The biggest mistake as a new hire
You are about to start a new job. How you prepare for it can be the reason why you will fail.
A reader reached out for advice. He recently started a job in a new company, as Head of Design. It’s the first time he takes on a Head of Design role, so he has two questions:
What is a Head of Design typically supposed to do?
What was the biggest mistake I made, as Head of Design?
Funnily enough, it is possible for me to answer both questions at once. Because the biggest mistake I personally made as a Head of Design was, precisely, being too obsessed by what a Head of Design is typically supposed to do.
Let me explain.
The role of a map
When asking questions like the ones above, what you are really trying to do is to build a map. A map is a simplified representation of a reality. Its purpose is to help you better navigate the reality.
For example, a geographical map is a simplified representation of a city. It omits certain minor details, to help you see better the big picture.
In the case of a new job, what you need is an expectations map: a summary of what is expected of you in this new role.
The map versus the reality
Now, why can it be a mistake to ask what a Head of Design is typically supposed to do?
Because, by doing so, you’re building the map the wrong way.
It’s a bit like planning to move to Tokyo, and asking: What is it like to live in a very big city? The question is so generic that it will lead to vague answers or, worse, to the meaningless average of Tokyo, Mexico City, Istanbul, Shanghai, Cairo and New York situations.
Similarly, when your expectations map is built from general questions, it will lead you to make absurd decisions. By being focused on what you are supposed to do, according on your job title and the typical expectations that are associated with it, you will start to create problems where there are none, instead of paying attention to the problems and opportunities that are in front of you.
Subconsciously, you will try to change the reality so that it looks a bit more like your neat little map.
Following a flawed map
The danger of a map is that it rapidly replaces the reality, in your mind.
Here’s an example: let’s say you learn that one of typical roles of a Head of Design is to bring ideas that will delight customers, in order for the company roadmap to not be just a list of business-centric projects.
Now, as you start your new job, you discover that the roadmap is already full of brilliant ideas. People from every department are pitching in the type of customer-centric ideas that you thought you would be bringing to the table.
According to your map, that’s a problem: other people are stepping on your territory. If you follow your map, you will be tempted to reduce the number of contributors to the roadmap process, as a way of demonstrating the value of your customer research expertise.
Your map, carefully prepared before taking the job, is not helping you — it’s making you blind. Blind to the fact that, maybe, you have joined a company with a strong (and rare!) customer-centric culture, which could lead you to develop projects that no typical Head of Design could ever dream of.
That’s why coming in a new job with a ready-made map can lead to mistakes: on top of giving you advice that may not be relevant, it’s also a distraction from the reality.
Mapping the reality
To reduce the risk of making that mistake, the secret is not to avoid creating a map — because you do need a mental model to navigate your job. Rather, you should draw an expectations map that is inspired from your reality, not from the theory behind your job title.
The book The First 90 Days, written by Michael Watkins, provides great suggestions on how to do that when starting a new job. Here’s a few:
Have 5 conversations with your manager. Make sure you have explicit discussion about the situation of the company, her expectations towards you, the style of collaboration she would prefer, the resources that will be at your disposal, and the personal development topics you should work on.
Ask the same questions to everyone. Define a couple of key questions about the company and the expectations towards your role, and systematically ask those questions to every single person you meet. The repetition of questions will help you see patterns much faster. These patterns will inform your map.
Run a weekly internal check-in. At the end of every week, go through a small checklist of questions. It will force you to look at the reality and adjust your map based on your most recent observations.
Next time you start a new job, try it out. And let me know if you ever fell into such a trap.
Last article
Another reader, Julien Zmiro, reacted to the previous article about invisible barriers. He saw a parallel between the difficulties to learn Rummikub and the mathematic concept of multiplication:
"Have you ever tried multiplying roman numerals? It’s incredibly, ridiculously difficult. That’s why, before the 14th century, everyone thought that multiplication was an incredibly difficult concept, and only for the mathematical elite. Then arabic numerals came along, with their nice place values, and we discovered that even seven-year-olds can handle multiplication just fine. There was nothing difficult about the concept of multiplication — the problem was that numbers, at the time, had a bad user interface." — Excerpt from Ex-Apple Designer Creates Teaching UI That “Kills Math” Using Data Viz
Next article
Teaser: the next article will be sent on November 25th 2020, a bittersweet date for many French people, including me. Can you guess why?
If you guess correctly, you will get to choose one word I will have to use in an upcoming article.
Thank you to Sabrina Cordaro, Anthony Diao, Laurent Memmi, Ayça Sevkal-Guyot and Luc Chaffard for reading early drafts of this article.