HPR Blog

When Human Performance Revolution (HPRev) was founded, we set out to help organizations with a business challenge that we saw all too frequently over the course of our careers: why do talented, carefully selected leaders so often struggle, or fail outright, when they step into a new role? The answer, which decades of organizational research confirm, is this: most leadership transitions fail not because the wrong person was chosen. They fail because the transition itself was n

When organizations hire and onboard new leaders, they are typically focused on leadership and technical skills and cultural fit. In the age of AI, we need to be including AI skills and AI attitude in this equation. Your organization has an AI culture, whether you are aware of it or not. You have made decisions about which AI tools to use and how you will use them. Your employees are using AI to support their work (even if you think they’re not). Everyone in your organization

The New Leadership Reality is that Leadership used to be physical. You could walk the floor. Read the room. Sense when things were off. Those watercooler chats about the weekend sports games or your 6-year old’s dance competition built something that created connection, trust and you got to know a person instead of a role. Now? Your team is split between Remote, In-office and Hybrid environments. So leadership doesn’t happen in one place anymore.

How good is your organization at onboarding? If you are like 68% of global executives who responded to a 2024 SHRM onboarding survey, it probably isn’t very good. Study after study shows that well-designed, comprehensive, and long-lasting onboarding programs drive employee retention, engagement, and performance for at least the first two years of employment. That means that a bad onboarding experience isn’t just a boring first day or first week. Making a bad, or even lukewarm

What do you do for your new managers in the first few days and weeks of their new role? Is it any different than how you onboard other employees? Even if you have a great new employee onboarding program (see It’s called onboarding, not on-boring) management roles are a bit more complex than individual contributor roles and they need a little more support.

When a new leader is appointed and starts in their new role, the organization often is filled with optimism, but the transition may be managed with assumptions. Most frequently, there is a mix of emotions on the team they are chosen to lead. The success of the new leader can be left to chance or the organization can manage the transition to improve the likelihood of that leader’s success and help that team continue to perform.