Why executive transitions go wrong - and what to do about it
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Day 42: A newly hired Group Strategy Director is still at her desk at 9:00 p.m. She was brought in to lead a major transformation - one that’s been discussed for months but never clearly defined. She was hired because she’s capable, and there’s often an unspoken belief that capable leaders should just “get it” and move.
Her inbox is overflowing. Priorities keep shifting. Her peers are polite but distant - unclear on her mandate, protective of their turf, and too busy to engage deeply. Conversations stay surface-level.
She’s been invited in - but not set up to succeed.
It’s a common story: a strong leader, dropped into a high-stakes role without the clarity, structure, or support to land well.
Whether new to the company or stepping into a bigger role, many executives spend their critical first months navigating complexity alone - while being expected to deliver from day one.
Research has held steady for years: around 40% of leadership transitions fail within 18 months when the right support isn’t in place.
Too often, companies focus on choosing the right person - then overlook what it takes to truly integrate them. Without structured, human-centered support, even the most capable leaders struggle to succeed.
Why this matters more now
Transitions have always been high-stakes moments. But in today’s climate, the pressure is rising and the timelines are shrinking.
Leaders are stepping in during disruption - not stability.
Most aren’t inheriting status quo - they’re hired to fix or accelerate something.
Hybrid work delays trust-building and blurs cultural cues.
Visibility is high. Expectations form early and often.
In short: less room for error. More risk when it goes wrong.
Different paths. Same risks.
It’s tempting to think internal promotions are easier. But each path comes with invisible traps:
External hires lack historical context and relationships yet are expected to drive change.
Internal promotions bring familiarity but struggle to reset relationships and lead differently.
In both cases, leaders are often left navigating ambiguity alone once onboarding ends.
What’s missing
Most organizations do onboarding. Few do transitions. And that’s where things break down.
What’s often overlooked:
- A clear and aligned mandate
- Shared definitions of success across key stakeholders
- Insight into unspoken cultural and political dynamics
- Active sponsorship from the manager
- A longer runway to build trust and momentum
- Board-level clarity and engagement for senior roles
The result? Leaders are under pressure to perform - while still finding their footing.
The quiet rejection
Leaders are often hired to shift the system. But once inside, they encounter subtle resistance:
- Their pace feels too fast.
- Their questions challenge norms.
- Their style doesn’t match unspoken rules.
Suddenly, trust is withheld. Expectations shift. Peers disengage - but don’t say why. The very qualities that got them hired now work against them. Confidence erodes. Performance stalls. And promising transitions quietly derail.
This isn’t just an onboarding issue. It’s a readiness issue - on both sides.
The cost of getting it wrong
A failed executive transition doesn’t just impact the individual - it ripples across the organization. It stalls momentum, fractures teams, delays results, and undermines trust in leadership.
It’s also expensive. Between lost productivity, re-recruitment, and missed goals, the cost can easily reach several times the leader’s salary.
When transitions go off course, it’s not just a talent issue - it’s a business one.
What needs to change
Organizations that get transitions right do five things well:
- Treat transitions as enterprise critical. Ask: What’s at stake beyond this one role?
- Define success together. Ask: Are expectations aligned across leader, manager, and stakeholders?
- Equip the manager to lead the transition. Ask: Are they prepared to sponsor - not just evaluate?
- Provide real support - not just warm welcomes. Ask: Have we created space for the leader to reflect, adapt, and build capability?
- Extend support beyond day 90. Ask: What happens after the honeymoon ends?
The gray zone
Most leadership transitions don’t fail during onboarding - they stall in the murky middle. That stretch between onboarding and full performance. Too late for checklists, too early for formal reviews, and too often overlooked.
This is when the leader is highly visible but still gaining footing. The system assumes they’re up and running. But what they actually need is time to reflect, context to navigate, and support to show up differently.
Without that space, small misalignments become big ones. First impressions stick. And promising transitions quietly derail - not because the leader isn’t capable, but because they’re left to navigate complexity alone.
