«This is the most important week»

I remember my first day at Airhelp.

It was February 2019, more or less one year ago. My first experience in such a dynamic, growth-stage startup.

And I remember my manager telling me something that I would have only later understood:

“This is your most important week.”

Why?

“Because you have something that none else have here: your thinking is free from constraints.“

What did he mean?

That’s what I will do my best to explain in this article:

1. Why the first week is the most important
2. How to make this week the most important one
3. How to structure your most important week

1. The problem

What my manager meant is that the first week in a new role is so important because you are able to see things with no filters and notice what everyone is blind to, takes for granted or considers impossible.

Essentially, you are able to see everything with new eyes, compared to anyone working longer.

In my case, I was able to evaluate critically the way we were measuring things, the process to define OKRs and ask apparently naive, but eye-opening, questions.

“Why don’t we have a marketing member in our team?”, “Why do we use volumes instead of revenues?”, “Why do we share an OKR with another team?”

I was able to note down questions, observations and action points that are still relevant today.

Indeed, over time we get used to the way things are done in organisations, we start to take for granted metrics, people and rituals. And we constrain our thinking.

Typical signs of this phenomenon are observations like:

“This would not be approved by legal”, “This would have to be negotiated with the partner”, “This would be a really difficult sell to the management”.

As the Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino found out in her study, curiosity drops by 20% just a few months after the initial start in a new organisation, as people focus on completing their work and spend less time asking questions about broad processes or overall goals.

And, I would add, as they lose objectivity, complying to “The way we do things here” and being affected by internal and external, often self-imposed, constraints.

2. The (possible) solution

It does not have to be like that. We cannot afford to limit to a few weeks the moment in which we are able to think without constraints.

It is essential to have a process to systematically challenge taken-for-granted assumptions.

These are some of the things that I have tested over time:

1. Talk about your business problem with external people. They will not be affected by your constraints and will ask you eye-opening questions, similar to the ones that you were asking your colleagues in your first week of work. For this purpose, I use bi-weekly “Growth talks” with product leaders of different industries and seniority levels.
2. Talk about your challenges with colleagues working in different areas than yours. It could be someone in any part of the business, in product, in operations, in sales or in marketing. Anyone that can bring a new perspective to the table is the right person.
3. Set aside time for yourself to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions. I maintain an assumption list, where I write down the main things that are constraining my thinking, and I have a weekly 1-hour slot for myself called “Strategy weekly”, in which I make an effort to challenge those assumptions.

3. My most important week

I am lucky, because this week I have another great chance. A chance not only to challenge the assumptions that are limiting myself since I have started at Airhelp, but also to start in a new role. And I do not want to miss it.

I am going to lead the product efforts in a new area, with a different team, new business model and B2C focus. And I do not want to lose the opportunity to make this “The most important week”.

I have asked the team a list of documents (presentations, survey results, etc.), dashboards (analytics, analytics, analytics) and people to talk to, in engineering, design, data, operations and sales.

And I will follow this process:

1. Day 1 — Spend time in a protected setting, out of the office, to go through documents and dashboards.
2. Day 2 — Write a note with my understanding of the business and a list of open points, divided by area (strategy, product, metrics, design, research, sales).
3. Day 3 and 4 — Book 1on1s with all the people that could give me their perspective on my notes and open points.
4. Day 5 — Put together these lessons into a document, with three main sections (current status, future strategy and action plan).

By the end of the week, I will have my view on how things should evolve, that I can use to produce an high-level roadmap for the next couple of months. And refer to it over time, as I will have more information and be more constrained by reality ;)

Today you have your best chance.

Start your day by asking yourself what you are taking for granted and find your own way (or take inspiration from mine) to systematically turn the current week into “the most important week” of your new or existing role.

And have a good (unconstrained) journey,
— Livio
16/02/2020

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