LINEUP is one zone of the lay-of-the-land map that any onboarding team member needs and wants.

LINEUP captures the informal, formal and deal-breaker deadlines and events on the annual calendar--and how far in advance should someone be thinking about them. Regular meetings. Optional meetings that really aren’t that optional. Monthly association lunches worth attending. Reports and summaries the person down the hall or a compliance department in Washington is expecting every quarter.

When someone leaves a position, rarely are they leaving with a completely cleared out INBOX. Things are in progress; DECISIONS are in progress.

One of the best ways an onboarder can "orient" herself to a new role is to understand the situations and decisions she’s stepping into. Completed pre-departure by the job incumbent or team manager, this tool's lists and short descriptions preview pending decisions along with other decisions further down the road.

It can take someone new to an organization weeks or months to accidentally happen upon the "right people." And the right people might not be the obvious ones!

A contributor leaving her position is in the best position to suggest good first conversations for a successor. The FIRST CONVERSATIONS tool prompts incumbent notes covering the “who with” and “what to discuss.” The right first conversations can make onboarding life easier in all sorts of ways.

New positions come with overloaded buckets of information in the form of project files, studies, outlines, checklists, summaries, annual reports, meeting minutes, and client surveys. Guidance on first things to review is priceless. Completed by the job incumbent or an in-place team, the FIRST READS tool helps the onboarder quickly get both feet on the ground, offering a few early wins.

What does the person(s) taking on the contributor’s work need to know? The MORE NOTES tool goes wide—extending beyond “who to meet” and “work in progress” information. What might surprise the successor? How can his learning curve be accelerated? How does he build his team's confidence in him?

In some situations, who someone knows is just as (or more) important as the what they know. Use the NETWORK tool to tap information about the contributor’s internal and external networks, along with best networking methods.

A checklist developed by the team for departmental and role specific onboarding. Information an onboarder uses after signing up for benefits and after the tour of the office. The tool format makes it easy for several people to contribute ideas and tasks to the checklist prior to the onboarder's arrival.

The structured, defined, more routine pieces of onboarding have happened—they’re done. Now, that new employee is climbing out of the deep end of the pool, stepping up, meeting with customers and working on early assignments.

SIX WEEKS IN is a check in, used by the onboarder and his manager in initial coaching discussions part-way through the probation period. In discussions that pave the way for future talent management activities.

In some work, timing is everything. In all work, timing means something. Timeframes. Efficiency. Sequence. Schedules. Deadlines. Often, time and timing are cultural to the organization. How do the ways an organization thinks about time affect a specific role, your customers, or the quality of your work?

In a specific contributor’s work, where does timing count? Good for the new person to know. Good for everyone to think about from time to time.

Where do things stand? What projects, assignments, promises and expectations just can’t be completed or met before the contributor leaves? What gaps and cracks can be anticipated—and avoided? What must be addressed in the first 30-60 days post departure?

LINEUP is one zone of the lay-of-the-land map that any onboarding team member needs and wants.

LINEUP captures the informal, formal and deal-breaker deadlines and events on the annual calendar--and how far in advance should someone be thinking about them. Regular meetings. Optional meetings that really aren’t that optional. Monthly association lunches worth attending. Reports and summaries the person down the hall or a compliance department in Washington is expecting every quarter.

When someone leaves a position, rarely are they leaving with a completely cleared out INBOX. Things are in progress; DECISIONS are in progress.

One of the best ways an onboarder can "orient" herself to a new role is to understand the situations and decisions she is stepping into. Completed pre-departure by the job incumbent, this tool's lists and short descriptions preview pending decisions along with other decisions further down the road.

It can take someone new to an organization weeks or months to accidentally happen upon the "right people." And the right people might not be the obvious ones!

A contributor leaving her position is in the best position to suggest good first conversations for her successor. The FIRST CONVERSATIONS tool prompts incumbent notes covering the “who with” and “what to discuss.” The right first conversations can make onboarding life easier in all sorts of ways.

New positions come with overloaded buckets of information in the form of project files, studies, outlines, checklists, summaries, annual reports, meeting minutes, and client surveys. Guidance on first things to review is priceless.

Completed by the job incumbent or an in-place team, FIRST READS helps the onboarder quickly get both feet on the ground, offering a few early wins.

Even internal transitions can create sending-receiving chaos. Information and requests that normally come TO a contributor (INBOUND) have nowhere to go—they miss their target. Information that used to head out from that contributor (OUTBOUND) isn't. Someone could be waiting for something that isn’t coming! Oops.

