Dr Alwin Tan, GAICD, MBBS, FRACS, EMBA (Melbourne Business School)

Senior Surgeon | Governance Leader | HealthTech Co-founder |
Harvard Medical School — AI in Healthcare |
Australian Institute of Company Directors — GAICD graduate |
University of Oxford — Sustainable Enterprise

Institute for Systems Integrity

We spend months finding the right person.

Recruitment.

Interviews.

Assessments.

References.

Executive searches.

Succession plans.

Selection panels.

Board approval.

Then they arrive.

We give them a laptop.

A password.

An organisation chart.

A mandatory induction.

A new title.

And sometimes, something remarkably close to:

GOOD LUCK.

Then we wait.

We wait until confidence falls.

Until performance slips.

Until relationships fracture.

Until the first mistake.

Until the complaint.

Until the resignation.

Until somebody says:

“Perhaps they weren't ready for the role.”

Only then does the organisation suddenly discover support.

Coaching.

Mentoring.

Development.

Counselling.

Performance plans.

Executive support.

Remediation.

WE SPEND ENORMOUS EFFORT SELECTING PEOPLE FOR IMPORTANT ROLES — THEN SOMETIMES LEAVE THE MOST DANGEROUS PART TO CHANCE: THE TRANSITION INTO THEM.

Perhaps that is not merely a people problem.

Perhaps it is a governance problem.

We have confused selection with preparation

Consider how many transitions organisations already know are difficult.

School to university.

University to work.

Graduate to professional.

Student nurse to registered nurse.

Registrar to consultant.

Clinician to manager.

Manager to executive.

Executive to CEO.

Executive to board director.

Successor to incumbent.

Employee to AI-enabled employee.

Military service to civilian employment.

Founder to institutional CEO.

Technical expert to people leader.

We know these transitions are coming.

We know the responsibilities will change.

We know the relationships will change.

We know the politics may change.

We know judgement will be tested differently.

And yet:

WE OFTEN GOVERN PERFORMANCE AFTER PEOPLE ENTER A ROLE — WITHOUT GOVERNING THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH THEY ENTER IT.

That distinction matters.

This is bigger than onboarding

There is now substantial evidence around organisational socialisation.

A major 2025 meta-analysis by Bauer and colleagues reviewed 256 studies of organisational socialisation, with 183 contributing sufficient evidence to the quantitative analysis.

The findings reinforce the importance of factors including social acceptance, role clarity, task mastery, perceived fit, organisational socialisation tactics and insider mentoring/support.

Importantly, social acceptance emerged as a particularly consistent pathway connecting organisational and newcomer factors with outcomes including satisfaction, commitment, performance, wellbeing and turnover intentions (Bauer et al., 2025).

In other words:

People need to understand the work.

But they also need to understand the environment.

They need capability.

But they also need connection.

They need responsibility.

But they also need clarity.

They need expectations.

But they also need somewhere safe to ask:

“WHAT DON'T I KNOW YET?”

An orientation is not a transition

This is where many organisations confuse administration with preparation.

Complete the forms.

Read the policies.

Meet HR.

Do the compliance modules.

Receive system access.

Attend orientation.

Done.

Except the real questions often remain unanswered.

Who actually makes decisions here?

What does good judgement look like?

What does the board really care about?

Who should I call when something feels wrong?

Where does formal authority differ from informal influence?

What mistakes are recoverable?

What should I escalate?

Who can challenge whom?

What does nobody write down?

And perhaps most importantly:

WHO WILL NOTICE IF I AM STRUGGLING BEFORE MY STRUGGLE BECOMES A PERFORMANCE PROBLEM?

That is why:

AN ID CARD IS NOT INTEGRATION.

A PASSWORD IS NOT PREPARATION.

AN INDUCTION IS NOT A TRANSITION.

The paradox gets worse as people become more senior

Organisations frequently understand transition very well at junior levels.

Graduate programs may provide:

rotations,

mentors,

peer cohorts,

formal learning,

feedback,

supervision,

structured exposure,

and progressively increasing responsibility.

