The goal of onboarding is integration

Cadence OneFive is a fully remote team and a horizontal organization, so our onboarding process is meant to ensure that you are a good fit for your role and have a clear pathway to successfully working horizontally. You are your boss — that means it’s on you to find your strategic alignment and path to thriving here.

During the onboarding, as during recruiting, we will treat you respectfully and as a capable adult. You should be prepared to receive and to give honest assessments of how you’re progressing, and so that you and your stakeholders give and get timely feedback, we hold 360s every month during the onboarding period.

What does it look like when we have good fit?

When there’s fit, people working with you notice that even as you find your way around, you are:

making helpful contributions, from just about day one
proactively grooming your tasks and time commitments to deliver early wins
asking insightful questions that reflect having done your homework on our problem space, business goals, and current challenges
contributing to our shared knowledge base and culture through documentation and thoughtful participation
As you get your bearings, making proposals and engaging in advice processes

What does it look like when there isn’t a good fit?

Lack of fit often starts out as “confusion and delay” (to quote Sir Topham Hatt). You may feel like:

You’re working hard, but your contributions aren’t visible to the team
You’ve got lots of time on your hands, you’re not sure what you should be doing, and/or you’re waiting for direction
You’re not working at your best, it’s unclear where you can plug in, or you’re not incredibly excited to get to work every day
You’re finding a lot to complain about, but you don’t feel empowered to fix things.

When there is confusion, we want to catch it before it becomes frustration and disappointment. Do not wait, hoping it will get better. Raise your concerns with your Onboarding Sponsor and consider triggering a 360 right away.

Who’s involved in your onboarding?

Hiring Manager - had the task of managing the recruitment and hiring process for your role. They are often involved in your onboarding, but not always. Either way, they are not your boss.
Onboarding Guide - has the task of helping you get settled into your role as a manager-of-one using horizontal practices. They are not your boss.
Peers and senior team members - work with you day-to-day. They have their own individual and team goals they’re trying to meet and they need your collaboration. They will also help you as needed. They are not your boss.
If you are an hourly employee, “Manager” on Justworks - approves your timesheet. They are not your boss.
You are the star of this onboarding show. It’s up to you to use the tools, process, and people to find a place at Cadence OneFive where you are doing your best work. Everyone else is a resource to you, so please don’t hesitate to ask for help.

Your onboarding guide

Your onboarding guide will be available to you for meetings once per week. They are likely someone you won’t work with closely day to day, and it’s intentional – we want you to meet people in other work groups. They will give you insight into work that you otherwise won’t learn about for a long time, so having access to them will give you a better start on getting context. Don’t think of your meetings with your onboarding guide as an obligation on you. They are gifting you time and attention, so make the most of the opportunity in that spirit.

Your onboarding guide has some specific responsibilities in the 360 process, in addition to generally being your first point of contact on any help you may need:

Help you organize your 360 meetings. The logistics of the 360 (scheduling, inviting your stakeholders, etc) are your responsibility, but your onboarding guide will gently remind you if these tasks are pending.
Facilitate your 360 survey. Prior to your 360 meeting, your stakeholders have the opportunity to provide feedback. Your onboarding guide will help you create, distribute, and compile the results of the survey.
Communicate the company’s side of the double-opt-in. They’ll let you know where you stand before your 360 meeting so you’re not on tenterhooks the whole time.

What’s the 360 Process?

The 360 is an advice process (see alsoAdvice Process How-to) to help you to develop your work plan and manage your onboarding. You are the principal (the person making the proposal–your work plan–about how you want to show up on the team) and the rest of your stakeholders are your sources of input.

Each each 360 review consists of:

You revise your work plan and distribute it to your stakeholders
Your stakeholders provide asynch input to your work plan
You and your consent stakeholders engage in your 360 feedback meeting

What’s the double opt-in?

The double opt-in is simply the affirmation by you and your stakeholders (on behalf of the company) to keep going with your onboarding/work plan. If everything is going well, it’s a non-event because we’re all excited to help you amp up your contributions. If things are not going as well, you or your stakeholders may choose not to opt-in.

If you opt out, you do so with no prejudice on our part. We were excited for you to try out whether Cadence OneFive is the right place for you, and if it’s not, we’re happy to support your transition out by providing, for example, a 2-week severance following a mutually agreeable off-boarding period. To opt-out, simply notify your onboarding sponsor via email.

If one or more of your stakeholders chooses not to opt-in at 30-days, then the company will let you know what the concerns are and ask you to address them in your work plan, if appropriate. If there are opt-outs at 60-days or 90-days, the company may ask you to make a 2-week off-boarding plan, offer severance, or both. Your onboarding guide will let you know your stakeholders’ collective opt-in status prior to your 360 meeting.

