9 Secret PM Hacks to Make Your First Month a Breeze
Congratulations! You found an amazing job, had a fantastic first day, received a bunch of training manuals that linked to dozens of other training handbooks, and even started to meet with colleagues.
If your conversations sound like mine:
Team member: “Hi Adi, how are you?”
Adi: “Wonderful, Thank you! I’m having a really great time and learning a lot.”
Team member: “Just remember to take it easy. Don’t panic. There’s a lot to digest. You know… it took me a few months to understand what was going on. At first, I was overwhelmed.”
If you weren’t stressed before, a conversation like that would put you even less at ease.
This is why I had to pull out my wand and create some productivity hacks to help me and enjoy my onboarding.
Interested? Here we go.
My 10 productivity hacks for smooth onboarding:
- Email folders, rules, and follow-ups reminders
Did you know that the average professional spends 28% of the workday reading and answering email (according to a McKinsey analysis)?
For the average full-time worker in America, that amounts to a staggering 2.6 hours spent and 120 messages received per day.
Having so many emails land in my inbox made it challenging for me to understand what should I read, which emails were action items, and what I can disregard.
After my first week, I decided to apply the following rule system:
2 Folders where I manually move emails:
ToDo — emails that require my immediate attention/action (< Week)
Knowhow — a folder to store all of the onboarding documents, HR emails, and useful links
Rules:
● 7 folders with automated rules to store specific reports organized by topic. (The reports are sent by 100 team members from my department.)
● 1 folder to catch the corporate newsletter.
● 1 folder to catch the annoying messages of OOO/OOP.
I only apply rules on emails where it won’t matter if I read them whenever I have time (or not :).)
I’ve tried to create a minimal amount of folders because once an email lands in a folder, the search function won’t find it, and thus it’ll take more time to find the email.
Another amazing productivity tool is “Outlook insight.”
It allows me to catch up on email — listing my 5 most recent unread emails from my most important contacts on requests. The insight tool allows me to see the requests that I’ve asked from other people and follow up on them.
You can implement “To-Do” reminders, so you always stay on track of tasks, using data from your emails.
You can set up one-on-one meetings with certain contacts you may fall behind with.
And my favorite feature, “View outstanding tasks.” The insight tool suggests tasks from my sent email and allows me to add it and book time for it.
2. Timezone Chrome add on-
I’m part of a team who works remote across diverse continents. (I’m working with teams from the U.S., Africa, Europe, and UAE.)
Setting a meeting with team members from different time zones was so confusing to me until my great buddy revealed to me to the genius of the “Figure It Out” Chrome add on.
FIO lets you see the current time of locations around the world based on your choices.
3. XML bookmark favorites from colleagues
Have multiple systems? Different projects? Many resources?
I asked my fabulous buddy to export his favorite to XML. In a second, I got all of the excellent links organized and stored in my Favorites bar.
4. 1 on 1 meeting questions
The first few weeks of a new job can feel like a blur. Having a weekly 1 on 1 meeting with your manager is a great way to get more clarity on what going on and to strengthen the working relationship.
Here are the questions that I used in my first 1:1 with my superb manager to get clarity about the business, my job, and working style:
- What is the vision, mission, and purpose of our business?
- How does our team contribute? What role do we play? How can I best contribute to our continued momentum and success?
- What metrics are in place to measure success? What are your measures of success?
- Who are my internal and external partners?
- Who will I collaborate with most closely to get work done?
- Who should I get to know as a part of my onboarding?
- What key challenges are we facing in our business? What are our opportunities?
- What current initiatives should I be aware of?
- How should I think about success in my role?
- How can I make the most impact?
- What are a few quick wins I will be able to accomplish within my first two months?
- What are your typical working hours? When is the best time to reach you?
I’m lucky to have two buddies that help me to ramp up. When I first met them, I asked the following questions:
- Who are my internal and external partners?
- Who will I collaborate with most closely to get work done?
- Who should I get to know as a part of my onboarding?
- Where are we in the current business cycle (budgeting, planning, and so on)? What do I need to do and know to contribute to these processes?
- What our specific job responsibilities? What are the main things that I’ll work on or be responsible for?
- What standing meetings should I attend? Who should I email to get the meeting invitation in my calendar?
- What tools will I use in my job?
5. Project management system — Trello
Trello is a project management tool that allows you to create boards for each of your projects; you create lists across your board and then add cards to each list.
Within each card, you can specify a due date, attach files, add descriptions, checklists, and labels. You can drag & drop cards and lists, which makes everything easy to move around.
This is how I organize my board:
The most important thing when working with a project management tool is to have just one source of truth. If you love to write tasks in notes, make sure to add them to Trello as well.
Form a habit — I used to watch the Trello board every morning and afternoon at specific hours. That way you will get used to looking at your task board
6. OneNote —
OneNote is a digital notebook that automatically backs up to Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud. There are many useful things that you can do and store on OneNote.
A nice hack I wanted to share is setting a page for each contact you are working with. You can add to this page the meeting summaries and points that you would like to raise when you meet/talk with them in the future.
7. OKR
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are defined as a metric that outlines company and team “objectives” along with the measurable “key results” that define the achievement of each objective. OKRs represent aggressive goals and define the measurable steps you’ll take towards achieving those goals. They’re typically used to set quarterly goals, but they can also be used for annual planning.
Understanding your company and team’s OKR (or KPI) will help you understand your goals and what you should prioritize (and will make it easier to say “no” to certain requests that don’t meet your OKR.) Knowing the OKR ensures you will be measured and valued.
8. Building a professional network
Building a network is one of the most important things you can do to advance your career.
The first two months are a rare window to set many meetings and get to know colleagues and higher ranks in your organization.
Many people don’t know how to go about it, but networking isn’t quite as complicated as it sounds.
Successful networking involves building authentic relationships. The easiest way to start a conversation and build a rapport that gets you to the real thing is to start with a common topic of interest.
Use the first 2 months to set meetings with colleagues. Learn about what they do and how you can collaborate. By the end of each session, make it your objective to understand how can you be a networking giver as much as a taker, which means, how you can help them.
By the end of each meeting, ask your partner two questions: “who do you think I also should meet?” and ”how can I help you?”. (In your follow up email, ask for intros with the people your partner mentioned.)
It takes time to cultivate relationships. When you find ways to connect with people authentically.
If you value your connections and make them a priority, there is no doubt that they will open doors and enrich your professional — and personal — life for years to come.
9. Don’t panic. Don’t rush it
Remember that onboarding is not orientation. Orientation is a crash course on where to find the toilets, how to work the printer, and who to speak to when you’ve got a complaint. Onboarding, on the other hand, is a longer, more in-depth process, and it takes time to know how to execute the job, how to be a team player, and how to contribute toward the achievement of the company vision.
Don’t rush it. It takes a while to be successful.
Still a bit panicked? Go to a nearby mirror, take a deep breath, and remember that you are fantastic. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been picked for this fantastic job.
10. [Your Suggestions]
You can always comment some of your most secret tips, I’ll be glad to append them to the list to help others.
I hope these tips will really boost your onboarding productivity. Please clap and share the post if you liked it and comment if I missed any extension/tip.