Apprenticeships work similarly.

We accept that someone learning a trade should practise under supervision before carrying the full responsibility of independent work.

Healthcare does the same through supervised training and transition-to-practice programs.

Yet something strange can happen as people rise.

The job becomes more complex.

The consequences become larger.

The ambiguity increases.

The politics become harder.

The accountability increases.

And sometimes—

THE STRUCTURED SUPPORT DECREASES.

A new executive receives congratulations.

A new CEO receives the keys.

A new board director receives several hundred pages of papers.

And everyone assumes:

They are senior. They will work it out.

Perhaps we have this backwards.

THE HIGHER SOMEONE RISES, THE MORE CONSEQUENTIAL THE TRANSITION — YET THE LESS PERMISSION WE MAY GIVE THEM TO LEARN.

The evidence from executive transitions should concern boards

McKinsey surveyed 1,195 C-suite executives about leadership transitions.

Nearly half reported that they had not been successful at gaining support for their initial objectives, while more than one-third said they had not successfully met their overall objectives during their tenure.

Only 27% believed their organisations had the right resources or programs to support their move into a C-level role.

Most importantly, executives reporting successful transitions were twice as likely to say they received organisational support.

More than half also said they had spent too little time preparing themselves for the personal demands of the new role (McKinsey & Company, 2015).

This should challenge a deeply embedded assumption:

SENIORITY DOES NOT ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR TRANSITION SUPPORT.

Experience matters.

Agency matters.

Personal responsibility matters.

But context still matters.

Culture still matters.

Relationships still matter.

Information still matters.

And support still matters.

We recruit people for what they know — then judge them for what nobody told them

Consider an externally recruited executive.

They may know the industry.

They may understand strategy.

They may have run a larger business.

But they do not yet know this organisation.

Its history.

Its scars.

Its informal power structures.

Its protected assumptions.

Its board dynamics.

Its unresolved conflicts.

Its institutional memory.

Its language.

Its people.

Its unwritten rules.

Technical competence does not automatically create contextual competence.

And yet organisations sometimes interpret slow contextual adjustment as personal deficiency.

WE RECRUIT PEOPLE FOR WHAT THEY KNOW — THEN JUDGE THEM FOR WHAT NOBODY TOLD THEM.

That should make us uncomfortable.

CEO succession exposes the governance gap

CEO succession makes this problem impossible to dismiss as an HR issue.

CEO succession is routinely regarded as a core board responsibility.

Yet Deloitte's survey of Society for Corporate Governance members found fewer than half of respondents reported including professional-development and readiness plans for internal candidates in planned CEO succession arrangements.

Even more strikingly, only 24% of large-cap respondents and 6% of mid-cap respondents reported including onboarding and orientation procedures for an incoming CEO (Deloitte, 2023).

Think about that.

An organisation can have:

a successor list,

candidate criteria,

board procedures,

emergency arrangements,

and potential internal candidates—

yet still have limited architecture for helping the person actually become CEO.

That leads to an important distinction.

SUCCESSION PLANNING WITHOUT TRANSITION PREPARATION MAY NOT BE SUCCESSION PLANNING.

IT MAY JUST BE SUCCESSOR IDENTIFICATION.

Finding the next person is not the same as preparing the next leader.

Healthcare already understands this — sometimes

Healthcare provides an interesting contrast.

We would never expect a medical student to graduate on Friday and independently perform complex surgery on Monday.

Training is progressive.

Observe.

Assist.

Perform under supervision.

Receive feedback.

Take increasing responsibility.

Demonstrate competence.

Then practise independently.

Nursing transition-to-practice and residency programs similarly recognise that professional qualification and successful entry into autonomous clinical environments are not necessarily the same thing.

This reflects a simple principle:

QUALIFICATION DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN READINESS FOR EVERY DEMAND OF THE NEXT ENVIRONMENT.

Yet when that same excellent clinician becomes:

head of department,

clinical director,

chief medical officer,

executive,

CEO,

or board director—

we can suddenly behave as though expertise will magically transfer.

But the job has changed.

