Bringing someone into your operation is not the same as handing them a task list. The first month decides whether they become the person who takes work off your plate or another thing you have to manage. Here is the playbook I have used, in one form or another, dozens of times.

Week 1: Watch and map, change nothing

No changes yet. A good operator spends the first week watching how the work actually flows, not how the org chart says it does. Where do requests come in? Where do they stall? Who is the bottleneck everyone quietly routes around? Sit with the people who touch the work and ask them to show you how they really do it, not how they are supposed to. The gap between those two answers is the job.

Week 2: Fix the loudest fire, end to end

Now earn the right to keep going. Pick the one thing that breaks most often and fix it completely, not a patch but a real fix that holds. An early, visible win buys the trust to touch bigger things later, and it proves the hire can ship rather than just observe.

Trust is built on shipped fixes, not on plans. One workflow visibly better beats ten workflows thoroughly documented.

Weeks 3 and 4: Turn fixes into systems

A fix that only works while someone is watching is a favor, not a system. Convert the early wins into things that hold on their own: written procedures, automations, and checklists, with a clear owner for each. The test is simple. Could the person leave for two weeks and would the fix survive? If not, it is not finished.

By day 30 you should have:

A map of where time actually goes across the operation
One workflow visibly better than the day they started
The next three fixes queued and ranked by how much they hurt

Thirty days in, the honest question is whether your own week got lighter. If it did, you hired an operator. If it did not, you hired another task list, and it is worth a frank conversation now rather than in three months.