Podcast EP 132 | Onboarded - What is onboarding and why does it matter? (1 of 4)

What is onboard­ing, and why does it matter?

In this first of four episodes, we’re dis­cussing Brad’s new book Onboard­ed, how to bring new hires to the point where they are effec­tive faster. We dis­cuss what onboard­ing is, and what it isn’t. We cov­er how 83% of organ­i­sa­tions aren’t real­is­ing the ben­e­fits of an effec­tive onboard­ing process and why onboard­ing real­ly mat­ters to your team, and your results.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Brad Giles 00:13

Hi there, wel­come to the growth whis­pers where every­thing that we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. My name is Brad Giles. And as always, every week for 132 weeks now, I’m joined by my co host, Kevin Lawrence, Kevin. Hel­lo, it’s love­ly to see you today. How are you?

Kevin Lawrence 00:30

You too, Brad. 132 weeks? You know, there’s not a lot of things that peo­ple aside from maybe brush­ing their teeth and a few things that many peo­ple or even myself can do 132 times in a row. We put an episode out for 132 weeks con­sis­tent­ly. Miss none, I don’t we haven’t missed 111 state how are we not one? Pret­ty incred­i­ble for two very busy peo­ple on oppo­site sides of the world. And dur­ing COVID. Actu­al­ly, it might have been eas­i­er dur­ing COVID. Because you might have had a lit­tle bit more free time because we did­n’t have to travel.

Brad Giles 01:03

Yeah, that’s That’s true. That’s true. But no, it is it is and you know, pat­ting our­selves on the back. I guess. Yes. Yeah, it’s good. It’s good to be and through that I wrote a book.

Kevin Lawrence 01:17

Hmm. On top of that, on top of that,

Brad Giles 01:20

yeah. And that book is com­ing out in a cou­ple of weeks on the first of Novem­ber. So we thought that, yeah, we just have a bit of a chat about that today, and in com­ing weeks, just break apart some of the some of the top­ics top­ics in there, and see where the con­ver­sa­tion takes us.

Kevin Lawrence 01:42

Yeah, and con­grats on the book, Brad. I mean, it’s a top­ic that I’m also very pas­sion­ate about because I see onboard­ing messed up. Oh, there’s the whole Old back­door way so fast onboard­ed. You know, there’s, there’s, there’s, you know, onboard­ing is a top­ic that I see I’ve seen go wrong so many times, and for lots of dif­fer­ent rea­sons, a lot of what you cov­er off in your book. But it’s, it’s one of these things who put all this ener­gy into get­ting awe­some new exec­u­tives, lead­ers, man­agers, front­line employ­ees. Recruit­ing them, but then help­ing them and not set­ting up to win. It’s inter­est­ing. My son has joined a new restau­rant that’s open and close to where we live. And it’s been inter­est­ing lis­ten­ing to him. He’s been involved in onboard­ing train­ing, but he was on board­ed. And then incred­i­ble amounts of train­ing and learn­ing and prac­tic­ing two weeks even before the restau­rant opens. Yeah, like it’s, it’s incred­i­ble how they are, I’m inter­est­ed to see what they do, the restau­rant opens this week, but it’d be inter­est­ing to see how they do but the amount of prepa­ra­tion has been impres­sive. I am sur­prised at the lev­el of they have put into it. So again, so fran­chise, they’re not it’s a sin­gle guy who owns one is a local entre­pre­neur owns a bunch of restau­rants. Yeah, okay, um, that these are decent scale restau­rants. And he’s got sev­er­al loca­tions. It’s not their first rodeo, or the sec­ond rodeo, as we’ve seen in Cana­da. But from what I can see the first 30 days, like they’ve nailed, and now it’s still chaot­ic, is they’re still in prep mode of the restau­rant and get­ting things sort­ed out, because it’s a brand new restau­rant. But for the restau­rant, open­ing type onboard­ing, they’re doing great. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see what hap­pens. But it’s, I’ve said to my son, you know, this is a great expe­ri­ence to get this much train­ing and it’s his first restau­rant job. And it’s great to get that much train­ing and prac­tice and all of this stuff for every­one. It’s, um, so it’s great to see when it looks to be good. Often, it’s not. So why don’t Brad, you know, we had a con­ver­sa­tion before, why don’t you kind of give the dis­tinc­tion between, you know, what you define as onboard­ing and what some oth­er peo­ple might call, you know, onboard­ing or induc­tion or ori­en­ta­tion if you want to give the dis­tinc­tion. So, it’s real­ly clear in the mind, the lis­ten­ers, the, you know, what it is and the point you’re mak­ing here?

