Having been someone who has spent a majority of his time at one organization refining skills, I can understand the swarm of feelings that you’re going to go through. I can understand the overwhelming excitement that you’ll feel, the fear of moving and being in a new environment and the ups and downs along the way. I feel like I’ve been preparing for this ever since I first studied abroad in Japan: being placed in a completely foreign country, thinking that you could speak the language and realizing that you only knew so much and just how far you have to go, and being away from your entire circle of support. Since then I studied abroad twice in France, once for a few weeks and then for an entire year. There are some things that I learned then that I can apply to my recent shift into a new company that I can share with you now.
First and most importantly…
No matter how hard you think it might be or the mistakes that you might make when speaking, people know you’re new. If you screw up, laugh about it and move on. I can’t count the amount of times I accidentally said “I’m pregnant” instead of “I’m full” in French, all it takes is one verb to completely change the meaning of a sentence. I learned this quite a few times in the States and knew I was wrong the moment I said it. Being a man, it always, one hundred percent of the time, resulted in laughter, both for myself and my company. I eventually got out of the English frame of mind and finally stopped saying something so ridiculous. And, that’s not the only ridiculous or obscene thing that I said on accident just because of inflection, a false cognate or a misplaced verb. The point:
Laugh about it. Enjoy it. Relish your mistakes and learn from them.
Secondly…
Remember that all good things come with time. Just as it took me forever to stop saying “I’m pregnant” instead of “I’m full.” You won’t become an expert on the new business in a day. It will take some getting used you. Explore your new Salesforce org, read some marketing materials targeted to customers, and ask someone to tell you about the business. Which brings me to my next point…
Relationships! Relationships! Relationships!
If you don’t know someone who is sitting next to you, take a moment to introduce yourself. Don’t just ask about Salesforce stuff either! (This is a hard habit of mine to break, since I’m just so passionate about what I do). But seriously, get to know the person not just their role. It’s good to know if they use the system, what they like about it, what they don’t like about it and where you can have some “quick wins”, but you will have time to figure that out! The hardest part about being a new environment is taking the initiative to introduce yourself. I find myself to be an outgoing person but sometimes, even I find it hard. Even in English it can sometimes seem like we’re speaking different languages. Don’t let that get in your way. For the great social media reference, I have to say, “Just do it!”
Success community!
If you haven’t already made your dev org your platform for being on the success community, do it today! Not only is your presence important, but you don’t want to lose your followers or your fellow admin support circle! While you’re making sure that you have your success profile linked to your dev org, please upvote these ideas while you have the chance:
Link / Merge Community Profiles
Inform Users to Register in Success with Developer Edition
With 1.7 million community members (at the time of the post), it’s impossible to keep up with all of the requests and the administrative overhead and understandably so. For the full post and a workaround, see here: https://success.salesforce.com/0D530000022Hzmo.
Parting words…
You are where you are for a reason and have plenty of value to add to your new environment. Take a deep breath and make your adventure become your own.