The First 100 Days

This is a slightly different post to the ones I normally do and is more of a share of some thoughts based on my experience of activities to undertake in the first 100 days of a new role.

Outside of my day job I help people prepare for interviews and this has come out of that work in the last couple of years. Although it is based on a L&D role I think it will chime with all kinds of roles – so I hope you find it useful…

Essentially when you start a new job there are five things which you want to do which are

1. Get to know your stakeholders
2. Get to know the organisation
3. Understand what they have in place already (even if the role is new it is likely that there will be pockets of practice around)
4. Look for opportunities to get involved and add value
5. Formulate a plan of what you are going to do in priority order based on your discussions with stakeholders.

Essentially what you are trying to do is a huge data gathering exercise to inform your plans. I suspect that what they might be looking for is someone who is focused on supporting the business to achieve their goals as this is very much the school of thought for L&D at the moment. 

Build a structured word document which captures all your notes together along the lines of

• Challenges
• Current L&D Practice
• Expectations
• Potential Opportunities

This will make it easier to build your action plan at the end of the process. 

Getting to Know your Stakeholders

The purpose of this is to build some relationships in the business and also to understand some of their challenges and their expectations from you. 

I would also suggest that the first key meetings you have are with your boss and senior leadership as these will give you a good steer for your other meetings.

Some key questions that you would ask along the lines of

• Tell me about yourself and your role in the organisation
• What are some of the challenges you face?
• Describe for me some of the L&D activity in the business – what happens at the moment? What would you like to see less or more of?
• What do you think the role I am here to do is about? (This also gives you a chance from the off to clear up any misunderstandings)
• How best can I add value to what you do?

Getting to Know the Organisation

I think this can be done at the same time as getting to know your stakeholders as in some cases these are meetings which could be combined i.e. heads of the different departments. 

There are a few things that I think you will need to understand here including

• The strategy and goals of the organisation – where are they going and how can you support this
• The values of the organisation – particularly from a leadership point of view as this will drive the direction of the leadership development
• What each department does and how they link together – I think there is a couple of ways you could do this 

1. Spend time in each part of the organisation (maybe ½ a day) to see what it actually feels like. This will enable you to see the ‘real’ organisation and spend time with people at the coal face. It will also be interesting to see from their perspective what L&D feels like for them and what they would like to see. 
2. Meet with the Heads of Department (and ask the questions as outlined above)

My personal feel is that the first one is better – I would suggest you meet with the Heads of Department anyway and then ask to spend time in the department as this will demonstrate proactiveness and an interest to be involved. 

You could also ask to attend team meetings – part of this process is getting your face out there and making connections so the more people you can meet in the organisation the better it is. 

Understand what they have in place already

In the structured document I mentioned above where you are collating your notes I would almost have a section which lists all the things in the job description so you can make notes against these. 

As well as the information you will gather in your meetings I think there will probably be information on drives and files somewhere so some of this will be about finding where this is, having a good read and asking some questions. Some things which may be useful

• If they are using external providers for leadership training/apprenticeship having a chat with them
• What evaluation data do they have and what is it telling you?
• You could talk to people who have experienced any L&D interventions – what did it feel like for them, how has it impacted on their performance at work?

Look for opportunities to be involved and add value

Organisations are usually looking for someone who can hit the ground running so this is really about looking at anything you can be involved in which sits in your remit and demonstrating your value. For example this could be

• Attending meetings i.e. apprenticeships
• Delivering a coaching/training session

Anything which you can do which demonstrates your skills in the early days is beneficial as it will enhance your credibility. 

Formulating a Plan for Action

This should come I think approximately around the 10 week mark and it really is based on what has come out of your research. In your presentation I think it is fine to say you won’t know what this is as it is based on whatever comes out of your discussions. 

Whatever your plan looks like I think it should be 

• Identified as having a priority order
• Be specific in nature – detailing the different elements of each task
• Have clear timelines (this will help you identify whether you are on track and will also help your manager as well)

It should also be signed off by the senior management team.

So these are my thoughts I would be interested in hearing others around this…