Clinical excellence does not automatically teach:

finance,

strategy,

people management,

governance,

organisational politics,

board dynamics,

risk oversight,

or institutional leadership.

The same problem occurs everywhere.

The great engineer becomes engineering manager.

The brilliant lawyer becomes managing partner.

The outstanding academic becomes dean.

The excellent teacher becomes principal.

The top salesperson becomes sales director.

WE PROMOTE PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY ARE EXCELLENT AT JOB A — THEN SOMETIMES BLAME THEM FOR NOT AUTOMATICALLY KNOWING JOB B.

Apprenticeships reveal how strange this really is

We already know how to manage transitions.

Apprenticeships have done it for generations.

Capability develops progressively.

Responsibility increases progressively.

Supervision changes progressively.

Feedback is built into the process.

Competence is demonstrated before complete independence.

The transition is not something that happens after training.

THE TRANSITION IS PART OF THE TRAINING.

So perhaps organisations should confront a simple question:

WE ACCEPT SUPERVISED TRANSITION WHEN PEOPLE LEARN A TRADE.

WHY DO WE SOMETIMES ABANDON IT WHEN THEY LEARN TO LEAD?

And then there is AI

The next generation of organisational transitions may happen without anyone being promoted at all.

A clinician begins receiving AI-generated recommendations.

A lawyer begins using generative AI for research.

An analyst begins supervising machine-generated analysis.

A manager becomes accountable for an AI-supported workflow.

An employee who previously produced the answer now verifies an answer produced by a machine.

Same job title.

Different cognitive task.

Different risk.

Different accountability.

Different judgement.

That is a transition.

And it exposes an important limitation in traditional onboarding thinking.

TRANSITIONS ARE NOT JUST CHANGES IN TITLE.

A transition occurs whenever the environment changes sufficiently that good judgement now requires something materially different.

That can happen through:

AI.

Automation.

Restructuring.

Mergers.

New regulation.

Remote work.

New teams.

New countries.

New responsibilities.

Return from extended leave.

Rapid organisational growth.

Or crisis.

Which means Transition Integrity™ is not simply about onboarding.

It is about how organisations govern consequential change around human beings.

Introducing Transition Integrity™

We propose Transition Integrity™:

The extent to which an organisation anticipates consequential transitions and deliberately equips people with the capability, role clarity, contextual knowledge, relationships, authority and recovery support required to navigate them successfully.

Transition Integrity™ asks organisations to move upstream.

Not:

What happened after the person failed?

But:

What did we know before they entered the transition?

That requires nine questions.

ANTICIPATE

Where are the predictable transitions?

PREPARE

What capability will the person require before entering them?

CLARIFY

Are authority, accountability, expectations and decision rights actually clear?

CONNECT

Who will provide mentoring, contextual knowledge and trusted challenge?

PRACTISE

Can responsibility increase progressively before the full consequences arrive?

MONITOR

What early signals show that the transition is deteriorating?

RECOVER

Can early mistakes trigger learning before they trigger labelling?

REMOVE

Which difficulties are genuinely necessary—and which are simply poor system design?

EVALUATE

Can the organisation demonstrate that its transition architecture actually works?

Because:

A TRANSITION PROGRAM THAT CANNOT SHOW WHETHER TRANSITIONS IMPROVED CAN BECOME GOVERNANCE THEATRE.

Transition Debt™

There is another risk.

Organisations can repeatedly underinvest in transitions and still appear to function.

Why?

Because people compensate.

A senior colleague quietly helps.

A spouse absorbs the extra hours.

A manager works weekends.

A nurse stays late.

An executive learns the organisation at midnight.

A board member finds an informal mentor.

A graduate relies on another graduate.

The transition appears successful.

But the system may not have succeeded.

THE PERSON MAY HAVE SUBSIDISED THE FAILURE.

We describe the accumulated risk as Transition Debt™:

The organisational risk that accumulates when people repeatedly enter consequential new environments without adequate preparation, contextual knowledge, relationships, authority or recovery support.

Like financial debt, Transition Debt™ may remain invisible while repayments are being made.

