Congratulations, you got the job. Now resist the urge to immediately start proving it. Spend the first week breathing, listening, and figuring out what you're actually walking into, not fixing anything yet.
What to actually do in your first five days, what to deliberately not touch yet, and how to introduce yourself in a way that earns trust instead of just announcing a title.
Were You Already On This Team?
Most of the moves below still apply either way: learning the workflow from a manager's view, saying what you don't know yet out loud. The introduction is the one place it really changes, so Move 02 splits into two paths depending on which one you are.
01
Listen before you diagnose
Spend the week watching, not deciding. Sit in on real meetings, read how work actually moves, resist the urge to fix anything, you don't have enough context yet to know if it's actually broken.
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02
Introduce yourself, then meet every person 1:1
How you open this depends on whether the team already knows you. Either way, the individual 1:1 is where the real information surfaces, not the group meeting.
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03
Learn the actual workflow, not the org-chart version
Sit in on a real piece of work getting done and watch where it gets stuck. The org chart tells you who's involved. It doesn't tell you where the friction actually is.
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04
Say what you don't know yet, out loud
Naming that you're still learning builds more trust than pretending you already have it figured out. Your team already knows you're new, pretending otherwise just costs you credibility.
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Introducing Yourself
How you introduce yourself, as a group and 1:1, depends on whether the team already knows you. Both paths, plus the script and templates, are in Move 02: Meet every person on your team 1:1 →