You're allowed to be terrified

On their first day, everyone in my team gets a book from me about how hard their first months are going to be. It's The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins. It costs less than the welcome lunch, and it has done more for those relationships than any onboarding deck I've seen. There's a small bit of magic in that moment, because it's rare to receive such a personal book on the day you start.

Most new starters spend their first 90 days trying to hide how terrified and overwhelmed they are by the complexity of a new job. The unspoken and informal webs of power. The undocumented processes that allow you to fast-track your work. So the book tells them that I thought about them before they set foot in the building, and also that they're allowed to feel that way.

It looks like a small gesture, but I think there's a real mechanism behind it. Researchers call it perceived organisational support, the belief that your employer values your contribution and cares about your wellbeing. Robert Eisenberger and colleagues introduced the idea in 1986, and a 2015 meta-analysis of 558 studies found that supervisor support is one of the strongest things linked to it. So a new starter is forming a view of the whole company mostly through you, on very little evidence. The same research links that feeling to an obligation to give something back, and I'd be careful with that part. A gift handed over to create a debt is manipulation and people can smell it, so I'd steer clear of that entirely.

The book also gives newbies tools, and the one I'd start with is the breakeven point. When you join a company you cost more than you bring. You're paid from day one, other people spend their time explaining how things work, and your own contribution is still close to zero. At some point those lines cross and you start giving the organisation more than you take from it. Watkins calls that crossing the breakeven point, and he treats reaching it sooner as the goal of any transition.

I find that a relief for people starting out. Being a net cost in your first weeks is simply how it works, and everyone who hired you knows it, so a vague fear of not being good enough becomes a point on a curve that everyone expects you to start below. It also gives them a better question to ask each week, which is what would bring that crossing forward.

The STARS model makes a point I wish someone had made to me much earlier, which is that the right behaviour depends on the situation you've walked into. Watkins names five of them, from a start-up to a turnaround to sustaining success, and each needs a different version of you. Someone who joins a turnaround and behaves as if it's sustaining success will be polite and useless, and the reverse will break something that was working. Most people starting out have never been told this, so they copy whatever worked in their last job and can't understand why it stopped working. I've certainly made this mistake, so God bless the leaders who make the intangible explicit.

Early wins are the part I'd underline for anyone ambitious. Watkins describes change as coming in waves, with small, achievable wins building your credibility before you touch strategy and structure. That's useful for a talented person who wants to present the grand plan in week two, and that person is typically me, along with other similarly delusional, albeit well-intentioned, folks.

It isn't breaking news that a book on its own does nothing. If I hand it over and then disappear into meetings for three weeks, I've shown that person exactly what my support is worth. So I encourage my teams to own their first 90 days. They forge their own plan, we vet it together, and they track and adjust it as they discover more on their journey. I point them to the few tools that matter most for their role and the stage the company is at.

I've never met a new starter who wasn't at the very least a little terrified and moderately overwhelmed. I've certainly met the ones who hid it well, and for a long time I was one of them. But the word is out: beginnings bring uncertainty, which brews anxiety, no matter how sharp and experienced you are. Buy your next hire the book, and help them stop hiding.