Start 'em Off With a BANG!, Part 1: People

Think back to a period where you got smart fast. Not book-smart, but "hey, I really know how to do this!" smart. It was likely a period where you had bitten off a bit more than you could chew, and had a scary deadline looming in the near future: so you put nose to grindstone, learned what you absolutely needed to learn to meet the deadline, and emerged perhaps exhausted, but certainly more knowledgeable and self confident.

This is generally true of people – we learn when we must learn.

This fundamental observation can be used to bring new hires up to speed as quickly and usefully as possible. When I bring on a new hire, I make it a point to NOT start them off with a "softball" project. Rather, I hand them a project that is:

• Critical for the success of the team they are on – failure or poor quality will be obvious to a
• At least a little bigger and/or more complex than anything they've worked on before
• Has a relatively unmovable deadline – a deadline that will cause great pain to many people if it slips

This puts a ton of pressure on the new hire – they will have some rough days, and some rough nights – and so will I. In the end, we will either win together, or we will lose together. If they perform poorly, you know that this person was not the right one for the job. But if they succeed, then you've accomplished quite a bit:

• You got some real work done by a new employee, bypassing the long "coming up to speed" curves that most organizations seem to wallow in.
• The new hire has more self-confidence than before, usually much, much more. She faced something scary, probably something she thought she could not do, and she prevailed.
• The new hire has confidence in you: You gave her this impossible project, and you knew she could do it, when even she did not.
• The new hire gains the respect of his or her peers, quickly moving from "the new person" to a full-fledged team member.
• Also, the new hire is forced to meet and mix with her coworkers quickly, as no real project can be done in isolation – it requires constant interaction with the team.

Note that this process is a big project for the manager, not just for the new hire: In my experience, you cannot simply delegate a scary project with a terrifying deadline, walk away, and hope for the best. Rather, you must work closely with the new hire, dropping into their office perhaps twice a day to:

• Advise. "That IS a non-trivial subject, but I read a great chapter on that – why don't you get that book from the library – it may be super helpful. Also, I think that Bill recently had to deal with something similar – why don't you talk with him?"
• Critique. "That code looks pretty good, but where are your comments? And what happens if the user types in something ridiculous here – will the program blow up?"
• Keep them on schedule. "Let's see, you're two weeks into a four-week project, and it doesn't smell half-done to me. What do you think? What can we all do to work together to make sure that this is delivered on schedule?"

While this requires more effort than the typical "here's some stuff to read, why don't you read it and start learning about what we do and we'll talk again in a few days" approach, it is absolutely critical work if one wants to end up with a department full of self-reliant and self-confident folks that quickly create highly-functional outcomes. Setting the wrong tone at the beginning of a new hire's tenure will likely permanently diminish their drive and effectiveness, which, in turn, can spread to the rest of the group, department, and/or company.

Caveat

It is important to keep in mind that the goal here is not to ensure that you develop a co-worker who is dependent on you. Rather, the goal is to cultivate good habits in a person who will quickly become self-sufficient. As soon as a person starts moving in the right direction, it is important to start backing off. At this point, they will either maintain the momentum and flourish, becoming self-sufficient as is necessary in an excellent organization. Or they will stall, indicating that they are high-maintenance types, requiring the kind of effort that slows an organization down.