Finding your feet in a large company

Joining a new company can be a challenge, even more, challenging when it’s a large organisation with so many layers to it. You can easily feel overwhelmed, start questioning your value and that’s when impostor syndrome starts kicking in. Which adds the pressure to make an impact as quickly as possible. It can be a bigger challenge onboarding remotely but the principles are still the same.

Throughout my career I have worked in many different types of organisations and here are my thoughts on how to find your feet in a large company.

Understand the business

You may have the instinct to get stuck in as soon as you land, you may also see loads of problems and issues that you feel you can easily sort out. Maybe your previous company had better processes. However, nobody likes that new person who joins constantly talks about their previous company and wants to introduce all the things they had done previously. 

Alternatively, you should spend time to get an understanding of the business. Why is the business the way it is? What decisions lead to its current state? What have they tried previously? 

During a design, project time is spent understanding the context, using the same approach to get an understanding of the business. This will help to give you context and build a picture of the business which in turn allows catering your approach to potential changes or introductions to the business. 

Understand your colleagues and their challenges 

The best way to understand how you can add value is by speaking to as many people as possible. Focus your first couple of weeks on this. Aim to meet a variety of people at different levels not just your immediate peers. 

In these conversations, you want to use it to not only introduce yourself and what you do but also find out about your colleague’s challenges and how you can help them. What are their expectations of you? What keeps them up at night? How can you help support them? But demonstrating that you want to understand the business is a great way to build relationships with others but showing that you are listening.

Identify the gaps you can fill

From the conversations you have with colleagues you should find some themes emerging. These themes can be used to identify the key business needs and in turn, give you an idea of some key areas to focus on. 

Think about how you can make an impact with what you have identified. It is useful at this stage to gather feedback from peers on your thoughts and findings, this helps to gauge if you are on the right track and also refine your ideas and thoughts which leads to a higher probability of getting buy-in from your colleagues.

Use what you are good at to fill some gaps and drive them forward 

So you have identified some gaps and know that you are on the right track. Now it’s time to think about how you have used your skills and expertise to drive some solutions forward. Maybe you are great at using data, or storytelling - how can you use these skills to help the business and also raise your profile. Focusing on the skills you have and what makes you great help to keep imposter syndrome at bay and gives you confidence as you are finding your feet.

Joining a new company is never easy, moving from a company that you know like the back of your hand into a big unknown. If you take away one thing from this post it would be to focus on making meaningful connections by talking to and meeting as many people as you can.