The first 30 days: how I read an operation I do not know

On my first night at the new hotel, I could not work as a Night Auditor.

The system was running an update, and for several hours it was practically impossible to work normally. So I spent most of the night in the back office. I took in information about the hotel, the basic processes and the way the work was organised.

At first sight, a lost night. In fact it was the night that taught me the first lesson: in a new place, before you do the work, you have to understand how it works.

This essay starts a new series. The first one, Ten years close to the work, was about what I have learned. This one is about how you build an operation that keeps working when the manager is not there. And that starts long before you change anything: it starts with how you read the operation.

The first nights: close to the people, not to the theory

In the first week I did not walk in with the idea of changing things. I walked in to understand how the night really worked.

In the nights that followed I concentrated on the Night Audit checklist, on the way my colleagues carried out the steps, and on the videos, screenshots and training documents. I took notes.

It mattered to me to understand not only what had to be done, but also the order and the reason it was done. A checklist tells you the steps. It does not always tell you why this step comes before that one, or what breaks if you skip it.

At the start I stayed closer to the people who did the work every night than to the theory in the documents. The document tells you how the work should be. The people tell you how it is.

Walk in to understand, not to show how much you know.

The information existed, but it was scattered

What struck me most was that the information existed, but it was scattered.

There were checklists, separate documents, screenshots, videos, and explanations that experienced people knew almost by heart. For someone who worked there every night, moving from one document to the next could feel normal. They had done it hundreds of times.

For me, as a new person, it was immediately visible that the problem was not a lack of information. The problem was that it was not always organised in a way that quickly told you:

• Where am I in the process?
• What do I need to check now?
• What comes next?
• How do I know I can carry on?

This is something you see better in your first days than after a year. After a year you know the answers by heart, and you no longer notice that the document does not give them to you. That is why a new person's first days are a source of information most organisations waste.

It was also the reason why, later on, I started to structure the material into a simpler, searchable SOP.

Why I waited on purpose

Here I have a clear answer: I waited on purpose.

I decided at the start to follow the existing process exactly as it was defined. The checklist told me what had to be done, while the training and the videos showed me how it was done.

I did not want to see something once and decide straight away that there was a better way.

First I had to understand the dependencies. A step that looks unnecessary from the outside may exist because another department, a report or a later process depends on it. If you remove it in week two, you may not see any problem. The problem shows up somewhere else, later, with someone else.

Only once I started to understand the flow did I begin to organise the information better. Not to change the operation, but to make it easier to read, for myself and for the next person who would have to learn it.

A step that looks unnecessary may be the step someone else depends on.

What I will not claim

It would be easy to fill this essay with stories. How I found the team's “leader without a title” in the first week. How a report said one thing and the floor said another.

I have no such episode documented from those days, and I will not invent one.

I know I learned a lot from the colleagues who actually ran the shift. I know that in Night Audit the report is only part of reality: to understand the real state you also have to look at the statuses, the open points, what the previous shift left you and what has to pass to the next one. But that is something I understood over time, not a discovery from the third night.

I think this, too, is part of reading an operation: telling apart what you have seen from what you would like to tell.

Three things for the first 30 days

If a new manager asked me tomorrow what to do in the first 30 days, I would tell them three things.

First: do not walk in to show how much you know. Walk in to understand. Look at the process from start to finish. Talk to the people who do the work every day. Understand what happens when everything goes well, but above all what happens when something deviates.

Second: compare the standard with reality. Read the SOP, the checklist and the reports, then look at how the work is really done. Where there is a gap, do not decide straight away who is wrong. Understand why the gap exists.

Third: build a map of the operation. What are the main processes? Who are the key people? What are the KPIs? Where are the dependencies? Which problems keep coming back? What can you decide yourself, and what has to be escalated?

And one thing I would tell them not to do: do not change something just because you want to show you have come to bring change.

30 questions for the first 30 days

This is not an exam. These are the questions I would have liked to have written down in my first nights. You do not need the answers on day one. You should have them after 30 days.

The process

1. What does the process look like from start to finish?
2. What result has to come out at the end of it?
3. Which steps depend on each other?
4. Where does the work wait, and why?
5. What happens when something deviates?

Standard and reality

6. What does the SOP or the checklist say?
7. How is the work really done?
8. Where is the gap between the two, and why?
9. Which step is skipped most often?
10. Which version of the process exists only by word of mouth?

Information

11. Where does a new person find the information?
12. How many places do they have to open to carry out one step?
13. What do only the experienced people know by heart?
14. How does information pass from one shift to the next?
15. What is left open at the end of the shift, and who takes it on?

People

16. Who actually does the work every day?
17. Who do the others ask when they do not know?
18. What wears them out most?
19. What would they change, if they could?
20. What works well and should not be touched?

Data

21. Which KPIs or reports are followed?
22. Who reads them, and when?
23. What does the report not show?
24. Which problems keep coming back?
25. How is a problem recorded when it happens?

Limits

26. What can I decide myself?
27. What has to be escalated, and to whom?
28. Who owns each process?
29. Which departments does my work depend on, and which depend on it?
30. What do I need to understand before I propose the first change?

In the first 30 days, a new manager does not need 30 solutions.

They need 30 good questions.