The Cost of On-Boarding if NOT Done Right

This is the second of a number of posts about on-boarding for executives:

2. What are the stats regarding such on-boarding when it goes bad?

a. In his book, The First 90 Days, Michael Watkins of the Harvard Business School states the blunt, disturbing truth: “Studies have found that more than 40-50% of senior outside hires fail to achieve desired results. Estimates of the direct and indirect costs to a company of a failed executive-level hire range as high as $2.7 million.”

b. In my experience as an executive coach, I’ve watched new executives come in like a freight train, turn the place upside down and take down walls before they know which ones are load bearing and which are merely cosmetic. Typically, their “death spiral” begins very early on and can take as little as a year and sometimes two for them to finally be ejected as a threatening organism to the tribe. Peers, subordinates, and even the very bosses who hired them will foment or back such a rejection—directly or indirectly.