Vicious and Virtuous Cycles in New Employee Onboarding
Onboarding a new employee is a critical process that can determine the success or failure of the employee in the new role. According to Michael Watkins, author of the book “The First 90 Days: any career transition are crucial and can have a huge impact on long-term. The book introduces 2 terms “vicious cycles” and “virtuous cycles”. While the former talks about the common traps involved in a career transition, the latter talks about approaches to avoid the traps and set up the employee for long term success.
In this post, we will explore the first term “vicious cycle”. In the next post, we will explore the term “virtuous cycle”.
So, what is a vicious cycle and when does it occur? As people make career transitions, a few common traps can hold people from achieving success.
Sticking with what we know: We believe we will be successful by doing the same thing that we did in our previous role.
Falling prey to the “action imperative”: We feel we need to take action and we try too hard, too early to put our own stamp on the organization. Setting unrealistic expectations: we don’t negotiate our mandate or establish clear, achievable objectives. We may perform well but still fail to meet the expectations.
Attempting to do too much: we rush off in all directions, launching multiple initiatives in the hope that some will pay off. We do not deploy mass of resources to focus on critical initiatives.
Coming in with “the” answer: we come in with our mind made up, or we reach conclusions too quickly about “the” problems and “the” solutions.
Engaging in the wrong type of learning: we don't build the cultural insight, relationship and information channel as we are too busy learning about the technical part of the business
Neglecting horizontal relationships: we don’t fully understand what it takes to succeed, and we miss the early opportunities to build supportive alliances as we spend too much time building vertical relationships.
Have you seen this happening with you and seen others falling in these traps too? This is more common than what we think.
To sum it up, look at the chart below.
Every employee wants to be successful and should be set up for success. To achieve this, the objective is not to avoid the vicious cycle but to create a virtuous cycle.
We will be looking at how to create a virtuous cycle in the next post tomorrow. Watch out this space!