1. New people are more likely to get time to learn.
Being at work usually means, well, getting things done. There are tasks to complete, deadlines to meet, meetings to attend, emails to answer, and so on. The day-to-day grind can keep a person so focused on the immediate matter or locked into the Pavlovian call-and-response of the email client that taking time to learn (or even think) simply falls off. It's not inherently bad, but needs to be acknowledged.
New people don't yet have all those things to fill your calendar. Instead, they have a lot of information to take in and parse. The organization is new, and perhaps the industry is as well. Colleagues need to be identified and met; history needs to be articulated and contextualized. This all takes time, and the first days/weeks/months are the most likely time to get considerable time to devote to this.
2. New people can ask all kinds of questions.
Organizational culture usually includes a certain amount of jargon and shared information specific to that entity. With that comes an expectation that each person understands why things are done the way they are. After all, each person is part of the organization, right?
New people fall outside this model, to their (and the organization's) benefit. New people can ask, "why is [thing] done this way?" and challenge conventions through honest inquiry. In the best-case scenario, this yields affirmation of well-working practices and thoughtful conversation and follow-up on practices in need of change. The new person can even help make an immediate impact by being part of those changes, during which they can demonstrate the capabilities and experience for which they were hired in the first place.
3. New people can determine their story.
Joining a new organization is significantly different than taking a new position in the same one. In the latter case, the social network and institutional knowledge are already in place, and colleagues are more likely to already know you and your story. After a while, this can sometimes be a hindrance: a person ascending to a leadership role may have to deal with perceptions formed far earlier in their career.
New people have virtually no story on arrival. At most, there are impressions from the interview process and any announcements made organization-wide. There certainly isn't the unabridged history from the previous organization(s). As a result, new people get to decide their story and how to reveal it over time. Maybe great achievements need to be adopted or lessons from past experiments need to be learned. Maybe a particular mindset needs to be set or affirmed, reinforced by past examples. A person has great influence over their professional identity, and this is most true in that early period with an organization.
4. Newness is fleeting, but it's great while it lasts.
Of course, one can't be new forever. Work has to get done, after all. How long newness lasts depends on the culture -- sometimes it's measured in weeks, while other times years can go by to still be new. No matter the duration, it's a thrilling time to learn everything, ask good questions that foster conversation, and get established in the best possible way.
Much of my thinking on this topic comes from Damon Phillips' class on network structures when I was at Chicago Booth. I took this class in my first quarter, and have gone back to it in each of the four organizational moves I've made in the past ten years.
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