The 360 Meeting

At the end of each of the onboarding periods, you’ll have a 45-minute meeting to conduct a diagnostic on how you are doing, how you’re defining where you fit and how you’ll succeed, and where the team can support you, and where you need support.

For the meeting discussions, consider:

Are you successful so far?
What are your deliverables/milestones and have you achieved the ones you expected to achieve by this point?
How have your contributions shown up for the team? How have you helped others succeed?
How have you contributed to building an effective asych/horizontal culture?
Do you have (or heading toward) manager-of-one mastery of your portfolio of work?
Does your understanding of what you’re autonomously responsible for match up with your stakeholders’ understanding?
How does your understanding of how others can help you compare with their own?
How are you positioned to succeed in the coming 30 days (or beyond)?
How do you plan to support your stakeholders’ success?
How do you need to be supported going forward?

The Onbaording Timeline

By the end of onboarding, you should:

Understand the company’s vision, mission, product, business model, and priorities, and constraints
Know exactly how you want to contribute to the success of the company and already made concrete contributions
Feel set up to thrive in our remote, horizontal organization

Throughout your onboarding, please be sure to adopt practices to work in the open and build community. In the Slacksphere, don’t be the audience – be part of the show! See How to Work in the Open

Day One Tasks

Get set up on your tech stack
Write your personal README (template here) and hello-world it in #_announcement
Review other READMEs

First Week

GOAL: Contribute something to a project or to our knowledge base.

You may find yourself in sponge mode the first week and that’s great! But the goal of onboarding is integration, so set out with the intent to do something that helps the team, no matter how small. Maybe it’s some documentation that needs updating. Maybe it’s swatting a bug. Make it your goal to make a contribution this week.

Some activities to keep you moving:

Set up 30-min 1:1 meetings with your onboarding guide and plan your onboarding
Meet you closest working group/peers
Get really familiar with the handbook

First 30 Days

You’ll need to be like Janus:

One side of you is learning all you can about the business we’re engaged in
Another side of you is becoming indispensable in some modest way.

By the end of the first month, you should have the first draft of your work plan.

The work plan is your proposal for an integrative consent process. It articulates for yourself and your colleagues what success will look like for you (and that may change over time). Try to build a work plan with specific goals and measures for success (it should not be a list of activities). Share work plan with the team as early as you’re comfortable doing so. This is an opportunity to let others know what you are doing and where you will need help.

Review:

company-wide goals
other people’s work plans

Articulate:

How do you define success, how will you measure it, and why is that the right way for you to think about it?
How does this ladder up to the quarterly goals?
Are there any gaps or opportunity spaces?
What help from whom will you need to succeed?
How does your work support others?

Some activities to keep you moving:

Schedule 15 min 1:1 meetings to figure out who everyone is and what they do
Meet with your onboarding guide (and set the frequency of your check-ins)
Get to know our culture (values, mission) and read the Going Horizontal book
Use our product
Learn about the company’s products, customers, competitive space and history
Get really familiar with the handbook. Really. Read the policies.

By the 30-day 360

If you don’t have a work plan draft by the time your 30-day 360 comes around, that may be an indication of something not quite right. You should interrogate what’s going on!

Second 30 Days

GOAL: Own your stuff.

You have a draft work plan. It’s gone through at least one round of the integrative consent process and you’re ready to start taking the helm on driving collaboration around your goals and owning your projects. In group communications, you are (hopefully) now comfortable speaking up and actively contributing, as well as actively soliciting collaboration.

By the 60-day 360

You’re able to articulate what wins you have delivered so far for the company.
Stakeholders are able to understand how you see your work from reading your work plan, even if they’re seeing it for the first time.
Your work plan reflects clear understanding of our strategic and quarterly goals by this time, and the how the work you’ve defined for yourself ladders up to the quarterly priorities should be very clear

Third 30 Days

Fit or lack of fit should be clear by this point. Hopefully, you are thriving and we’re excited to see how we can support you further: the training wheels are fully off, and you’re independent and proactive in self-managing your work.

If you’re struggling at the 90-day point or beyond, you will receive clear signals from your consent stakeholders on what is and is not working well for them.

What happens at the end of 6 months?

If you have successfully on-boarded, you will become eligible for post-probationary benefits and, if applicable, you’ll receive your option or stock grant agreements under our Employee Stock Option Plan.

6 months is the maximum duration of the onboarding period. If there is no double-opt-in by the company at the end of any monthly review during the onboarding, we will take steps to transition you out of the company. Again, we’ll do this as respectfully and with an eye to your long-term career success.