This “gray zone” isn’t anyone’s job to manage - and that’s the problem.
The role of transition coaching
Transition coaching provides a confidential, strategic space to:
- Navigate unspoken dynamics
- Build confidence and clarity
- Reflect and recalibrate in real time
As Greg Smith, CEO of Teradyne, put it:
“We’re investing in executive coaching because we want our senior leaders to lead with confidence from day one—not figure it out by month six.”
And the research backs it up. Coaching accelerates traction, strengthens alignment, and improves long-term performance.
But it only works when paired with system-level readiness: aligned stakeholders, engaged managers, and a clear plan for integration.
Final thought
Transitions aren’t just about setting a leader up to succeed. They’re a mirror for whether your organization is ready to evolve.
Because every new leader brings change - and every transition is a test of how well your system absorbs it.
If you’re hiring or promoting this year, the question isn’t just “is this the right person?”
It’s “are we ready to change with them?”
BTS helps leaders - and the systems around them - thrive through transition. Let’s talk.
Sources
- McKinsey & Company (2023), Leadership Transitions: Making the Move from Operational to Strategic
- Harvard Business Review (Ciampa & Watkins, 1999), Right From the Start
- CEB/Gartner Executive Research (2016), Why Successful Executives Fail
- DDI Global Leadership Forecast (2021), Assessing the Risks in Leadership Transitions
- McGill, P., Clarke, P., & Sheffield, D. (2019). From “blind elation” to “oh my goodness, what have I gotten into”: Exploring the experience of executive coaching during leadership transitions into C-suite roles. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring. Oxford Brookes University.
- Greg Smith, CEO of Teradyne, as quoted in BTS webinar (2025)
- International Coaching Federation (ICF, 2021), The Value of Coaching in Leadership Transitions
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From top-down to judgment all around: The AI imperative for organizations
Each business revolution has reshaped not only how businesses operate, but how they organize themselves and empower their people. From the industrial age to the information era, and now into the age of artificial intelligence, technology has always brought with it a reconfiguration of authority, capability, and judgment.
In the 19th century, industrialization centralized work and knowledge. The factory system required hierarchical structures where strategy, information, and decision-making were concentrated at the top. Managers at the apex made tradeoffs for the greater good of the enterprise because they were the only ones with access to the full picture.
Then came the information economy. With it came the distribution of information and a need for more agile, team-based structures. Cross-functional collaboration and customer proximity became competitive necessities. Organizations flattened, experimented with matrix models, and pushed decision-making closer to where problems were being solved. What had once been the purview of a select few, judgment, strategic tradeoffs, and insight became expected competencies for managers and team leads across the enterprise.
Now, AI is changing the game again. But this time, it’s not just about access to data. It’s about access to intelligence.
Generative AI democratizes access not only to information, but to intelligent output. That shifts the burden for humans from producing insights to evaluating them. Judgment, which was long the domain of a few executives, must now become a baseline competency for the many across the organization.
But here’s the paradox: while AI extends our capacity for intelligence, discernment, the human ability to weigh context, values, and consequence, is still best left in the hands of human leaders. As organizations begin to automate early-career work, they may inadvertently erase the very pathways and opportunities by which judgment was built.
Why judgment matters more than ever
Deloitte’s 2023 Human Capital Trends survey found that 85% of leaders believe independent decision-making is more important than ever, but only 26% say they’re ready to support it. That shortfall threatens to neutralize the very productivity gains AI promises.
If employees can’t question, challenge, or contextualize AI’s output, then intelligent tools become dangerous shortcuts. The organization stalls, not from a lack of answers, but from a lack of sense-making.
What organizations must do
To stay competitive, organizations must shift from simply adopting AI to designing AI-aware ways of working:
- Build new learning paths for judgment development. As AI replaces easily systematized tasks, companies must replace lost learning experiences with mentorship, simulations, and intentional development planning.
- Design workflows that require human input. Treat AI as a co-pilot, not an autopilot. Embed review checkpoints and tradeoff discussions. Just as innovation processes have stage gates, so should AI analyses.
