What are the most important actions after starting as a junior lecturer? I am a new lecturer in a sciences department, this is my first academic position. There is no one telling me what to do which is great, but I am not sure how to maximise my chances of doing well here. What would you think is the most important actions to do and not to do in your first 6-12 months of a position like this? Some people suggest to apply to all grants possible, but I am tempted to get my backlog of papers submitted instead. I was given a lab which is currently empty, and I have limited internal research funding but I can hire one PhD student. Any tips from more seasoned academics?
As commenters already point out, ultimately this is a question that only people within your department can answer. However:


  Some people suggest to apply to all grants possible, but I am tempted to get my backlog of papers submitted instead.


In general, and assuming you are in the sciences, the people that say that you should be focusing on grants are probably right. I kind of understand the temptation to write up all the things that you did not yet have time for due to needing to wrap up your dissertation, but this seems like short-term thinking to me. Sure, you will appear fabulously productive for some time, but then your backlog is empty and you have not acquired funding for new students nor started any other longer-running new initiatives.

As a faculty member, you will now need to start focusing more on the longer term, and sadly this often means that grants are more important than individual papers.