PM New Hire Onboarding is Broken

November 2020 was a memorable month for me. It was then that I bought my first car. It was also the month when I started working in a new organization.?As I navigated around the streets of Bangalore and my new workplace, I realized how I needed to be fully turned on and use system 2 thinking to achieve anything.

This experience made me think deeply about new hire onboarding experience, especially for a Product Manager. And I have come to this conclusion - new hire onboarding is broken.?

Onboarding is broken? Tell me more …??

Most onboarding plans for new PMs contains a checklist with some of the following tasks to be completed within 30/60/90 days:

• Meet a set of people within and outside the product org
• Join a specified set of slack channels, meetings, and other rituals
• Consume a list of videos and knowledge articles to get familiar with the product
• Go through product dashboards
• Play with the product

Once a new hire completes the above tasks, they are expected to achieve a few sets of “wins” within the first 30, 60, or 90 days to signal their arrival. The checklist-based onboarding plan is prevalent wisdom. Heck, even I have written about this in the past.?

The current model of onboarding doesn't work for the following reasons:

Oversight of system 2 thinkers

The folks who are onboarding new hires (hiring managers etc) are usually folks who have spent enough time in the organization and have moved from a system 2 to a system 1 way of thinking. They have assimilated knowledge over the years and have honed their intuition. As the hiring team creates an onboarding plan for a new member, they aren’t able to visualize ALL the things that are going to appear new to this person.?

Prematurely stopping the onboarding process

There is a desire that new hires need to be productive within a certain number of days of their joining. While this desire is valid, the assumption that the new hire’s onboarding stops, the moment they start getting productive, is incorrect. Onboarding is a slow activity that never really stops but eventually merges into the regular learning and growth of an individual.

Isolated learning with a poor feedback loop

The checklist-based mode of onboarding also forces the new hires to do this hard job of onboarding, all by themselves. The onboarding plan doesn’t include enough feedback points and is inflexible in structure. The standardized approach to onboarding folks does not take into account the new hire's unique backgrounds, strengths, and weaknesses.

A poor onboarding results in disillusioned, anxious, and unmotivated new hires. It also leads to a sense of frustration and a lack of confidence amongst existing employees.

How do we fix onboarding?

We need to use our product management skills as we look at new hire onboarding. A new PM hiring manager needs to:

1. Define what a well onboarded new hire looks like
2. Identify the gap between the current and desired state for the new hire
3. Create a custom onboarding plan
4. Executing against the plan

Step 1 - Defining the desired state

A well onboarded PM will have the following attributes:

• They are aware of their role expectation and what great work looks like
• They have built the domain knowledge necessary to move the product forward
• They have adapted to the organization’s approach to collaboration
• They are aware of the mechanism to achieve progress through the decision making

Step 2 - Identify the gaps

The hiring manager should spend time with the new hire to learn more about their prior experience. They should understand the new hire's role expectation, domain knowledge, the preferred mode of collaboration, and their previous experience in driving decisions.?

They should discuss the desired state with the new hire and work with them to co-create a plan which focuses on bridging the gap.?

Step 3 - Creating a custom plan

The hiring manager and the new hire should set goals and work on a list of activities that help bridge the gap. The plan needs to be customized to the new hire's gaps, preferences, seniority, etc.?

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Step 4 - Executing against the plan

As with any plan, the custom onboarding plan needs to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based).?

While executing against this plan, it is important to keep the following in place:

• Constant check-ins to identify challenges with the onboarding
• Modifying the plan as and when necessary
• Making other stakeholders part of this plan - other PMs, designers, engineers, etc

To paraphrase Winston Churchill - ?“(Onboarding) Plans are of little importance, but (onboarding) planning is essential.”

Cover photo by?Isaac Mehegan?on?Unsplash