Bryan Power
speaker
121 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Bryan Power’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And these combinations don't naturally come together because they tend to have different ways of operating. But if you build that relationship almost with your foil, the person who is not unsuccessful, successful, they're just doing it a way you would never do. You're almost surprised that they're successful. That relationship can be very key. And so I encourage people to be proactive
You can usually think about it. If the team's big enough, company's big enough, there's someone where you're like, I just don't get it. Go make a relationship with that person because they will get just as much out of you in your way. And that can help buffer you from the stuff that's either uncomfortable or confusing or unknown that's very natural to them.
Because it's probably the opposite is true. The things that come very easy to you will probably be harder or more confusing for them.
I'll give people two, and this works for leaders as well as anyone joining a company that I think are significant.
The first is really around three or four weeks in, you almost have these night vision goggles where you can see the company, the culture, their processes, their way of doing things in this incredibly visceral way because your brain is actually working in overdrive because it's in a new environment. Your limbic brain is charging to make sense of this world.
So you're actually accessing like way more juice than you normally would. And a couple of weeks in, you kind of actually start to understand it, but you haven't yet assimilated. And so your ability to really share reactions over like what is this company is profound three or four weeks in around that timeframe. Not your first week, everything's too new.
Not two to three months in because you've kind of started to settle in. But like a month in, you can just share incredible observations. So as a... People leader, like I really seek out these new higher observations a month in because they can really confirm or educate on what you think your company actually is. And they have no agenda. They're just like, wow, this is really interesting.
I've never seen this before. This really stands out. This is so cool. Those are like the observations I think are really powerful. And that can help your onboarding. You know, you're letting people understand maybe something they didn't appreciate that's so different because they've been here now for four or five years. It's just become... their day-to-day.
The second thing, which I think is one of the most common traps, one of the most common mistakes of starting in a new environment is this urge to just prove yourself too fast, to swing for the fences. Because we all seek this validation where they're like, oh my God, Brian is such a good hire. This guy's amazing. Everyone wants to hear that a month in. Who doesn't want to hear that?
And so what that means is you're looking for this opportunity to just be like, oh, I totally got it. I understand. I know what to do. We should do this. The problem is, is related to the first point. There's so much you don't understand. And so your brain might actually be making a mistake at pattern matching. You think you're seeing something you've seen before, but you actually don't.
And the people you're working with will overreact to the early data points on you. They will begin a narrative about who you are with your first one or two experiences. And so we've all had this experience of someone's new, the first meeting, they just say, I know what we should do, we should do this. And you're like, yeah, we've been talking about that for months about why that's not a good idea.
That person doesn't know, they just got here. But in your head, they're now a character in this story of they don't know what they're talking about, fair or unfair. And so it's really important to just do the little things, build credibility and trust through doing what you say you're going to do, be in the place you're supposed to be. All these little things really add up.
I think the best example, it's kind of like a pre-COVID example at this point, but we're all told don't be late to work on your first day. This was the thing our parents would say to us, do not be late on your first day. And this really illustrates the point, because if you're late on the first day, they must not care about work. They might not take this seriously. They're not a prepared person.
You and I work in the Bay Area. Your ability to get somewhere in the morning is plus or minus two and a half hours. Like it has nothing to do with their capability. But the truth is that's what people will start spinning in their subconscious or in their conscious brain. And so you just don't want to start that narrative.
So whatever home run idea you think you have in your first month or two, if it's that good of an idea, it will still work in month three, four, five, or six. But more likely you're going to learn something else and be like, oh, wow, I am so glad I didn't say that. Now that I understand the bigger picture, that was totally not the right idea.
So just really that counterintuitive because you have so much energy to do your job so well when you're new, you have to hold yourself back until you have as much context as you can to really qualify those bigger thoughts.
If I was to say in one sentence, we're an essential neighborhood network. You come for utility, but you stay for the community. And when I zoom out, to me, it just makes sense that there's a use for a product that is about your neighbors. The idea of a neighbor as a relationship is a fundamental human idea. It goes back centuries. It cuts across all cultures.
Everyone understands what a neighbor is. And it's not the same thing as your friend or your family or your coworker. And so for me, Nextdoor just makes sense as a tool, right, as a technology that lets neighbors cultivate those relationships together. You pick your neighborhood, you don't really pick your neighbors.
you have this shared identity with people that you might have totally different worldviews with. But at the same time, no matter what the person across the street from you thinks, politically, generationally, if you realize 20 minutes after you took off in the car, you might've left the garage door open, you could call them and they would go tell you because you would want to reciprocate that.
It's a very different way of thinking about these types of relationships. And so next door is really at the heart of giving ways for neighbors to bring their neighborhood together. And it's particularly important in the more recent years of technology where so much of people's day-to-day is now on their phones or on screens.
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