The statistics around executive transition failure rates of newly appointed executives are staggering: 

• Nearly half of all leadership transitions fail (McKinsey)
• Not only external hires fail: research from DDI shows that 35% of all executives promoted internally are considered failures
• The costs of C-level failures are, in the vast majority of cases, higher than USD 2 million, but can be as high as USD 30 million. In their Harvard Business Review article, Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Gregory Nagel, and Carrie Green estimate that the costs of mismanaged CEO transitions in the S&P 1500 alone already result in nearly USD1 trillion in market value loss on a yearly basis.

Unfortunately, the number of leaders and organizations that actually invest in addressing this problem is relatively small. And that is an issue for both the individuals concerned and their organizations.

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