Brad Giles 04:17

Sure thing. So onboard­ing is the process of tak­ing some­one from out­side your orga­ni­za­tion, and mak­ing them a pro­duc­tive, inde­pen­dent and con­fi­dent mem­ber of your team who under­stands the cul­ture, the tech­ni­cal and process expec­ta­tions and your expec­ta­tions as their manager.

Kevin Lawrence 04:37

So that’s sort of put that sim­ply it’s like, some­one learns how to do the job with­in the way the com­pa­ny works. The man­ag­er works expec­ta­tions and is able to do excel­lent, amaz­ing work in if from the per­spec­tive of them­selves and their man­ag­er and the peo­ple they work with. Yeah, they under­stood they get to awe­some­ness. Onboard­ing to awesomeness.

Brad Giles 04:59

The key word there is under­stand, they under­stand the man­ager’s expec­ta­tions, like what is my ener­gy man­ag­er expect of me they under­stand the cul­ture and all of the bits around that. And the tech­ni­cal and process the way we do things here. Under­stand, geez, I was talk­ing to my broth­er not not only a week or two ago, and he was telling me he’s on, he’s joined a very large orga­ni­za­tion, multi­na­tion­al. And he said, they had no idea about teach­ing him about his job. Like it’s, it’s, it’s preva­lent in small and big com­pa­nies, some com­pa­nies do a great job of it, you would think that only big com­pa­nies, part of me would do a good job of it. But the data just does­n’t say that, like you said with that restau­rant. Some com­pa­nies do a good job, irre­spec­tive of size. And some com­pa­nies do a ter­ri­ble job.

Kevin Lawrence 05:57

Like in our firm, we’re now 14 Peo­ple in our lit­tle bou­tique firm. And we’re bring­ing two peo­ple on in the last quar­ter. But we have a 13 week onboard­ing plan. Like it’s very thor­ough, and we’re always look­ing for ways to make it bet­ter. But you know, it’s it’s one of our work. A few of our guys have had amaz­ing expe­ri­ences in large, suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies that fig­ure this out. And they brought a basic tool for a 13 week plan. But that works real­ly well.

Brad Giles 06:28

So he’s, he’s a quick and dirty Sor­ry to cut you off there. Can you think of some­one who recent­ly did that 13 week onboard­ing plan, you don’t need to say their name?

Kevin Lawrence 06:39

Yes. Okay.

Brad Giles 06:40

So first of all, how on a scale of one to 10? How clear­ly do they does that per­son under­stand their man­agers expec­ta­tions? One real­ly low, 10 Real­ly high like 10. Now, cul­ture, how clear­ly tells the per­son and then tech­ni­cal, I’m sor­ry, give tech­ni­cal and process? Because you did the 13 weeks. Now, if you did a sev­en, like a sev­en day or one week or two week onboard­ing process, which 83% of com­pa­nies do, you might not be able to say 10?

Kevin Lawrence 07:15

Well no, because it’s your first sev­en days, you for­get a bunch of stuff. Like, you know, at first, I thought it might be overkill, but I see the results. But I’ve seen I’ve seen the oppo­site. I remem­ber, you know, the clas­sic thing that I see is when we bring new exec­u­tives in, yeah. And they come on board. And I have the same con­ver­sa­tions with the exec­u­tive and the CEO almost all the time. And say to the exec­u­tive, Hey, your job, for the first 13 weeks, first quar­ter, as we think in quar­ters, is to learn the team, learn the cul­ture, learn the busi­ness, and the nuances and learn how to work with your CEO. You’re not here to shoot the lights out, you’re not here to blow us away with how amaz­ing you’re, you’re not here to make big deci­sions. Because you won’t frickin know until you you get a month into a job and you have the best inten­tions and poten­tial­ly bad results. And then I say to the CEO, hey, it’s great that you have this awe­some new exec­u­tive. And it’s amaz­ing to have this amaz­ing expe­ri­ence from XYZ com­pa­ny that we love, and believe in. But they need to be on a short rope. You need to meet with him ide­al­ly, every day, you need to have a full meet­ing with him every week and need to talk about was and mak­ing sure that all key deci­sions that they run by you first. Now, where they want to take an employ­ee for lunch does­n’t mat­ter. But there’s this peri­od of them get­ting an addi­tion to the the onboard­ing plan, which you talk a lot about. But it’s I see all the time, that the CEO is so excit­ed to have Mr. or Miss amaz­ing exec­u­tive, and they just let them run on their own into a wall. That’s and they often are awe­some peo­ple who end­ed up fail­ing, dam­ag­ing rela­tion­ships, mak­ing bad choic­es, piss­ing peo­ple off, because they don’t know yet. And in some cas­es, they don’t even have rela­tion­al per­mis­sion yet. And I mean, it’s not rock­et sci­ence. It’s just it’s a dis­ci­pline, like a lot of good things. And again, I know your book will get into this way bet­ter than I would explain it. But it’s I’m just huge­ly pas­sion­ate about it. Because, you know, recent­ly bring­ing on a new pres­i­dent in a com­pa­ny. And I know if I did­n’t say some­thing the Pres­i­dent would run too fast and the CEO would let him.

