If you are an experienced leader in a completely new role, this article is for you. I haven’t started a completely new position in many years; however, I do talk with leaders in this situation all the time, so I think it’s worth sharing some wisdom.

If you have recently started a new role, I know exactly how you feel. You are trying desperately to memorize names, find the conference rooms, and decipher company acronyms, all while trying to make a good first impression. It’s utterly exhausting. Fortunately, you are also in the honeymoon phase of employment, so your general enthusiasm carries you through each day.

The first horrifying discovery

Something else starts to happen almost right away. You notice something off. You notice something missing. You see something that flies in the face of best practices. You see something that violates all of your collective wisdom and experience.

You think to yourself, “That’s okay. That’s why they hired me. I can fix this.” You rest easy for a bit and start to devise a plan to rectify it. You might even meet with your new boss to share your insight and get buy-in for action.

Then something else happens.

The second horrifying discovery

Just when you become mentally prepared to handle the first mess, a second one emerges. It may be even worse than the first. You think to yourself, “Oh my goodness, how does this place even operate?” The first discovery is still top of mind, but you feel the need to re-evaluate its importance based on the new information you gathered.

Horrifying discoveries 3 through n

Unfortunately, this process continues on for a bit, and you really have a hard time relatively prioritizing all of this information. I was in this situation about four years ago. That’s when my friend, Nick Hernandez, gave me a call and asked, “What’s your Mean Time Between Horrifying Discoveries?”

It’s a funny term, especially for people with an engineering and operations background, like myself. We often measure technology resiliency in terms of Mean Time Between Failures or MTBF. If a technology has a long mean time between failures, then that’s good.

The Mean Time Between Horrifying Discoveries works like this:

When the Mean Time Between Horrifying Discoveries is short, you cannot possibly make heads or tails out of what next steps to take. Frankly, you are a little spooked that you’ll find more skeletons behind every closet door.

Once the Mean Time Between Horrifying Discoveries starts to lengthen, you can start to gain some confidence. Don’t get me wrong. On one hand, you aren’t confident at all, because you just discovered a whole lot of horrifying things that you need to deal with, but on the other hand, you start to believe that perhaps you’ve seen the worst of it all.

Once that happens, then you can make a plan. How long does it take? I’m not exactly sure, but usually, 30-60 days should do it. Then you can prioritize that list of horrifying discoveries and tackle the most important, most strategic, and most urgent ones first.

The art of being new

There’s something else you should know. The fact that this term exists and the fact that I can write this article means that you are not alone and you’re not crazy. That’s the good news. New roles always come with some ugly surprises. After all, that’s why they hired you. The first few months of any new role are a mixed bag of disorientation, euphoria, and horrifying discoveries.

The disorientation will fade first. Don’t forget to enjoy the euphoria of the honeymoon phase. Don’t let the horrifying discoveries scare you too much, especially when you know you haven’t seen them all yet. Stay the course, see what there is to see, then start making your plans.

Yes, you are an experienced leader, but this is a new role. You may feel an internal pressure to start performing immediately at the level you did in your previous role. Don’t worry, it will come back. You will get there soon enough. Be patient with yourself in those first few months.

If you are new in your role, I hope your Mean Time Between Horrifying Discoveries starts to lengthen soon, but don’t be surprised if there are more than a few big ugly things you need to deal with.

Is one of your colleagues going through this right now? Do them a favor and share this article.

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