Part of my job is walking into stadiums and facilities I don’t work in.
It means I get a period of clear sight and I try to use that freshness to notice everything. From who speaks first in meetings (or who never does), to which conversations happen outside rather than inside the meeting. Even things like the old broken bin that’s used every single day by players worth £100m, or the cheap disposable cutlery that screams British ‘caff’.
If I’m around long enough, that attention can get cloudy. The environments can start to absorb your freshness. It’s well evidenced why this happens and it’s not exactly a character flaw but attention is expensive, so the brain stops spending it on anything that hasn’t changed lately. A good example is I stop smelling the new reed diffuser in my own house after just minutes of walking into it. Or when I’m in the market for new running trainers and I notice them everywhere.
That’s what I find interesting about onboarding of new staff or athletes. We treat a new starter’s first week as a period where they know the least and so we load them with handbooks and meetings. When in reality, it’s the only week they’ll ever see the place clearer than ever before and there’s an opportunity to utilise that freshness that is so hard to recreate once they’re 6 months in.
Last week’s question was about the promises that quietly slip, so this one is about the things that never get noticed in the first place.
Question 002
What would a new person notice in their first week that the rest of us have stopped seeing?
Discuss it with your team over lunch, or your next commute instead of the usual playlist (in my case, Olivia Dean on repeat).
The thing could be small like the broken bin. The tired paint in the locker room, or lack of smiles in reception. Maybe the meeting that runs twenty minutes over every time because of sloppy structures, or the treadmill that’s not been fixed yet.
Or it could be bigger. Who gets listened to and who clearly doesn’t.
And the dream scenario is if you’ve got someone in their first few weeks with you right now or joining you shortly. Please ask them - it could shine a light on something you have never seen before. They might be polite about it so maybe show them this post so they know why and ask again.
See you next week.