The INBOUND-OUTBOUND tool identifies those potential disconnects in advance. Handy!

In some situations, who someone knows is just as (or more) important as the what they know. Use the NETWORK tool to tap information about the contributor’s internal and external networks, along with best networking methods.

In some work, timing is everything. In all work, timing means something. Timeframes. Efficiency. Sequence. Schedules. Deadlines. Often, time and timing are cultural to the organization.

In the contributor’s work, where does timing count? How does how the organization thinks about time affect a specific role, your customers, or the quality of work? Good for the new person to know.

In some workplace transitions, more than project files pass forward to a new manager or leader. Sometimes (often!) it's a team that's handed off. When a vice-president, team manager, coach, or supervisor leaves, their team can feel as if they are starting from scratch with the “new guy” or “new gal.”

Notes entered in TEAM HANDOFF acquaint a successor with team capabilities. For five specific team members, what are their strengths? What motivates them? Where should the organization be tapping their talents?

In some work, timing is everything. In all work, timing means something. Timeframes. Efficiency. Sequence. Schedules. Deadlines. Often, time and timing are cultural to the organization. How do the ways an organization thinks about time affect a specific role, your customers, or the quality of your work?

In a specific contributor’s work, where does timing count? Good for the new person to know. Good for everyone to think about from time to time.

Where do things stand? What projects, assignments, promises and expectations just can’t be completed or met before the contributor leaves? What gaps and cracks can be anticipated—and avoided? What must be addressed in the first 30-60 days post departure?

WORK IN PROGRESS prompts a departing contributor's WIP comments and organizes them in a way that will be invaluable to her manager and her successor.

LINEUP is one zone of the lay-of-the-land map that any onboarding team member needs and wants.

LINEUP captures the informal, formal and deal-breaker deadlines and events on the annual calendar--and how far in advance should someone be thinking about them. Regular meetings. Optional meetings that really aren’t that optional. Monthly association lunches worth attending. Reports and summaries the person down the hall or a compliance department in Washington is expecting every quarter.

When someone leaves a position, rarely are they leaving with a completely cleared out INBOX. Things are in progress; DECISIONS are in progress.

One of the best ways an onboarder can "orient" herself to a new role is to understand the situations and decisions she is stepping into. Completed pre-departure by the job incumbent, this tool's lists and short descriptions preview pending decisions along with other decisions further down the road.

An organizational leader in the process of planning a retirement, or later as she’s packing up the office, has considered a variety of financial, legal, and continuity issues. Easily overlooked is the "know-how, know-why, hard core experience" piece that could set her successor up for taking on the role.

DEPARTING LEADER’s focus is capturing specific slices of accumulated “knowledge and wisdom.” The tool pulls up insights on the industry, the products, the customers and actually running the show. It prompts notes on her “sense” of how coming changes could impact everything.

Use this tool early in the succession process as a warm-up to transition discussions to come. Or as a guide for productive conversations with a successor.

It can take someone new to an organization weeks or months to accidentally happen upon the "right people." And the right people might not be the obvious ones!

A contributor leaving her position is in the best position to suggest good first conversations for her successor. The FIRST CONVERSATIONS tool prompts incumbent notes covering the “who with” and “what to discuss.” The right first conversations can make onboarding life easier in all sorts of ways.

Even internal transitions can create sending-receiving chaos. Information and requests that normally come TO a contributor (INBOUND) have nowhere to go—they miss their target. Information that used to head out from that contributor (OUTBOUND) isn't. Someone could be waiting for something that isn’t coming! Oops.

The INBOUND-OUTBOUND tool identifies those potential disconnects in advance. Handy!

Hard ones. Easier ones. Decisions made with team or colleague input. Decisions made solo. Spontaneous ones. Long-thought-out ones.

There are all manners and ways to make decisions, along with better ways to make them. MAKING DECISIONS captures experience and guidance from organizational experts, covering the types of decisions made in their role or group, as well as best practices in making them.

A contributor’s two or more cents’ worth on where the team and the organization could be or should be heading. MOVING FORWARD includes good questions for in-depth exit interviews, team debrief discussions, last lunches with the boss.

In some situations, who someone knows is just as (or more) important as the what they know. Use the NETWORK tool to tap information about the contributor’s internal and external networks, along with best networking methods.

A structured, case-study like tool that enables a successful sales veteran (staying or departing) to share best, tested practices and insights relative to a key client account.

Incorporate the tool or sections of it in coaching sessions and sales training. Collaboratively complete the tool for team skill building. Use multiple copies of the tool to cover multiple customers/clients.