Those repayments may take the form of:

extra hours,

stress,

workarounds,

peer rescue,

lost confidence,

avoidable mistakes,

unnecessary turnover,

and human effort.

Eventually the bill arrives.

The Preparation–Accountability Gap™

There is another imbalance boards should examine.

We call it the Preparation–Accountability Gap™:

The distance between the accountability placed on an individual and the preparation, authority, information and support provided to carry it.

Imagine:

ACCOUNTABILITY ↑

while:

PREPARATION →

AUTHORITY →

INFORMATION →

SUPPORT →

The gap widens.

And so does risk.

Yet when something goes wrong, organisations can look almost exclusively at the individual.

Why did they make that decision?

Why didn't they escalate?

Why couldn't they cope?

Why didn't they know?

A high-integrity investigation should ask something else as well:

WAS THE PERSON GIVEN WHAT THE ORGANISATION SHOULD REASONABLY HAVE KNOWN THEY WOULD NEED?

That does not remove individual accountability.

It aligns it with system accountability.

But there is a danger in all of this

Transition Integrity™ must not become institutional hand-holding.

People have agency.

Professionals have responsibilities.

Executives should seek information.

Leaders should learn.

Directors must exercise independent judgement.

People should not expect organisations to eliminate every difficulty.

And there is another danger.

Onboarding can become indoctrination.

Mentoring can become conformity.

Socialisation can teach newcomers not merely how the organisation works—

but which dysfunctions they are expected to tolerate.

Don't question that.

Don't challenge them.

That is how things work here.

Keep your head down.

Choose your battles.

You will understand eventually.

This creates one of the most important governance questions in the entire framework:

EVERY ORGANISATION ONBOARDS PEOPLE INTO SOMETHING.

WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE TEACHING THEM TO ACCEPT?

A newcomer may see something insiders no longer see.

The strange process.

The unsafe workaround.

The protected executive.

The absurd meeting.

The pointless KPI.

The cultural contradiction.

The risk everyone has normalised.

Transition Integrity™ therefore cannot mean:

“Teach newcomers how we do things here.”

It should mean:

“Help newcomers understand why we do things here — without destroying their ability to ask whether we should.”

And resilience cannot become an excuse

There is one final trap.

When transitions are difficult, organisations may respond by trying to make people more resilient.

Sometimes that is appropriate.

But not always.

If workload is impossible, fix workload.

If authority is unclear, clarify authority.

If staffing is unsafe, address staffing.

If information does not flow, repair the information system.

If the culture punishes questions, fix the culture.

If accountability exceeds authority, redesign the role.

Because:

WE SHOULD NOT TRAIN PEOPLE TO BECOME BETTER AT SURVIVING CONDITIONS GOVERNANCE SHOULD HAVE FIXED.

High-integrity organisations do both.

They prepare people for unavoidable difficulty.

And they remove avoidable difficulty.

The question boards should start asking

Boards routinely ask:

Do we have the right people?

Do we have a succession plan?

Is turnover acceptable?

Do we have leadership capability?

Is the workforce resilient?

Perhaps another question belongs beside them:

WHERE ARE THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL HUMAN TRANSITIONS IN THIS ORGANISATION — AND HOW DO WE KNOW THEY ARE DESIGNED TO SUCCEED?

Then ask:

Where do people repeatedly struggle?

Where does accountability suddenly increase?

Where does authority fail to increase with it?

Where are newcomers dependent on informal workarounds?

Where do people receive responsibility before contextual knowledge?

Which transitions rely disproportionately on heroic individuals?

What do we currently call a performance problem that may actually be a transition-design problem?

And perhaps the hardest question:

WHAT ARE WE CURRENTLY TEACHING PEOPLE TO COPE WITH THAT WE SHOULD ACTUALLY BE FIXING?

Sometimes people do fail

We should say this clearly.

Not every unsuccessful transition is a systems failure.

Sometimes the person was wrong for the role.

Sometimes judgement was poor.

Sometimes behaviour was unacceptable.

Sometimes support was offered and not used.

Sometimes accountability properly belongs with the individual.