Brad Giles 09:30

And the great risk is attri­tion. The great risk is the Pres­i­den­t’s let’s be fair, right. The pres­i­dent a few weeks ago, was talk­ing with oth­er com­pa­nies he could start with, right. So that was a few weeks ago, and now we’re try­ing to let them run. If they’re an A play­er, then they’re going to work out. But that that is quite impor­tant, right? Onboard­ing is not hir­ing. Onboard­ing is not induc­tion. It’s not ori­en­ta­tion. And it’s not train­ing. Onboard­ing is a sep­a­rate process. And in the book, I real­ly want­ed to say, you’ve got to have a great hir­ing process eg like top grad­ing, okay, you’ve got to have that. But then that process fin­ish­es and anoth­er com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent process begins.

Kevin Lawrence 10:16

An equal­ly impor­tant and thor­ough process begins. And you can’t just accept the drop, expect this, drop them in. One more that hap­pened. I was talk­ing with them a com­pa­ny in anoth­er coun­try. And they’re telling me about this per­son who was mak­ing hor­ri­ble deci­sions, run­ning off and doing things that made no sense. And I said, like, How was that pos­si­ble? And I’m talk­ing to the exec­u­tive of the per­son reports to him like, like, they like, like, tell me like, What was your onboard­ing plan? Like, what did you do? It made no sense the per­son can make such hor­ri­ble deci­sions, because they that we know they’re not unin­tel­li­gent? Yeah. Well, you know, when it turns out, the exec­u­tive that is lead­ing this per­son does­n’t even have a week­ly meet­ing. It’s nice that they hired the per­son and told them the job and did­n’t did a lit­tle bit of train­ing by hav­ing them shad­ow the oth­er per­son. And just as let­ting I want­ed to scream, and I prob­a­bly said some bad words. Like, that’s not only not fair to the per­son, it’s not fair to the busi­ness. And it’s not, it’s not a smart way to man­age any invest­ment. The per­son has zero chance of suc­cess. He has a neg­a­tive chance.

Brad Giles 11:34

Here’s the thing, that it’s also incred­i­bly expen­sive. I’ve got like two chap­ters devot­ed in a book of sev­en chap­ters, I’ve got two chap­ters devot­ed to the cost, because it’s scary.

Kevin Lawrence 11:47

We’re not talk­ing about the mon­ey they waste with deci­sions. It’s the dam­age to the busi­ness and the dam­age to the oil and the cost. It’s crazy. But you know, to you and I, Brad, this stuff is basic, and to the peo­ple lis­ten­ing, like, Look, if you have this has been an over­sight, we’re not here to judge it, we’re here to help you. It’s, it’s basic, but unfor­tu­nate­ly to build a thriv­ing busi­ness, it’s like fly­ing a jet plane. There’s a lot of switch­es, espe­cial­ly in the old ana­log ones, there’s a lot of switch­es that do a lot of things. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a lot of peo­ple in the jobs, they don’t even know that some of these switch­es exist. It’s like they’re hid­den under the dash­board, and they can’t see them. And for some peo­ple, this is one of them. They don’t even con­tem­plate it. Maybe, hope­ful­ly until now until they read your book.

Brad Giles 12:36

Yeah, there are struc­tur­al rea­sons why we’ve got in this posi­tion, right? Nobody owns onboard­ing or onboard­ing. Some­one owns sales. Some­one owns the operation.

Kevin Lawrence 12:48

They should though. In some com­pa­nies, like in some com­pa­nies, HR owns the process. The man­ag­er owns the work.

