The Engineering Executive's Primer

Chapter 16. Onboarding Peer Executives

While many companies build out an elaborate Engineering onboarding program, the process for onboarding new executives tends to be an ad hoc, chaotic affair because it’s used too infrequently to ever become excellent. Part of the problem is similar to that of an executive job search: every executive and role is unique, and it’s hard to create a repeatable program to handle one-of-a-kind onboardings.

The other part of the problem is that the executive’s manager, the CEO, usually hires a new executive to solve a specific problem. Once the executive starts, the CEO will often turn to focus on their next biggest problem. This happens so frequently that the two most common frustrations I hear from executives about onboarding their peers are, “Isn’t this the CEO’s job? Why should I worry about it?” followed shortly thereafter by, “Why didn’t I worry about it more? I knew leaving it to the CEO was a mistake.”

Even when the CEO is engaged, most new executives want to impress their CEO. You’ll often find new executives struggling a bit with onboarding, while simultaneously reassuring the CEO that they’re doing fine. Your job as a peer executive is to help the new executive succeed, even if no one tells you it’s your job.

In this chapter, I’ll break down onboarding peer executives into five topics:

• Why executive onboarding matters

• How onboarding executives differs from onboarding engineers

• How to share your mental framework

• Defining your roles in respect ...