Transition Integrity™ should never become a mechanism for explaining away personal responsibility.

But neither should personal accountability become a convenient way of explaining away predictable system weakness.

The task of governance is to distinguish between them.

INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND SYSTEM ACCOUNTABILITY ARE NOT COMPETITORS.

HIGH-INTEGRITY GOVERNANCE REQUIRES BOTH.

From school to the boardroom

This brings us back to a deceptively simple example.

The MBK-Obama Leadership Academy prepares young men before they enter high school.

Academic capability.

Leadership.

Relationships.

College exposure.

Belonging.

Voice.

The importance of the example is not that a youth program contains the answer for corporations.

It does not.

The lesson is simpler.

THE TRANSITION WAS VISIBLE BEFORE THE FAILURE.

So support began before the failure too.

That principle travels remarkably well.

School.

University.

Work.

Clinical practice.

Management.

Executive leadership.

CEO succession.

Boards.

AI-enabled work.

Different people.

Different environments.

Different risks.

Same question.

IF WE CAN SEE THE TRANSITION COMING, WHY ARE WE WAITING UNTIL SOMEONE STRUGGLES BEFORE WE BUILD THE CONDITIONS THEY NEED TO SUCCEED?

The ISI proposition

High-integrity organisations should not merely govern who enters important roles.

They should govern how people enter them.

Because selection without preparation is incomplete.

Accountability without authority is dangerous.

Responsibility without contextual knowledge creates risk.

Onboarding without relationships creates isolation.

Resilience without system repair can hide dysfunction.

And succession without transition architecture can leave even outstanding people exposed.

Perhaps the responsibility of an organisation does not begin when somebody struggles.

Perhaps it begins when the organisation can reasonably foresee the environment they are about to enter.

WE SPEND MONTHS CHOOSING THE RIGHT PERSON.

WE SHOULD SPEND MORE TIME ASKING WHETHER WE HAVE BUILT THE RIGHT TRANSITION.

Because sometimes—

THE PERSON DID NOT FAIL THE TRANSITION.

THE ORGANISATION FAILED TO DESIGN ONE.

References

Bauer, T.N., Bodner, T., Erdogan, B., Truxillo, D.M. and Tucker, J.S. (2007) ‘Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), pp. 707–721. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.92.3.707.

Bauer, T.N., Erdogan, B., Ellis, A.M., Truxillo, D.M., Brady, G.M. and Bodner, T. (2025) ‘New horizons for newcomer organizational socialization: A review, meta-analysis, and future research directions’, Journal of Management, 51(1), pp. 344–382. doi:10.1177/01492063241277168.

Bauer, T.N., Erdogan, B. and Simon, L. (2025) ‘The evolving future of work: Implications for newcomer adaptability and connectivity during organizational socialization’, Human Resource Management. doi:10.1002/hrm.70008.

Deloitte (2023) ‘CEO succession planning processes’, Board Practices Quarterly, December. Deloitte Center for Board Effectiveness.

McKinsey & Company (2015) ‘Ascending to the C-suite’, McKinsey Quarterly, 1 April.

Obama Foundation (2024) ‘The My Brother’s Keeper Alliance hosts first-ever MBK-Obama Leadership Academy’, Obama Foundation.

Saks, A.M., Uggerslev, K.L. and Fassina, N.E. (2007) ‘Socialization tactics and newcomer adjustment: A meta-analytic review and test of a model’, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 70(3), pp. 413–446. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2006.12.004.

Van Camp, J. and Chappy, S. (2017) ‘The effectiveness of nurse residency programs on retention: A systematic review’, AORN Journal, 106(2), pp. 128–144.

Watkins, M.D. (2007) ‘Help newly hired executives adapt quickly’, Harvard Business Review, 85(6).

Suggested citation

Institute for Systems Integrity (2026) Why Do We Wait for People to Fail Before We Give Them What They Needed to Succeed? Transition Integrity™: Why High-Integrity Organisations Prepare People Before Predictable Transitions Become Preventable Failures. Melbourne: Institute for Systems Integrity.