My logistics guy emailed me the other day. Had a question that he wanted me to answer, or rather find out the answer for him. The email could’ve been written in Martian and it wouldn’t have made a difference. I didn’t understand what he was asking of me, let alone figuring out who I needed to track down to get answers from. Just so happens, every single nearby cube was empty. I had no lifeline. Not one. I had maybe 2 seconds of hesitation before I picked up the phone and just called the guy up. I dished out my “New” card right then and there and confessed that I had no idea where to even begin to help him out and if he could help me to help him. Needless to say, he was more than understanding. We quickly found out that I was not the best person to provide the answers he needed. He was able to redirect his question elsewhere and had it resolved in due time.
A couple days later, an hour before I got ready to leave one day, a vendor partner emailed me about an invoice that had been sent earlier in the month but was never paid. I’ve only been on the job for 6 weeks and have approved maybe 1 invoice, which is barely enough experience to even begin to understand how our billing system works. I am completely ignorant as to where I should even begin to track down an unpaid invoice that I’ve never seen before because it was never routed through my system. So I jumped the first person I could find and I asked. I asked until I found the right person for the problem. I asked until I understood what was going on and what the solution might be and how I should communicate the situation and relay the limited information I had to our partner.
None of these scenarios were drafted up in any transition document, and for good reason. Part of on-the-job training is about improvisation and trouble-shooting. You can’t always expect there to be a standard operating procedure or an all-encompassing process in place all the time to walk you through the steps of every possible situation that may arise. Hand-holding is comforting only for so long before you start to get clammy palms. And then you need to figure out how to grope and probe and navigate on your own.
Because as I realized, the purpose of hand-holding is not to provide you the fallback excuse for passiveness and regression; it’s your reassurance to stride forward into foreign territory, and to blaze through all the uncertainties with a new trail of your own.
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