact data of your onboarding process on your associates and your organization.


While thinking about taking on a comprehensive review and assessment of your entire onboarding process may seem daunting, you can start with these first five steps to either “jump-start” your initiative or make a few changes that have greater impact. Either way, jumping in and doing something is better than nothing. You will get some results and the more you work at it, the better the results.

At least that’s what they say about exercise. Start small and make it a habit. You’ll wonder how you did without it.

Why Do New Leaders Fail?

Turnover for chief executives has doubled since statistics began to be complied in 1999, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In 2004, 663 chief executives left, and then in 2005, the number doubled to 1332. CEOs are now lasting only 7.6 years in office, down from 9.5 in 1995, according to Booz Allen. And an Havard Business Review article reports that two out of every five new CEOs fail in the first 18 months on the job.


Here are the major reasons for new leaders' failure*:


There is no process to assismilate executives into the firm.................22%

The new leaders don't have the required internal political savvy.......25%

They are unclear about what their bosses expect..............................33%

They fail to build relationships with staff and peers............................52%

They fail to establish a cultural fit…........................................75%

*from the Wall Street Journal, Nov 2006

Culture is what gets you everytime.

A wise Ford executive once was quoted as saying, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast", so you can only imagine what it does to new leaders coming into complex organizations with high expectations from shareholders, board members and employees.

"Because most organizations usually do not include any type of culture data in their leadership onboarding programs, (that is, if they have a leadership onboarding program) the new leaders start out with a significant disadvantage. True, they can talk to their bosses or peers, but this information can be biased at best, and wrong, at worst.

New leaders are prone to making common mistakes while attempting to communicate “big ideas” or determining how conflict is resolved. This not only slows their integration into the company, but taints how they are viewed by others. They will be accused of “not getting it” or “not being the right fit” for the job. This can result in lost time to productivity, team dysfunction, and general opposition to whatever changes they are attempting to implement.

Smart organizations capture that information, summarize it and present it to their new leaders in a way that is understandable and doable. They can immediately “get” how to behave in meetings, the most effective communication methods and where the power centers are in the
organization.

With this critical information, new leaders are equipped to more quickly produce the results for which they were hired. They are also more likely to express satisfaction in their work and their relationships if they have fully absorbed this cultural information. This translates to their performing at a higher level and increases their likelihood of staying with the organization, while not regretting their decision to join it."

-Excerpt from Leadership Culture: Impact on Strategy, November 2007

To get this whole whitepaper on the impact of culture on strategy, email us at info@connectthedotsconsulting.com and we will add you to our email distribution.

Onboarding Conference

For immediate release

Connect the Dots will present at Onboarding Conference--January 2008

Connect the Dots Consulting will present a pre-conference workshop, a keynote presentation, and an exhibition booth at Onboarding Talent: Proven Strategies for Onboarding and Retaining Talent from America's Best Employers Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference will be held at the Omni Hotel at the CNN Center from January 28th through 31st.

The keynote will be a joint presentation with Connect the Dots' client, TJX Companies, on the impact of their leadership onboarding process on their business.

Connect the Dots presenting:

Onboarding 101: Building the Bridge from Recruitment to Engagement

Executive Onboarding: What Your New Leaders Need But Don't Know to Ask For

Other presentations include:

• The Gold Standard for Onboarding
• Onboarding Technology
• Retaining Talent Through Onboarding
• ROI of Onboarding
• Benchmarking Onboarding Programs

Organizations that will be represented:

• TJX Companies
• Ann Taylor
• FedEx Kinkos
• Starbuck's Coffee Company
• Jet Blue Airways
• Sun MicroSystems
• General Mills
• Blue Cross Blue Shield
• The Coca-Cola Company
• The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company
• Texas Roadhouse
• Hewlett-Packard

For more information and registration go to www.iqpc.com/us/onboarding or call 1-800-882-8684.

Hope to see you there!