Onboard Yourself 5: Set Longer-Term Goals
Use the buy-in you’ve garnered.
This is the final step in the framework, and when you use the momentum you’ve gained through the quick wins in step four to get buy-in for more challenging projects.
Create a vision
To set the longer-term goals, I suggest you create a vision. You can put this together from your observations and pain points. The vision describes the ideal state you want to get to. It should be something that will stay the same for a long time. It shouldn’t be too prescriptive. And it should be ambitious. You should be a bit uncomfortable with how hard it will be to get there because that helps you make good compromises.
For example, if you observed that people don’t know where information goes, then part of your vision could be that people have a strong mental model of where different types of content belong.
As well as thinking about the content, think about how your team fits into the vision. Part of your vision could be growing the team or setting goals based on metrics like page performance and feedback.
Simply put:
Observations + Pain points + Thinking time = Your vision.
Write a roadmap
Alongside the vision, you can create a roadmap. The roadmap lays out different projects that will get you to the vision. You can roughly size the projects and show how you’ll prioritize them.
Remember to use what you’ve learned about the company to track your work in the same way other people do.
If you’re looking to grow the team, then the roadmap is a handy tool. You can use it to show how you’ll make progress by yourself vs. how much you could do with additional people. Don’t go too crazy since you’ve just joined, but if the rest of the company is growing quickly, you’ll likely need to as well to keep pace.
Next steps
That’s the end of my main steps for onboarding yourself. Good luck, and I hope you’ll use these to set yourself up for success in any new roles.
For an overview of all the steps, see Onboard yourself.
Michael Belton is a Technical Writer at Carted, a software company seeking to empower the future of eCommerce. He’s interested in helping people through content, explaining complex things simply, and making good food. Find him on his Twitter, @mykale37.