Short worksheets embedded in the tool enable a departing manager or leader to list—in one document—eight key processes they regularly work with, along with notes on timing, required steps, special issues, etc.

Complete and attach as a "context" piece to more detailed process documentation, or as a processes overview for new employees, team members or a successor.

One part of deep work experience is anticipatory thinking. Knowing what to keep eyes and ears open to—that hasn’t shown up or landed quite yet.

RADAR checks in on a departing contributor’s screen: What are the opportunity signals or warning signs they’ve learned to stay alert for? Where do they look? Which blips can be watched for a while and which others call for action—now?

Secret or special. It’s a deeper knowing of something specific—the how, why, why not, how much, in what order, when and when not of something.

Sometimes sauce is the key to making something happen or turning a situation around. Colleagues and customers rely on it, even if the contributor can’t see it or doesn’t consider it special or secret in any way. The SAUCE tool taps the contributor’s sense of their own sauce; it prompts her to explain it and share it as best she can.

In some work, timing is everything. In all work, timing means something. Timeframes. Efficiency. Sequence. Schedules. Deadlines. Often, time and timing are cultural to the organization. How do the ways an organization thinks about time affect a specific role, your customers, or the quality of your work?

In a specific contributor’s work, where does timing count? Good for the new person to know. Good for everyone to think about from time to time.

Where do things stand? What projects, assignments, promises and expectations just can’t be completed or met before the contributor leaves? What gaps and cracks can be anticipated—and avoided? What must be addressed in the first 30-60 days post departure?

When someone leaves a position, rarely are they leaving with a completely cleared out INBOX. Things are in progress; DECISIONS are in progress.

One of the best ways an onboarder can "orient" herself to a new role is to understand the situations and decisions she is stepping into. Completed pre-departure by the job incumbent, this tool's lists and short descriptions preview pending decisions along with other decisions further down the road.

Embedded within a larger performance management cycle, GP FORWARD focuses on the work and the learning looking forward. Pair this tool with performance appraisals and/or the GAME PLAN REVIEW tool. GP FORWARD is self-administered, then brought to coaching discussions.

When managers check in with their individual team members for periodic performance or other reviews, make sure the topic of “learning” comes up. What’s been learned? How has what’s been learned been applied and where has it made a difference?

Employees work with GP REVIEW in advance of review meetings as part of their meeting prep. Then, during the meeting, managers focus and follow up on the tool's most discussion-worthy comments.

Hard ones. Easier ones. Decisions made with team or colleague input. Decisions made solo. Spontaneous ones. Long-thought-out ones. There are all manners and ways to make decisions, along with better ways to make them.

MAKING DECISIONS captures experience and guidance from organizational experts, covering the types of decisions made in their role or group, as well as best practices in making them. Once completed, the MD tool becomes a coaching guide for application in pre-hire discussions, onboarding, training sessions or one-on-one coaching.

A structured, case-study like tool that enables a successful sales veteran (staying or departing) to share best, tested practices and insights relative to a key client account.

Incorporate the tool or sections of it in coaching sessions and sales training. Collaboratively complete the tool for team skill building. Use multiple copies of the tool to cover multiple customers/clients.

Ideal for facilitated or self-led team discussions at program milestones and completions. Captures best big ideas or small details not recoverable later. How are program measures measuring up? What plan changes and adjustments were made, and why? What best practices emerged and merit passing forward to later program stages or to the next team?

One part of deep work experience is anticipatory thinking. Knowing what to keep eyes and ears open to—that hasn’t shown up or landed quite yet.

RADAR checks in on a departing contributor’s screen: What are the opportunity signals or warning signs they’ve learned to stay alert for? Where do they look? Which blips can be watched for a while and which others call for action—now?

Secret or special. It’s a deeper knowing of something specific—the how, why, why not, how much, in what order, when and when not of something.

Sometimes sauce is the key to making something happen or turning a situation around. Colleagues and customers rely on it, even if the contributor can’t see it or doesn’t consider it special or secret in any way. The SAUCE tool taps the contributor’s sense of their own sauce; it prompts her to explain it and share it as best she can.

The structured, defined, more routine pieces of onboarding have happened—they’re done. Now, that new employee is climbing out of the deep end of the pool, stepping up, meeting with customers and working on early assignments.

SIX WEEKS IN is a check in, used by the onboarder and his manager in initial coaching discussions part-way through the probation period. In discussions that pave the way for future talent management activities.

