90 Days - Part 2: Accelerate Learning

Summary

Efficient and effective learning reduces the window of vulnerability associated with the initial 90-day plan. It is key to identifying potential problems that might impact goals, and allows you to make solid business decisions earlier in the process. Developing a learning plan is a pre-requisite to the next stage, matching your strategy to situation.

This section's areas involve:

• Ensuring effectiveness at learning about the new organization
• Identifying the best sources for learning
• Developing a learning agenda
• Learning about culture

Effective Learning

Anyone entering a new role has to have awareness of importance of effective learning as a part of their 90-day plan. Information overload can cause risk when seeking to effectively diagnose an organization; with the amount of information presented it is east to miss important signals. A balanced approach is also important, ensuring you're absorbing all sides of the business; products, customers, technologies, strategies, culture and politics.

Effective learning can be de-risked by simply developing a learning plan, with a historian viewpoint; how did we get here? as a way to understand the paths sought in the past. Balanced with patience: Beware compulsive "need to take action" and "arriving with the answer"

Sources

Determine best sources for extracting historical viewpoints and views on current state of affairs. Break down between external and internal sources.

External Sources

• Customers: Organizational perception, assessment of product/services, how is customer service ranked against competitors? Any key challenges or themes?
• Distributors: Can learn about customer service and competitors' practices and offerings
• Suppliers / Vendors: Perspective on strengths and flaws of internal operations mgmt and systems.
• Outside Analysts: Objective assessment of strategy and capabilities.

Internal Sources

• Frontline operations: Contact center agents, supervisors, and leaders
• Sales: awareness of market trends, competitive advantages, etc.
• Staff: Finance, Legal, HR, IT, and Ops
• Integrators: Cross-functional roles, such as project managers, product managers. Good source for identifying political hierarchies and where internal conflicts lie
• Natural Historians: People who have been with the company for a long time

Learning Agenda

The core is a cyclical process: collect information, analyze and distill, develop hypotheses, test and repeat. Insights to pursue should be checked against different transition situations and priorities. The 4 methods employed will include:

• Organizational Climate / Satisfaction Surveys
• Structured Interviews
• Focus Groups
• Analysis of Past Critical Decisions

Structured interviews and collection of any satisfaction survey data will be first priority; learning about culture and morale from any existing data sets, and learning about general perceptions of opportunities and problems by interviewing team direct reports. Expand action across internal and external sources.

Tactical List

Before Entry

• Read about the organization’s strategy, structure, performance, and people.
• Look for external assessments of the performance of the organization.
• Find external observers who know the organization well, including former employees, recent retirees, and people who have transacted business with the organization.
• Talk to new boss.
• Write down first impressions and eventually some hypotheses.
• Compile an initial set of questions to guide your structured inquiry once arrived

Soon After Entry

• Review detailed operating plans, performance data, and personnel data.
• Meet one-on-one with direct reports, questions;
  • What are the biggest challenges the organization is facing (or will face) in the near future?
  • Why is the organization facing (or going to face) these challenges?
  • What are the most promising unexploited opportunities for growth/experience/expense?
  • What would need to happen for the organization to exploit the potential of these opportunities?
  • If you were me, what would you focus attention on?

Pay attention to convergent and divergent views, and about them as people.

• Assess how things are going at key interfaces from the inside; sales reps, customer service agents.
• Test strategic alignment from the top down. Ask people at the top what the company’s vision and strategy are.
• Test awareness of challenges and opportunities from the bottom up.
• Update questions and hypotheses.
• Meet with your boss to discuss hypotheses and findings.

By the End of the First Month

• Gather team to feed back your preliminary findings.
• Analyze key interfaces from the outside in.
• Analyze a couple of key processes.
  • Convene representatives of the responsible groups to map out and evaluate the processes selected. Goal to Learn about productivity, quality, and reliability.
• Meet with key integrators: How things work at interfaces among functional areas within the company.
• Update questions and hypotheses.
• Meet with boss again to discuss your observations.

Culture

The cultural dimension is an important part of the learning process; what aspects of the existing culture are impediments to delivering high performance, and what aspects are supporting the delivery, and thus worthy to preserve (and build upon). My framework for cultural analysis will initially examine symbols, norms and assumptions:

• Symbols are signs, including logos and styles of dress; they distinguish one culture from another and promote solidarity. Are there distinctive symbols that signify your unit and help members recognize one another?
• Norms are shared social rules that guide “right behavior.” What behaviors get encouraged or rewarded in your unit? What elicits scorn or disapproval?
• Assumptions are the often-unarticulated beliefs that pervade and underpin social systems. These beliefs are the air that everyone breathes.

After understanding the cultural identity - determine how to adapt or alter to support effective performance. As a shared service organization, this will have to leverage organizational culture, professional culture and geographic culture as well (off-shore element, distributed call centers, and organization of shared services.