Brad Giles 12:55

I agree with you. But But no, but there’s no full time com­po­nent to it is what I’m say­ing. Like, if what I mean by that, if I’m a sales man­ag­er every day I come to work. And the first thing I think is how can I hit my tar­gets? Where­as Yeah, onboard­ing, it’s like, if you’ve got a team of 10, maybe once or twice a year, you’re onboard­ing some­body new if you’ve got an aver­age attri­tion rate. So it’s, it’s a part time?

Kevin Lawrence 13:22

I would agree that that some­body does own IT, HR gen­er­al­ly should own that the process is fol­lowed. It’s just the dis­ci­pline is not very strong. And a lot of these companies,

Brad Giles 13:32

I’m say­ing the same thing. Yeah, I’m say­ing the same thing. Like, yes, the man­ag­er absolute­ly has to own it. There’s no doubt about it. But it’s a part time process. Okay. And it’s not like there are any with hir­ing. We’ve got the per­son we’ve hired the new hire, tick. Awesome.

Kevin Lawrence 13:55

But I think the same thing falls down hir­ing, a lot of peo­ple don’t have enough. HR owns the hir­ing process. And a lot of man­agers aren’t dis­ci­plined around it.

Brad Giles 14:03

Peo­ple, there’s a mea­sur­able met­ric there. We can say we’ve hired somebody.

Kevin Lawrence 14:06

A lot of com­pa­nies don’t even mea­sure it. Like, I know what you’re say­ing, I’m agree­ing with you Brad, hir­ing often runs loose, and onboard­ing often runs loose. And, and onboard­ing prob­a­bly worse than not. Hir­ing is often very, very loose. But the point of it is, it’s, it’s missed. And it lets slip and then it’s it’s not good for the per­son. It’s not good for the com­pa­ny. Nobody wins.

Brad Giles 14:31

Yeah, so So I guess in my 20 – 30 years of being an entre­pre­neur and a lead­er­ship team, coach, there’s one thing that I’ve learned and I do hope that you agree with this Kev,

Kevin Lawrence 14:45

We’ll find out.

Brad Giles 14:49

Rule num­ber one, rule num­ber one of build­ing a great busi­ness. The first and most impor­tant rule is that you’ve got to have the right peo­ple on the bus. You’ve got to get the right peo­ple on the bus in the right seat, doing the right things the right way. Right. That’s if you can’t get the right people.

Kevin Lawrence 15:05

That fit, doing a great job. So yes,

Brad Giles 15:10

hir­ing gets the right peo­ple on the bus. And in the right seat. Yes, but But an effec­tive onboard­ing process gets them doing the right things the right way. And it is, and there’s a dif­fer­ence there. Okay, so hir­ing gets the right peo­ple on the bus and onboard­ing gets the right peo­ple doing the right things the right way. Yep. So if we, if we reverse engi­neer there, if we’ve got a great hir­ing process, okay, and we’re get­ting let’s say, we’re get­ting A maybe B play­ers, we’re get­ting good peo­ple come on board, and that’s fine. They’re on the bus, and they’re in the right seat, but they don’t know how to do the right things the right way, which cre­ates problems.

Kevin Lawrence 15:52

And that’s why orga­ni­za­tions put a lot of ener­gy into onboard­ing, and mak­ing it bet­ter and bet­ter and bet­ter, so that they can one get these peo­ple up to speed faster. Or get more of them up to speed than they would have if they had a loose sys­tem. And it’s kind of like the strongest survive.

Brad Giles 16:11

So I want you to imag­ine that you’re as a mid­dle aged per­son com­pet­ing in a week­ly bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion, okay, you and let’s say eight of your friends every week, you come togeth­er, and they’re all about the same cal­iber, as you. They’re pret­ty good, okay? They’re good for their age, good for their, you know, the ama­teur, they get around. And then, and then what hap­pens is one of the peo­ple has to go, and anoth­er per­son comes in. He’s a, he’s a chap called Michael Jor­dan. Same age. But he’s, he’s incred­i­bly com­pe­tent, expe­ri­enced. He’s one of the great­est of all time joins your lit­tle team. This team is now a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent team. Okay. Now we’ve got peo­ple have got to under­stand each oth­er, but they’re com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. And that’s where the phrase every time a new per­son joins the team, the team fun­da­men­tal­ly rein­vents itself. Is the new per­son who’s just joined your team? High IQ, low IQ, high EQ, low EQ, are they loud? Are they qui­et? Have they got­ten 25 years expe­ri­ence doing what you’re doing? Or are they fresh out of col­lege? Have they? Have they used a com­peti­tor’s prod­uct that they don’t know how to unlearn or it’s going to be real­ly tough to unlearn? So you think about a team every sin­gle time some­one joins, the team is fun­da­men­tal­ly rein­vent­ed. And not only is the onboard­ing about get­ting them to learn the process, but it’s also about learn­ing the cul­ture, and the ways that we work and interact,

