Best Wishes for Welcoming New IBMers

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Later today, I will speak with up to 100 IBMers, who are volunteering to help new IBMers feel more welcome, faster at IBM India. Here's what I will say, and I'm confident that none of them will see this entry prior to the meeting:

The inviting danglers commanded my attention when they began hanging from the ceiling several days ago: My head kept bumping into them; I’m sitting, and so you might not know that I’m really tall.

By the time Sapna and I agreed that I would be able to join you today, nearly 100 new GrassRoots members had joined the community, and so you don’t need tips on community building from me. Instead, thinking back to what would have helped me when I joined IBM, I’ll ask you to consider my top five best wishes for welcoming new IBMers, and then I’ll offer tips on sustaining a community.

Before I jump into the wishes, I need to say how lovely it is to be invited to meet and encourage you in your essential and friendly mission! Thank you for your leadership in volunteering to help new IBMers feel at home and productive more quickly.

Now, I’ll contrast your marvelous mission with my experience when I joined IBM in New York City in 1996:

At our Midtown location, 590 Madison Avenue, I took the elevator to the 5th floor, where a security person photographed me...unflatteringly. And then a kind woman said, “Welcome,” and handed me a binder, and said that I would find everything I needed to know inside it.

Guess what the binder contained? An eight-minute welcome video by our CEO at the time, Lou Gerstner, and, according to the introduction of the thick content inside, 40 hours of instructions on getting my Lotus Notes ID and other basic processes…none of which I read. Instead, I relied on the kindness of my new peers, who had gone through the same thing, in many cases, just a number of months prior to me.

A decade later, while I was setting up the LEADing@IBM booth at 590 Madison’s fast_forward event, the woman who gave me my welcome-binder greeted me; she was still part of HR, though no longer had that job, and she remembered having welcomed me on my first day. I’d like to tell you that it was a warm reunion.

That would be untrue, though. I didn’t remember her at all. I was flattered and amazed that she would have remembered me and so I quickly rose to the occasion, but the reality was that she had not made a huge impression on me, as her welcoming role had been so narrowly defined – unlike IBM India’s ingenious Royal Blue Ambassador and Connections Advisor programs. She was just someone who handed me a big package full of boring reading material….The video, of course, was decent, but….

I’m telling you this story because you are poised to mean so much more to the new IBMers than that woman was able to signify for me. Remember the part of the story, where I said that the people who helped me most were my colleagues, my peers – the ones who had learned how to navigate IBM just months and even sometimes just weeks before I had. And I was also lucky to have peers who had been with IBM for many years, who helped me succeed, too.

Whatever tenure you’ve had at IBM, you’re doing a mitzvah in helping new IBMers feel part of, rather than apart from, the amazing organization that is IBM. Who knows what “doing a mitzvah” means?

[If no one:] I’ll teach you now, as I offer my top five best wishes:

My Top Five Best Wishes for Welcoming New IBMers

As GrassRoots Community members, I wish you would:

1. Help new IBMers understand the beauty in being part of a globally-integrated enterprise:
• IBM does business in 164 countries and cultures (In my culture, which is Jewish in addition to American “mitzvah” means “good deed”)
• You will work with, and lead, people from all over the world
2. Share what makes you proud to be an IBMer
3. Be an agent for helping new IBMers explain how their role aligns with the IBM global strategy; encourage discussion with their manager (IBM strategy, at internal URL)
4. Show new IBMers that IBM is the best place to be from a:
• Leadership development standpoint
(internal URL)
• Professional development perspective (internal URL)
5. Encourage new IBMers to join or start a diversity network group:
• Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender (GLBT) (in process; contact me directly for further information, at...)
• People with Disabilities (PwD) (internal URL)
• Women’s (internal URL)
• Guidelines for starting a diversity network group (DNG) (internal URL)

Perhaps you’ve already thought of all of these tips and so maybe I can offer another five tips on how to sustain a community. As I said upfront, I see you’re already successful at building a community.

My Top Five Tips for Sustaining a Community

1. Be needed; keep your sense of purpose and mission thriving
2. Go global; find or help launch counterparts beyond India
3. Turn it into a leadership incubator, and make new leaders
4. Sponsor summits and speaker series, whether F2F or online
5. Stay active on the Wiki (internal URL), trading best practices and having fun.