- Make judgment measurable. Assess and develop decision-making under ambiguity from entry-level roles onward. Research shows the best learning strategy for this is high-fidelity simulations.
- Start earlier. Leadership development must begin far earlier in career paths, because judgment, not just knowledge, is the new differentiator.
What’s emerging is not just a flatter hierarchy, but a more distributed sense of judgment responsibility. To thrive, organizations must prepare their people not to outthink AI, but to out-judge it.
BTS acquires Nexo to strengthen its position in Brazil and Latin America
P R E S S R E L E A S E
Stockholm, May 5, 2025
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN – BTS Group AB (publ), a leading global consultancy specializing in strategy execution, change, and people development, has agreed to acquire Nexo Pesquisa e Consultoria Ltda., Nexo, a boutique consulting firm headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil.
Nexo has been growing continuously since it was founded in 2017. With revenues of approximately 12 million Brazilian Reales (approx. 2.1 million USD) in 2024, and a highly capable team of 21 members, Nexo has built a strong reputation for delivering transformative projects in strategy, innovation, leadership, and culture.
Nexo collaborates with a great portfolio of clients across sectors such as financial services, consumer goods, and technology, assisting both local and global companies in navigating uncertainty, unlocking creativity, and activating strategy through people. Their work encompasses culture transformation, leadership development, employer value proposition, innovation culture, and vision alignment – supported by proprietary methodologies and frameworks.
BTS currently operates in Brazil servicing both local and multinational clients with a team of 13 employees. By acquiring Nexo, BTS not only increases the Group’s footprint in Brazil but also adds significant capabilities in culture and transformation services. Nexo’s client base has limited overlap with BTS, creating strong growth potential and synergy opportunities.
“Nexo is known for helping leaders and organizations tackle some of the most complex, human-centered challenges with creativity, empathy, and strategic clarity and the Nexo team is loved by their clients,” says Philios Andreou, Deputy CEO of BTS Group and President of the Other Markets Unit. “Their products and services complement and elevate our existing offerings, especially in culture transformation, and we are thrilled to welcome the Nexo team to BTS.”
“We’re excited to join BTS. We’ve long admired BTS’s approach and unique portfolio to support large organizations and leaders in connecting strategy with culture across the organization,” says Andreas Auerbach, co founder of Nexo. “Becoming part of BTS, allows us to scale our impact and bring more value to our clients while staying true to our values and culture,” adds Mariana Lage Andrade, co-founder of Nexo.
Upon completion of the transaction, Nexo’s business and organization will merge with BTS Brazil. Nexo’s founders will assume senior management roles in the joint operation.
The acquisition includes a limited initial cash consideration. Additional purchase price considerations will be paid between 2026 and 2028, provided Nexo meets specific performance targets. A limited portion of any such additional purchase price considerations will be paid in newly issued BTS shares. The transaction is effective immediately.
BTS’s acquisition strategy continues to focus on broadening our service portfolio, expanding our geographic reach, and enhancing our capabilities to support future organic growth in a fragmented market.
For more information, please contact:
Philios Andreou
Deputy CEO
BTS Group AB
philios.andreou@bts.com
Michael Wallin
Head of investor relations
BTS Group AB
michael.wallin@bts.com
+46-8-587 070 02
+46-708-78 80 19
High-performing teaming
Work today is too complex for individuals to succeed in isolation. Almost every critical decision, innovation, or transformation depends on teams working effectively together. Leaders rely on their teams to deliver results. Teams, in turn, rely on their leaders to create the conditions where performance is possible. This exchange, what leaders need from their teams, and what teams need from their leaders, sits at the heart of what we call teaming.
When teaming is strong, leaders get what they need from their teams [creativity, resilience, execution] and teams get what they need from leaders [direction, support, and the conditions to thrive]. It’s how strategy becomes action, how uncertainty becomes opportunity, and how businesses stay competitive in a fast-changing world.