Onboard in 30 days, contribute in 72 hours

New hires are more work on their bosses in the short term. You need to flip that script as fast as possible.

👋 Hi, it’s Greg and Taylor. Welcome to our newsletter on everything you wish your CEO told you about how to get ahead.

After two years of no headcount growth, we’ve hired and onboarded 5-6 new employees in the last year. Our takeaway: we LOVE it when a new hire is taking work off of others’ plates as fast as possible (ideally within 72 hours of starting).  

When starting a new job, guidance can range from a robust onboarding plan from HR to recommendations like “soak up as much as possible” or “ask a lot of questions.” In theory, this isn’t bad advice – it is important to learn as much as you can about the company you’re joining. 

But this advice ignores a key reality. In today’s economy, new hires are only added to the team when everyone is already overworked. Yet in the short term, a new hire creates MORE work for the hiring manager and team (building an onboarding plan, explaining how things are done, finding documents, creating new documents, etc.). 

To stand out and be valuable, you want to shift this dynamic as fast as possible – remove work, don’t add work, for your new team. Don’t look for breakthrough ideas or needle-moving value (yet) – just get shit done. Learn as much as you can, but do it on your own time, and reserve questions for things you can’t read or observe on your own. 

As busy hiring managers ourselves, this is what we want new employees to do. So here’s our playbook for your first 30-day sprint as a new employee, joining any size team or company.

– Taylor

How to become immediately valuable

Every company or team today is overwhelmed and under-resourced – startup or not. While we’re not in a recession, high borrowing costs and slowing growth mean that most businesses will continue to constrain hiring.

These days, most companies only hire once the current team is under water. So forget about the old norm of a 4-week onboarding ramp, even if your new boss says that’s the plan. Ignore them (and HR). Get to work and start taking tasks off someone else’s plate within 72 hours of starting.

We’re not saying this is easy – you’ll have to navigate a few things: 

• All the unsaid stuff. We all store too much knowledge in our heads, so you’ll have to be curious and observant to learn the basics fast – where to store documents, the preferred memo or deck templates, sheets vs. excel, how your boss likes to review documents, and so on.

• It’s probably a shitshow. You will be shocked by process inefficiencies everywhere – but now is not the time to fix them. Assume that everyone knows things can be done better, focus your first 30 days on taking care of work, and note the changes you might want to make later.

• Your job might have already changed. The time from job description to your first day has probably been anywhere from 4 weeks (fast) to three months (typical). There’s a good chance priorities or expectations for your role have already shifted. Roll with it.

• Your manager is at capacity. Assume your boss has little time to onboard you. Don’t whine – accept this reality as a challenge. Proving a degree of independence early will make your boss’s life a lot easier and set you apart from the beginning.

Executing your first 30-day sprint 

Approach your first 30 days as a “high-low” 30-day sprint – get shit done (low) and learn all the obvious and non-obvious stuff about the business (high). 

Step 1: Find (and finish) tasks that need to get done.

Don’t wait for work to be assigned to you – start taking work off others’ plates immediately. These don’t need to be huge, transformative projects – start small. Checking off even minor to-dos will create relief. Here are a few examples: 

• Write the marketing brief for a new campaign

• Draft the user stories for a new feature

• Build out a landing page

• Handle the research for a presentation

• Create a new dashboard

• Organize all the docs for a new project into a brief

This is the “low” part of your 30-day sprint: getting your hands dirty and helping your team make progress. Your goal here is to make a clear dent in someone else’s workload. That person could be your boss, a teammate, or even your direct report – just figure out who has too much work, and relieve them.

If you’re not sure where to start, you have a few options. You can return to your original job description and review the high priority items listed– if the job description says “write user stories for new features,” write the next one. You can also ask the previous person that was in your role (if they’re still around) or the person who was doing your role on nights and weekends (often the case) – they’ll know what work really matters. Worst case, just go ask a teammate, “what can I take off your plate today?”

Step 2: Learn as much as you can about the business…on your own time. Your first 30 days are not the time to start pitching new business models or roadmaps, but you are laying the foundation to be strategically valuable later.

This is the “high” part of your 30 day sprint, and helps you decide where to focus after the first 30 days. Your goal is to learn the following: 

1. What they didn’t tell you in interviews. This is your first peek under the hood so figure out weak metrics or blind spots in the business, risks or dependencies in the revenue model (e.g. 30% of the revenue is coming from one product or customer), or the biggest roadblock to product-market fit.

2. The complexities and intricacies that aren’t obvious from the outside. Every product or service looks simpler than it really is – and most teams have figured out how to make their business work in ways that others don’t understand. Learn what’s special about how your product or service is built and delivered. 

3. How the product actually works. Even if you’re in a nonproduct role, the onus is on you to know your product, inside and out. Don’t wait for training or an explicit invitation. Use the product like your customer does, and ask about the roadmap so you can see where things are actually going.

4. What’s already been tried and what was learned. Understand what has already been tested and why it didn’t work out. This helps you avoid tone deaf or off base recommendations. 

A critical point: Learn as much of this as you can on your own time, without peppering your boss with questions. Going to your boss first creates more work for them; doing your own due diligence removes work for your boss – and makes you look resourceful.

Here are a few ways you can do this:

• Get access to the product and use it

• Get access to internal dashboards and data, and review them

• Ask to shadow calls with clients

• Ask to see the budget and/or business model, and review it on your own

• Get a link to the product roadmap and review it on your own

• Schedule time with a salesperson, and ask why the company wins and loses deals

• Take notes in all-hands on what the CEO or executive team talks about in your first month

Your goal is to only ask your boss things you can’t read in a document for yourself.

Then use your 1:1s in the first 30 days to do two things: convey progress on the tactical work you’ve taken on (step 1) and ask thoughtful questions based on the diligence you’ve done on your own time (step 2). After the first 30 days, you can settle into a management/communication cadence that mirrors your boss’s preferences. 

Our advice

Any team that is overworked and under-staffed prefers a degree of independence in new hires. Very few bosses will have time for a lot of hand-holding. So run our playbook for your first 30-day sprint. Obviously check with your boss about any immediate projects or priorities – but if they say “well, just watch and learn for a while,” ignore that advice and do this.

As bosses, we want new hires that 1) learn as much as they can about the “real” business without taxing others and 2) immediately get shit done, creating relief for the team. 

Bottomline: Treat the first 30 days as a learning + working sprint. Don’t tax already overworked teammates. Be willing to do a lot of grunt work and little projects. Build your POV on how the process or output (or both) can be improved, but save your big ideas for the right moment – day 31 and beyond.

To the next 10 years,

Greg & Taylor

P.S. We’re running a private 1-hour workshop on using AI as a thought partner on October 17 from 5-6 p.m. ET for Personal Math subscribers. Sign up here.