Executive onboarding

Executive onboarding or Executive on-boarding is the process of assimilating a new hire or a newly transferred executive to the current working environment. It may also be called Executive assimilation.

General

Executive onboarding is a relatively old idea but only recently has it been systematically incorporated into business, as more businesses acquire their executives and board members through outsourcing, head hunting, or other methods where the person's qualifications were not assessed through the companies' own experience with the employee. Unlike executives who have "climbed the ranks", these new hires do not automatically "fit in" to the work environment, and companies find gaps in expectations and the results delivered. There are three levels of onboarding: accommodation, assimilation and acceleration.

Accommodation involves things that enable executives to do work. This includes things like getting them an office, phone, computer and other tools they will need.

Assimilation involves things that enable executives to work with others. This includes identifying their key stakeholders, facilitating conversations between the new executive and those stakeholders, and doing periodic 360-degree assessments for early identification of potentially troubling relationships so the executive can improve those before they become real problems.

Acceleration involves things that enable executives and their teams to deliver better results faster. This is also called transition acceleration and includes work done with executives and their teams to jumpstart critical strategic, operational and organizational processes. Companies that hire senior executives from outside in order to introduce new leadership perspectives take on significant financial and organizational risks because 35-40% of externally hired executives fail. Strategy focused executive onboarding is a way to mitigate the risk.

There have been several books written on the subject of executive onboarding including: - "The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan", Bradt, Check and Pedraza (Wiley, 2006) - "The First 90-days", Watkins (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2003) - "You're in Charge, Now What", Neff and Citrin (Random House, 2005)

Silk Road ( [http://www.silkroad.com] ) covers the mechanics of onboarding. PrimeGenesis ( [http://www.primegenesis.com] ) specializes in senior executive transition acceleration. Many other consulting firms offer onboarding services (Break Through Consulting, Kaiser Associates).

The Economist wrote an article that does a good job explaining executive onboarding [http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7170443] .