Kevin Lawrence 17:56

Right. And often we talk about get­ting the team to mesh, which is one thing. But then there’s them actu­al­ly learn­ing to do their job in a spec­tac­u­lar way, which is a whole oth­er thing. When you have a break­fast, Michael Jor­dan is gonna have his own place. And as well in ways he likes to prac­tice, but your team has their own way and he’s got to learn your team’s way. Or maybe his ideas that change the whole thing. But that’s got to be a con­scious choice. Oth­er­wise, it’s just not going to work.

Brad Giles 18:24

Imag­ine the first sec­ond third week where Michael Jor­dan’s run­ning rings around all of you and your your peo­ple. And the frus­tra­tion would be enor­mous. So that’s the job to be done.

Kevin Lawrence 18:39

It is. So the essence of what we’re say­ing is tak­ing your onboard­ing real­ly quick­ly, mak­ing sure that it’s if you have a strong hir­ing process, there’s also a strong onboard­ing process. And ele­ments from the hir­ing process, like the score­card that defines the role can be should be a key part of that process. But it’s a notable com­mit­ment of time and ener­gy to get that per­son ful­ly up to speed so that as you say, you very well have the right per­son. Now you got to make sure they’re doing the right things the right way, so they can be suc­cess­ful. And the soon­er that hap­pens, the bet­ter. But it does­n’t hap­pen on its own. And if you just leave them to fig­ure it out on their own. I mean, it’s kind of like going to Vegas and mak­ing a bet on a roulette wheel on black when you’re gam­bling. And it’s just not smart.

Brad Giles 19:27

Well, they’re going to try to do things the way that they think is right. But it might not be the right way for all the whole range of legit­i­mate reasons.

Kevin Lawrence 19:37

Or it could be bet­ter, but then it’s going to screw up some­thing else some­where else in your busi­ness because they don’t under­stand the whole process or why you do it that way. Yeah. Yeah. It’s awe­some. I’m real­ly excit­ed to see your book come out, which is going to be out in a cou­ple of weeks, Brad, because, you know, as you know, we’re very pas­sion­ate about nail­ing the hir­ing process. And that’s why we do a lot of work around that and we’ve done a lot of work with clients around onboard­ing. And as I said, in our firm, we do a thor­ough job. Not per­fect, but always try­ing to get bet­ter. And I’m big, big believ­er in the ben­e­fit of it, because I’ve seen way too many times how it goes out eas­i­ly it goes wrong, most­ly because there’s not a good enough plan.

Brad Giles 20:16

I guess I looked at it. And I thought, What’s the big thing that’s miss­ing? What’s the big gap in busi­ness today? And I think that there are struc­tur­al rea­sons for it. So I did a sur­vey of 1100 CEOs and hir­ing man­agers around the world to get some com­pelling data that told the sto­ry in a way that I could­n’t. And then yeah, real­ly built out one or in fact, two real­ly strong tools that peo­ple can prac­ti­cal­ly use with­in the book.

Kevin Lawrence 20:46

Awe­some. Good, good stuff. Well, hey, thanks for lis­ten­ing. This has been the growth whis­pers pod­cast, and today we’re talk­ing about onboard­ed Brad’s new book that’s com­ing out Novem­ber 1, Novem­ber 1 of 2022. For those of you that might be lis­ten­ing to the back cat­a­logue, I’m Kevin Lawrence in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia, Cana­da and Brad Giles, my co host here is in Perth, Aus­tralia. To sub­scribe if you haven’t already, just hit that sub­scribe but­ton. Keep it com­ing. Feel free to share it with some friends. If you found some good val­ue for video ver­sion go to youtube​.com and Brad and I both have very thor­ough newslet­ter shar­ing the best ideas we can and you can get a hold of Brad at evo​lu​tion​part​ners​.com​.au and get that newslet­ter and you can reach me and my team at lawrence​and​co​.com You can also get the newslet­ter there and learn about past books that I’ve done and you can also learn about Brad’s pre­vi­ous book as well on his web­site. Hope you have an awe­some week. And please do the best you can to onboard your peo­ple and make them more suc­cess­ful soon­er, which is good for them and you. Have a good one.