The experience of participating on a program or project team brings multiple professional lessons (sometimes along with a few personal ones) for the individual contributor. Different lessons than those captured by the larger team.

SOLO DEBRIEF enables a contributor to capture notes and insights for his own development or in preparation for an annual performance review or work with a coach.

LINEUP captures the informal, formal and deal-making or breaking events and deadlines on the contributor’s annual calendar. And in advance of those deadlines, best timeframes for collecting and developing what’s needed.

The LINEUP tool offers the departing manager or director a framework to record regular meetings, optional meetings that really aren’t that optional, monthly lunches worth attending, and the grant applications, reports and summaries the person down the hall or a compliance department in Washington is expecting every quarter. It’s a starter view of the new person’s year.

When someone leaves a position, rarely are they leaving with a completely clean INBOX. Things are in progress; discussions are in progress, DECISIONS are in progress.

One of the best ways for an onboarding staff person to "orient" herself to a new role is to understand the contexts, discussions and decisions she is stepping into. Completed pre-departure by the job incumbent, this tool's lists and short descriptions outline pending decisions and forecase others further down the road.

A thoughtful organizational leader in the process of packing has likely considered a variety of financial, legal, and continuity issues related to his group's next leader. Easily overlooked is the "know-how, know-who, hard core experience" piece that could help set the successor up for success sooner than later.

DEPARTING LEADER’s focus is capturing specific slices of accumulated “knowledge and wisdom.” The tool pulls up insights on the sector, the organization’s services and programs, the clients and day-to-day wisdom of running the show. It prompts notes on his “sense” of how coming changes could impact everything.

Use DEPARTING LEADER early in the succession process as a warm-up for subsequent transition discussions. Or as a guide for productive conversations with the successor.

It can take someone new to an organization weeks or months to accidentally happen upon the "right people."  Possible surprise!  The right people might not be the obvious ones.

A contributor leaving her position is in the best position to suggest good first conversations for her successor. The FIRST CONVERSATIONS tool prompts incumbent notes covering “who with” and “what to discuss” in conversations. The right first conversations can make onboarding life easier in all sorts of ways.

Unless charted in some fashion, transitions can create sending-receiving chaos.

The INBOUND-OUTBOUND tool positions the departing contributor at the pivot point of a two-way communication path.

With a departure, information and requests that normally come TO a contributor (INBOUND) have nowhere to go now—they miss their target. Information once initiated by or sent out from the contributor (OUTBOUND) isn't heading anywhere. Someone could be waiting for something that isn’t coming! Oops.

The INBOUND-OUTBOUND tool identifies potential disconnects in advance. Handy!

Our LOA tool makes it easier for anyone preparing to go on leave—to pack a few notes for everyone else. It collects and prepares need-to-have, work-in-progress, where-it’s-filed, who-to-call notes for team members covering for a contributor taking medical, family, vacation, jury duty and other kinds of time away.

What does the person(s) taking on the contributor’s work need to know? The MORE NOTES tool goes wide—extending beyond “who to meet” and “work in progress” information. What might surprise the successor? How can his learning curve be accelerated? How does she go about building her new team's team's confidence in her?

Our TEAM DEBRIEF tool can be used for facilitated or self-led team discussions at program milestones and completions. Use the tool to captures notes on best and big ideas or small details not recoverable later. How are program measures measuring up? What plan changes and adjustments were made, and why? What best practices emerged and merit passing forward to later program stages or to the next team?

It can take months for a new leader in a non-profit or academic environment to discover and interpret stakeholder relationships, relevant history, and work-in-progress with those groups.

Our STAKEHOLDERS tool structures a departing leader's high value insights to those relationships. With that guidance as groundwork, a leader-successor will be more confident choosing their own course and priorities. If a Board is involved in the transition, notes in the tool will give that group more confidence in the process as well.

In some work, timing is everything. In all work, timing means something. Timeframes. Efficiency. Sequence. Schedules. Deadlines. Pacing. Managing delays.

Often, time and timing are cultural to the organization and rarely described in the handbook. But how a nonprofit organization thinks about time affects in major ways how the work gets done.

Where do things stand? What must be addressed in the first 30-60 days post departure of a key contributor?

Almost always, a nonprofit can expect that pieces of projects, parts of assignments go unfinished or incomplete when a contributor leaves. Promises and expectations are jeopardized. Sometimes credibility is at risk.

What gaps and cracks can be anticipated? Can some be avoided?  A solid list of what’s left on the desk gives the successor and others staying on their “marching orders.”