In my PM journey, I've joined new teams on multiple occasions (often within a company). And over time, I've learned how to make this transition more efficient. Below are some of my learnings.
Get in-person time ASAP
When I’m on a remote team, I try to get in-person time with my colleagues as early as possible. There is just a different type of learning and trust I’m able to gain when in-person.
For example, in a previous role, I joined a company after an acquisition and visited the team a couple of weeks post-announcement. Despite my familiarity with the company from previous collaboration and due diligence, spending time in person allowed me to experience the company culture firsthand — and in this case, see how much they lived by their value of being kind to one another. We also had time to go on hikes and drink whiskey, and I learned what motivated each person. All of this led to a higher level of trust (almost over night) between us.
Be disciplined; focus on only a few things
This one and the next one are probably obvious. But, when I start a new role, one challenge I face is the desire to learn everything at once. To address this, I create a list of 3-5 key challenges in the first couple of weeks and concentrate solely on those items.
For instance, in one case, my ownership area spanned many products, none of which I had any familiarity with. However, there were a lot of folks on the team who knew the ins and outs of all the products and I quickly realized what the team needed help on was delivering on time and so that’s where I focused.
To create that priority list, some of my strategies are ask team members the same questions and noting what they don’t say/what they all say and conducting pre-mortems to create a space for open communication within the team (more here).
The second challenge is having the discipline to stay focused. For that, I find the best way is to create a killer to-do list (more here).
Get immersed in the customers
Especially at the start of a new role, I dedicate at least an hour every day to understanding customer use cases and problems.
I research different segments of customers (e.g. top customers by year over year growth and overall revenue, largest churned customers) by talking directly to customers, talking to internal customer-facing reps, watching recorded calls or looking at collateral created for the customer.
I then go back to my team with a synthesis of my research to get a sense of whether it aligns with their experience.
Customer discovery—in particular, discovering customers appreciation and opportunities—is always is one of the most funs parts of onboarding for me.
Prioritize relationships that were bad in a previous role
As a PM, I interact with various functions across the company, including Marketing, Sales, Implementation, Solutions, Design and Engineering—to name a few. When transitioning into a new role, I prioritize building rapport with functions that are both necessary to my role and where my prior experience has been negative.
I mention negative prior experience since, for me, these functions initially seem less appealing to engage. But it’s worth investing in early. Twice, I took months to form a good relationship with a key function, mainly due to a bad previous experience. Each time, I regretted waiting so long since the new folks in the function were lovely, and I missed out on months of learning and product growth.
Of course, it’s also important to prioritize relationships that have been historically bad at the company along with any that are just necessary to do the role. However, in my experience, I naturally prioritize those relationships since I’m not scared.
Don’t schedule 1:1 recurring meetings
One of my time saving tactics is to not set up recurring meetings, especially 1:1s, in the first couple months of a job.
To be clear, there are some 1:1s that are necessary like 1:1s with reports, a manager or skip levels. For me, it’s typically my manager and engineering lead. In almost every other case, it’s not necessary to schedule a recurring meeting and you will learn in time who are the right people you need to talk to, at what cadence and at what time of day.
If you're concerned about appearing impolite due to your company's 1:1 culture, you can try what has worked for me. When someone suggests scheduling a recurring 1:1, I either explain my reasoning (my why=”I'm reserving time for ad-hoc team meetings and ensuring I'm available for same-day discussions”) or propose trying it for a while with an expiration date on the calendar event.
I can't speak to how important this is to do outside of the PM individual contributor role, but this has been one of my most effective time-saving tactics.