In a context where new leaders are expected to “hit the ground running” more quickly than ever before, more than a third of these leaders fail to integrate into their new environment and leave the organization within 18 months. Internal transitions are also challenging events and require the same level of attention that is granted to new employees. We design custom-made onboarding programs for individuals and teams that focus on learning, relationship-building and performance acceleration. Our programs recognize the need to engage key stakeholders before and well after the person’s first day on the job and come up with metrics to monitor progress and enable rapid course correction.

Example. We designed the following onboarding program for a biotech organization:
1. Pre-Onboarding Phase
· Planning process with key stakeholders (leader of new executive and members of HR/Talent Management) to draft an onboarding roadmap listing the learning and networking events over the first 3-6 months.
· Conduct assessment of the current personal networks for the management team.
· Feedback session to identify opportunities for the onboarding individual to connect and focus his relationship building and learning efforts with the right individuals. Participants in this session were the management team leader, team members, and a facilitator.
· In parallel, we had the onboarding executive complete several individual assessments (personality, judgment, etc.) as well as his/her own personal assessment on his/her network.
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2. Onboarding Phase
· Shortly before day 1 on the job, we held planning session to feed back the personal network analysis data and help the onboarding executive set priorities for networking and relationship building. Participants included the onboarding executive, his leader, and a facilitator.
· We updated the onboarding roadmap based on the outcomes of the onboarding planning session
· HR and the Management Team Leader worked with the new executive to ensure the successful execution of the onboarding roadmap.
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3. Assessment of the Onboarding Process
· 9 months after the executive has joined the organization, we conducted follow-up survey and assessment of personal network with the same participants as described above in the pre-onboarding segment
· We updated learning and networking objectives according to the results of the analysis.