Nearly half of new leaders fail by month eighteen. Almost none of them fail on competence.
A transition-readiness diagnostic built as one continuous case: you take over a division whose numbers applaud and whose evidence quietly disagrees — and every decision of your first ninety days is scored against the situation you were actually in, not the one you assumed.
The first assessment with a ground truth — and it knows whether you found it
The transition research is blunt about the stakes: the largest new-hire tracking study on record found 46% of new hires fail within eighteen months and only 19% clearly succeed — with 89% of the failures attributed to fit, judgement and political factors, not technical skill. Executive syntheses put 27–46% of leadership transitions at failure or disappointment two years in, and find 68% of them foundering on politics, culture and people. And a survey of 402 chief executives found 74% believed their past success had prepared them for the new seat; in hindsight, 32% were right.
So this instrument tests the skill the research says decides transitions: situation diagnosis. You inherit a real dossier — the P&L against its category, the share-price decomposition, the engagement verbatims, the pipeline vintage chart, the predecessor's warm handover note, the organisation's tenure map — and you commit to a diagnosis before you act. The case has a ground truth the exhibits support, and your Situation Read is scored against it. Then you live the ninety days: the first all-hands, the inherited strategy, the quarter-end deal, the rival deputy, the early-win choice, the discounting engine, the star who is interviewing out, the first personnel call, the stop list, the structure question, the day-90 presentation.
Here is the mechanism no other assessment has: every option in every decision is invisibly tagged with the situation it actually serves — and your Transition Craft is scored against the true situation whatever you diagnosed. Run last job's playbook and the report shows it. Diagnose correctly and act otherwise, and the report names the gap — The Borrowed Playbook, the most documented failure in the literature. Move right on a wrong stated read, and it names that too: Right Instincts, Wrong Map. Hidden tempo tags separately profile your pace against the research-backed learn-then-act gradient, catching the action imperative and the study hall alike.
What you walk away with
The Flying Start, The Borrowed Playbook, Right Instincts Wrong Map, or The Exposed Ninety — your Situation Read and Transition Craft scored against separate bars, because they fail separately, and the failure research names both.
The four situation archetypes with your committed call marked against the case's ground truth — and each dossier exhibit marked read or misread, so you can see exactly which surface story took you in.
All fifteen decisions replayed in three phases, each marked for situational fit and tempo — the construction drawing of your transition, misfit moves flagged in the margin.
The Old Playbook, The Action Imperative, The Study Hall, The Court Politician — flagged only when they reach pattern strength, each with a concrete counter-practice.
Your written note to the CEO — diagnosis, stop list, sequence, ask — graded against an expert rubric, plus a second-ninety plan built from your two weakest fronts.
Inside your blueprint
Illustrative sample — your blueprint is generated from your own responses.
Built for
- Leaders in their first ninety days right now — or with a start date on the calendar
- Internally promoted leaders, who report feeling less prepared than external hires and get less support
- External hires walking into an organisation whose politics they cannot yet read
- HR and talent teams building transition support for newly appointed leaders
The breakeven point of a typical transition is month six. Move it.
Fifty-five minutes, one honest dossier, ninety days you get to live twice.
₹1,999 (incl. GST) · assessment and full report, nothing further to pay
Frequently asked questions
Not competence. The largest tracking study on record — 20,000+ hires across 312 organisations — found 46% failed within eighteen months, with 89% of failures attributed to attitudinal and fit factors and only 11% to technical skill. Executive syntheses find 68% of transitions founder on politics, culture and people, and that a typical mid-level leader consumes more value than they create for roughly the first six months. This assessment scores exactly that terrain: diagnosis, pacing, alliances, and the political work of arrival.
The case's evidence dossier supports one true reading of the situation — a quietly drifting business wearing a successful one's numbers. You commit to a diagnosis, and your Situation Read is scored against the truth, with graded partial credit for near-misses. Then every transition decision's options are invisibly tagged with the situation each move actually serves, and your Transition Craft is scored against the true situation regardless of what you diagnosed. The two dimensions separate cleanly — and their four combinations are the four verdicts.
No. The case rewards the research-backed gradient — learning while learning is cheap, acting once the map exists — and hidden tempo tags profile every choice. Sustained act-first picks in the first thirty days flag The Action Imperative, the most common documented transition trap; sustained deferral flags The Study Hall. Bold rescue-mode moves in a situation that isn't a rescue score as misfits, with the reasoning spelled out in the replay.
Especially. The CEO-transition survey found internally promoted leaders felt less prepared than external hires (28% vs 38%) while receiving less structured support — familiarity hides the fact that the role, the altitude and the political geometry have all changed. The case is built so the inherited map — the predecessor's note, the celebrated numbers, the loyal team — is precisely what must be re-examined.
Any leader entering a new role — team lead to general manager — and the HR teams supporting them. Scenarios are set in the modern professional workplace and keyed to international transition research; it runs online in about 55 minutes, priced in INR and USD, with a written day-90 note graded against an expert rubric.
Every level from aspiring leader to the boardroom has its own readiness assessment — its own research base, scoring model and verdict report. Wherever you are now, and wherever you are heading next, there is a rung that measures it.
See every level →Methodology: Measures transition readiness through an original ground-truth case design: a continuous ninety-day case whose evidence dossier supports one true situation diagnosis, with every transition decision scored against the situation the leader was actually in rather than the one they assumed. Situation Read and Transition Craft are scored as separate dimensions with a quadrant verdict; hidden tempo tags profile the leader's pace against the research-backed learn-then-act gradient. Constructs draw on the executive-transition research tradition: the breakeven finding, situation-archetype diagnosis, the documented transition traps, structured boss conversations and stop-list doctrine. Includes a rubric-graded written day-90 note. All items are original works.