Listening Tour
A round of short 1:1s with key people in the first month, asking the same questions every time, designed to surface patterns rather than anecdotes.
A listening tour is a deliberate practice of running 5-15 short 1:1s in the first 30 days of a new role, asking each person the same set of 3-4 questions. The questions vary but typically include 'what does success look like in this role?' and 'what is one thing you would change about how the team works?'
The point is not to gather opinions. It is to see which patterns repeat. One person saying the deploy pipeline is broken is an opinion. Six people saying it is signal. The repeated complaints are where the work lives.
A good listening tour produces zero decisions in week 1. It produces one decision per pattern by week 4. The discipline is asking, listening, and writing down without responding to each item in real time.