First Month

The first month is all about figuring out what’s going on. The hardest thing for me off the hop is not rushing in trying to change everything. You have to remember that things are likely the way the are for a reason and the organization has been operating without you. Take some time to let it all sink in.

Get a feel for what people are happy with and what’s frustrating. Get to know the product inside out. Get to know internal systems and operations before you need them. Avoid making too many commitments – this is a time for you to absorb more than you produce. You won’t have this opportunity again, so make the best of it.

Culture What’s the overall feel?
Written guidelines or tribal knowledge?
Differences remote vs. in-office?
Differences between orgs?
Identify potential mentors
Customers Overall demographics
Ticket review
Top 10/100/1000
Trendspotting
Squeaky wheels
Promoters and detractors
Goals What was I hired to accomplish?
What does success look like?
Who needs to be in the loop and how much detail do they want?
Operations Formal training
Portals (customer facing and internal)
Communication tools
Data sources
Analytics / Intelligence
Schedules
Benefits
Product Play and learn as a user
SDLC
Security
Bug and feature tracking
Infrastructure / ops
Product lines
Team Meet and greet with directs, peers, leadership, sales, product, engineering etc.
Discover individual communication preference.
Understand baseline workload / utilization
Start 1:1s with my directs

General insights from blogs and other “experts”:

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Second Month

The second month is where you really start adding value. You still have fresh eyes and can play the new hire card when you go out of bounds, but not for much longer. Start to be more assertive and question why things are the way they are. Make suggestions for improvements. Start making commitments you know you can keep and then deliver results.

Culture Settle into norms
Refine office / WFH balance
Engage with mentor(s)
Customers Engage with strategic customers and account teams
Evaluate customer alignment
Evaluate existing metrics – CSAT, NPS, HMD, MTTR, etc
Goals Codify quarterly goals
Define team-member goals to accomplish overarching goals
Share codified goals with team and leadership
Operations Continue any formal training
Codify useful data views / insights
Codify repeating TODOs
Product Grok roadmap
Grok sales and marketing strategies
Provide feedback from ticket review
Team Identify individual strengths / weaknesses / needs
Build trust with results and follow-through
Start formally tracking wins and areas for improvement
Actively collect feedback from my team and leadership
Evaluate snapshot and continuous hiring needs

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Third Month

By the third month, you should have a good grasp on your day-to-day and should be taking on more of a leadership role. Own company initiatives. Formally pitch ideas and projects. Make commitments and hit them. Document your and your team’s workload and prioritization to stay aligned with the business. Share these data when you need to push back. Build your capital / influence by doing what you say you will, taking on challenging projects, speaking your mind, and making decisions based on real data. Finally, take a moment to reflect. Have you enjoyed the last quarter? Did you meet or exceed expectations? What lies ahead next?

Culture Actively help others outside of role
Contemplate company / personal value alignment in practice
Customers Collect lost / forgotten customers
Evaluate and pitch improvements on customer metrics
Pitch alignment changes and other get to green procedures
Goals Is my team happy?
Is my leadership happy?
Am I happy?
Did I hit my goals? – why/not?
Adjust codified goals as necessary
Operations Start owning escalations
Formulate and pitch ideas to improve KPIs
Share views / insights / scheduled tasks / etc
Evaluate and pitch improvements on internal metrics
Product Start influencing roadmap as VoC
Partner with sales and marketing
Identify and fill gaps in the product pipeline
Actively collect feedback on myself and my team from multiple orgs
Team Align individuals by strengths and preferences as possible
Actively route team members to each other based on expertise
Drive hiring as necessary

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