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No One Is Born Knowing How You Work
In my consulting work, there’s a scene I see play out again and again: a CEO or manager hires someone with proven experience, convinced that experience guarantees immediate results. A few weeks later, disappointment sets in.
“I hired them because they were supposed to already know how to do the job,” they tell me, genuinely frustrated. But when I dig deeper, I find the same frustration on the other side.
The new hire doesn’t complain about a lack of technical knowledge, but about something much simpler: no one explained how things are done at your company. They were introduced to the team, shown to their desk, and put to work — without thorough onboarding, without a process manual, and without anyone telling them what their boss specifically expected.
And here’s the underlying mistake: many of us assume that two companies or departments that do “the same thing” do it the same way. But that’s not the case.
Two recurring causes
Onboarding that never happened. Every company has its own approach, makes decisions differently, and prioritizes work in its own way, regardless of the department. That specific knowledge doesn’t come with the person: it lives inside the company, and if it isn’t passed on to the employee, they’ll do the job based on what they already know.
Siloed experience. The problem gets worse when we hire people from large companies, where roles are so specialized that the person only mastered one part of the process. When they join a smaller company where they have to handle the entire process, they feel lost — not because they lack ability, but because they’ve never done it from start to finish.
I agree that previous experience is an asset, but it’s not a substitute. As their new boss, make the most of it, but don’t forget it’s no guarantee of immediate results.
Design real onboarding:
Document your processes and train new employees to learn and follow them.
Spell out how you expect them to prioritize tasks, make decisions, and report on their work, whatever their department.
Take it as seriously as the results you need from them. Teaching “how we do things here” isn’t optional: skipping it costs you more than investing in it.
If your new hires aren’t delivering results, before you question their ability, ask yourself whether you ever trained them and told them, clearly and in detail, how you expect them to do their job.
“Experience gets an employee hired; onboarding is what makes them productive.”