118: George Bradt - Onboarding—Culture First—for the Modern Workforce

George Bradt is the Founder and Chair of PrimeGenesis, an executive onboarding and transition acceleration consultancy. He has authored many books including “The New Leader’s 100-day Action Plan.” George brings his international senior management experience, including witnessing and welcoming new leaders and team members into many large multinational corporations. He shares his experiences highlighting the importance of corporate cultural assimilation and relationship building for new hires. George explains when and how onboarding optimally starts and ends and how to update the process for a distributed workforce.

 

TAKEAWAYS

[02:30] After studying economics, George starts in sales working for an industry leader.

 

[04:02] George brings a successful, different approach to selling.

 

[04:54] George moves to Procter and Gamble, the academy company for marketing at the time.

 

[06:36] The success of a multi-step process for his sales team at Unilever starts George realizing what onboarding means.

 

[08:39] At Procter and Gamble, it was all purposeful, disciplined onboarding.

 

[07:05] How ongoing support and alignment are crucial for the success of new hires beyond the initial onboarding period.

 

 

[09:10] He challenges the traditional notion of onboarding being limited to the first day, week, or month.

 

 

[10:30] Deliberate efforts are necessary to build relationships and company culture in distributed work environments.

 

 

[14:00] George's Forbes article gets much feedback about corporate cultures with distributed workforces.

 

 

[17:02] Onboarding new hires effectively is essential for productivity and retention.

 

 

[20:30] Coca Cola does not have a copy strategy while George is there.

 

 

[21:50] George explains his shift towards focusing on onboarding after realizing an unmet need in the industry.

 

 

[23:11] The four main ideas of effective onboarding.

 

 

[24:35] Why a structured onboarding plan before Day One matters.

 

 

[26:00] Consider an onboarding scenario, highlighting the different sentiments and expectations.

 

 

[27:20] Building relationships before starting a new job to set a positive initial dynamic.

 

 

[28:45] How leaders can onboard new team members, aligning and accomodating them.

 

 

[30:10] He suggests companies allow new hires to conduct due diligence before officially accepting a job offer.

 

 

[32:00] Transparency and providing necessary resources are crucial from Day One.

 

 

[33:25] George shares his experience with Procter and Gamble's rigorous and specific onboarding process, including the one-page memo format.

 

 

[34:50] After six years at Procter and Gamble, George contemplates staying forever.

 

 

[38:00] George explains experiences at Coca Cola that led him to focus on onboarding.

 

 

[39:40] He notes that despite Coca Cola's history, they had a flawed onboarding process for new hires.

 

 

[41:10] The importance of understanding and co-creating the ideal future culture with your team.

 

 

[42:30] He suggests that leaders should pay more attention to onboarding and actively create personal onboarding plans for new employees.

 

 

[44:00] To support onboardin cultural rituals are important to understand.

 

 

[45:15] He emphasizes aligning new hires with the current culture before co-creating an ideal future culture.

 

 

[46:30] George points out the lack of attention to onboarding by leaders and the need for their involvement in the process.

 

 

[47:50] He concludes by highlighting the importance of focusing on culture and relationships in a hybrid work environment.

 

 

IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: As soon as possible after someone accepts their new position, before Day One on the job, get their manager to sit down with them to co-create the person’s own personal onboarding plan, particularly emphasizing culture and building relationships. 

 

 

RESOURCES

 

George Bradt on LinkedIn

Prime Genesis website

George’s book “The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan”

 

 

QUOTES

 

"The one most important idea is you have to converge into an organization or a team before you try to evolve it. You have to become part of the team and evolve it from the inside."

 

“If you're onboarding somebody who's working remotely, you've got to be incredibly deliberate and invest so much time in building the relationships."

 

"Give them the time, give them clarity of direction, give them the resources, and then eventually give them the authority they needed to do what they needed to do."

 

"All that matters is relationships. Any question, any meeting, you know, the answer to any question is you're caring about building relationships."

 

"Acquire them in the way that's going to work going forward, accommodate them so that they can do work, assimilate them so they can work with others, and then stick with it and help them accelerate."

 

"Ultimately, culture is the way people behave, the way they relate, their attitudes, their values, the environment. What's different with remote work is how deliberate you have to be about relationships."