Executives Don't Need Onboarding
Why the belief that "a professional will figure it out" costs companies millions
"Senior executives don't need onboarding. They're professionals, they'll figure it out."
I hear this from CEOs and even some HR directors regularly. The logic behind it seems sound: someone with twenty years of experience, an impressive track record at well-known companies, who has passed five, ten, or twenty rounds of interviews - surely they don't need help adapting?
The statistics, and I alongside them, answer: yes, they do. According to various studies, 30 to 50 percent of senior executives leave their companies within the first eighteen months. These are people who performed brilliantly in their previous roles.
Over my years in executive search, I've seen this pattern dozens of times and heard the same arguments for why executives don't need onboarding.
Let's examine them.
"A top executive is a top executive precisely because they can quickly understand new contexts"
This is true, but only partially.
The ability to quickly grasp context is indeed a key competency for any leader. The problem is that "understanding" and "having access to information" are two different things.
An executive can be a brilliant analyst, but you can only analyze what you can see. Informal alliances, political landmines, the history of conflicts - none of this information sits on the surface. It lives in the heads of people who have no obligation to share it.
A new CFO can understand the financial statements within a week. But to learn that the CTO and COO haven't spoken since last year's conflict at the corporate party, someone needs to tell them. Analytical abilities are useless here.
Onboarding isn't about teaching someone their profession. It's about transferring information that's impossible to obtain independently within a reasonable timeframe.
"If someone needs help adapting, we hired the wrong person"
This logic confuses two different things: professional expertise and contextual knowledge.
Professional expertise is transferable. Someone who knows how to build financial models can do it at any company.
Contextual knowledge is non-transferable by definition. Who influences the CEO, which projects are toxic, which words you can't say at board meetings - these things are impossible to "know in advance."
Expecting a candidate to arrive with contextual knowledge is absurd. Expecting them to acquire it on their own within a reasonable time is, to put it mildly, naive.
Hiring "the right" person and not giving them critical information is like buying a sports car and filling it with cheap gas from a run-down station.
"A true leader will build relationships and figure out the politics on their own"
They will. The question is how long it will take and at what cost.
Building trust at the C-suite level takes six to twelve months under favorable conditions. If a leader makes mistakes in the first few months due to lack of context, relationships don't form - they collapse.
The average time before it becomes clear that an executive "doesn't fit" is about a year. Roughly when they might have finally figured things out on their own. Unfortunately, by then it's already too late.
Onboarding doesn't replace the ability to build relationships. It provides a head start: the person begins with an understanding of the landscape rather than spending months reconstructing it through trial and error.
"We have an open culture, there are no behind-the-scenes games here"
Every company believes its culture is more open than it actually is.
This isn't hypocrisy - let's call it a popular delusion. People inside don't notice the unwritten rules because they've long since internalized them. For them, it's not the grandiose word "politics," just a simple "how we do things here."
Here's an example. A company declares a "culture of open feedback." A new executive takes this literally and gives harsh, honest, open feedback to a vice president during a general meeting. It turns out "open feedback" actually means "praise openly, criticize one-on-one, and never criticize vice presidents at all."
This rule is obvious to everyone except the person who violated it.
The more strongly a company believes in the absence of politics, the more dangerous it is for newcomers. Where politics is acknowledged, at least you'll get a warning. Where "there's no politics," the newcomer is left alone with invisible rules.
"We hired them to change the culture, not fit into it"
This is the most dangerous argument because it sounds logical.
Yes, sometimes executives are hired as change agents. But a change agent who doesn't understand the system isn't a reformer - they're a destroyer.
Successful transformations require understanding: what can be changed, what shouldn't be touched right now, what sequence to follow, and who to enlist as allies.
Corporate history is full of "transformers" who came to change the culture and were rejected by the company's immune system within eighteen months, sometimes sooner. Not because their ideas were bad, but because they didn't understand how to implement those ideas in that specific environment.
