Start Faster Than Other Rookies!!

You may have just com­pleted stud­ies and begin work­ing in your first job.  You left your cur­rent com­pany to pur­sue a greener pas­ture at other firms.  You’ve got your­self trans­ferred into another depart­ment of the same com­pany.  They’re (almost) sim­i­lar where you are enter­ing a new envi­ron­ment to work in.  What will you do after you entered a new envi­ron­ment?  Usu­ally, you set­tled down to get accus­tomed to the cul­ture, pace and peo­ple, right?  And hope that you will be in line for pro­mo­tion the next finan­cial year. (But usu­ally you’re not the one in line…) That’s pretty nor­mal.  Let’s try to speed things up a lit­tle by giv­ing you point­ers so that you start fast in the new environment!

First, be con­fi­dent of your­self.  How do you gain con­fi­dence (not com­pla­cent) is to under­stand your­self bet­ter.  Recall the Me fac­tor and per­sonal aware­ness?  You’ve got to look at your abil­i­ties to see if it fits into the com­pany.  If it doesn’t fit, that’s fine.  You know and admit what is lack­ing, and you move towards improve­ment of your­self.  Another place to gain con­fi­dence is to have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the new envi­ron­ment (Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor).  Inves­ti­gate the cul­ture, pace and peo­ple.  Always be alert of the move­ment, pro­to­cols and events hap­pen­ing in the envi­ron­ment.  They will serve you well in future but we will men­tion the ben­e­fits at the later part.

By the end of three months in the new envi­ron­ment, you should have known quite a few basic things.  You should know where you stand, in terms of your abil­i­ties, bound­aries, bosses and co-workers opin­ion of you.  Do you feel that there is still room for improve­ment?  Or are you mov­ing faster/slower than other co-workers?  Faster is a good sign but some­times you have to mod­er­ate with the gen­eral crowd to avoid being an out­cast.  Slower is not too bad as you are excused being a rookie in the team, but it does calls for improve­ment in you.

Now look beyond your­self.  Observe the sur­round­ings.  Who are the real friends and foes in the new envi­ron­ment?  Who are those that will sup­port your pro­posal and deci­sions?  Who are the neu­tral par­ties?  Who are the snakes?  Who are the vul­tures?  Who are the ramp­ing ele­phants?  You do not want to be back­stabbed right?  Nor do you want to hit into major obsta­cles in the new place.  Being obser­vant with your co-workers helps you iden­tify their char­ac­ter­is­tics and work styles, a bet­ter aware­ness of the You fac­tor.  So when you have to work with them some how in future, you know how to bet­ter man­age them.

We are going to go a lit­tle fur­ther in being obser­vant.  We have to know what’s implicit in the new envi­ron­ment (Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor).  Things like pol­i­tics, cul­ture and pro­to­col.  What is the polit­i­cal land­scape in the new envi­ron­ment?  Who are the ones that are hold­ing power to influ­ence deci­sions?  The influ­encer can be any­one, not just your boss.  They can be “Indian Chiefs” in the work place and sur­pris­ingly, the bosses can also be influ­enced by them.  Also look at the dif­fer­ent clus­ter of social cir­cles.  Who are the peo­ple that always mixed together?  What are their com­mon inter­ests?  Why do we need to know this?  Some­times, all you need is to con­tact one of the peo­ple in a par­tic­u­lar social group to influ­ence ideas or con­vey infor­ma­tion thus speed­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion process.

With the above, you should have a bet­ter head start than other rook­ies in the new envi­ron­ment.  Our under­ly­ing mes­sage, be sen­si­tive and obser­vant.  If there is some­thing that you are lack­ing, improve it.  Get to know oth­ers and the sur­round­ing well.  It will serve you well when you need to influ­ence deci­sions in the future!

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