This creates a paradox: the more ambitious the change agenda, the more important onboarding becomes. Someone who will maintain the status quo only needs to understand the basic rules. Someone who plans to break them critically needs to know which violations the system can digest.
"We've had successful integration without any onboarding"
This is a classic case of survivorship bias.
We know about executives who integrated without support - they stayed at the company, they're visible. We've forgotten about those who didn't integrate. Their failure gets attributed to personal qualities, not the absence of a system.
But there's another aspect: even "successful" integrations without onboarding could have happened faster. Someone who figured things out in six months could have done it in two. Those six months aren't free - they represent delayed decisions, missed opportunities, slowed progress.
We see that the person succeeded. We don't see what it cost the company.
What's behind all these arguments
All objections boil down to one belief: professionalism replaces context.
It doesn't.
Professionalism is a necessary condition for success. Context is a sufficient one. Think of it as an equation: Professionalism × Context = Results. If either factor is close to zero, the result will be correspondingly poor.
Companies invest months in searching for and evaluating professionalism while investing nothing in transferring context. Then they wonder why the equation doesn't balance.
What executive onboarding should include
If the candidate has the professionalism, onboarding's job is to provide context.
The real power map. Not the org chart, but an understanding of who actually influences decisions. Where the formal and informal power centers are, what alliances and conflicts exist.
History. What initiatives have been tried before, what worked, what failed. Which topics are sensitive and what's not discussed openly.
Substantive expectations. Not KPIs from the job description, but how the CEO actually defines success. What's unacceptable to them and how to tell when they're dissatisfied.
Working style. How the CEO makes decisions, how they prefer to receive information, what irritates them.
Key relationships. Who it's critical to connect with first, who's a potential ally, and who might become an adversary.
This knowledge is transferred only through conversations - CEO with the new executive, in the first weeks, regularly and honestly.
The CEO's role
Onboarding a senior executive is the CEO's responsibility. Not HR's, not a "buddy's," not a mentor's.
Only the CEO knows the real distribution of power from the inside. Only they understand what they actually want. This task cannot be delegated.
But CEOs are always busy. Setting aside several hours to talk with a new director seems like an excessive luxury.
This is false economy. A few hours of CEO time in the first weeks versus several million dollars in failed hire costs - the choice is obvious.
What the executive can do themselves
If the company doesn't offer structured onboarding (and most don't), you need to take the initiative yourself.
Ask for meetings with the CEO more often than they offer. Ask questions that might seem naive: who really influences decisions, which topics are sensitive, what happened to your predecessor.
Find someone who will explain the unwritten rules. Not HR with the official version of culture, but someone who actually knows how things work.
Slow down. Resist the pressure to "show results quickly." In the first months, understanding matters more than speed. After all, if you don't know which direction to "race," it's clear what kind of finish line you'll reach.
The first months in a new position aren't the time for heroics. It's time for reconnaissance. Sitting idle is obviously a bad idea too. But playing the hero might cost you more than you bargained for.
The cost
A failed hire at the C-suite level is one of the most expensive mistakes a company can make.
Direct costs include paid compensation, severance packages, and the cost of a new search.
Indirect costs are lost time, missed opportunities, and the consequences of wrong decisions.
Organizational costs include team demotivation, loss of key people, and reputational damage.
The total cost ranges from two to three times annual compensation. For a C-suite executive with a $500K package, that's a minimum of $1-1.5 million. For larger companies, the figures are multiples higher.
The cost of onboarding? A few people's time in the first weeks.
The math is obvious.
Conclusion
The belief that "executives don't need onboarding" is based on a false premise: that professionalism equals the ability to figure out context.
It doesn't. Professionalism enables you to act correctly when you understand the situation. Context enables you to understand that situation. One without the other doesn't work.
Companies spend months searching for the best candidates, then abandon them to figure things out on their own. Thirty to fifty percent don't make it. They're replaced with new candidates who also don't get help.
This cycle will repeat until someone acknowledges the obvious: even the best professional needs information that's impossible to obtain independently.
Executive onboarding isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of company maturity.
