Almost everything written about CEO appointments assumes you’re working for a large (listed) corporation, have the luxury of a structured onboarding programme, and are guided by a patient, measured board. If that’s not your reality – and for most newly appointed CEOs, it isn’t – it’s time to test assumptions and ask different questions.
The 100-day framework has become the default currency of CEO transitions. It is cited in onboarding conversations, referenced in board papers, and built into executive coaching programmes. It has the reassuring quality of all widely accepted frameworks: it feels like someone, somewhere, did the research, and the answer came back as ‘100 days’.
But the truth is ‘Someone’ didn’t. Or at least, not in the way the mythology suggests. The concept traces back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legislative sprint in 1933 – a political context with little to no meaningful parallel to running a company.
Notwithstanding this detail, it was later popularised in leadership literature as a convenient container for ‘early momentum.’ It has persisted because it is nicely boxed: Boards like it. Search firms build it into their interview prep battery. And so incoming CEOs accept it as the standard measure of Qu 1 success.
None of this makes it wrong, exactly. But as a borrowed framework taken out of context and applied without scrutiny, it’s very possibly going to set everyone up for failure. Not due to capability, but because any kind of universal playbook is unlikely to be fit for purpose.
Between a third and half of new CEOs are considered to be underperforming within 18 months of appointment. More than 90 percent of those CEOs say they wish they had managed their transition differently. (McKinsey, 2025)
The Research Gap
There is a substantial body of research on CEO transitions. McKinsey, Harvard Business Review, Korn Ferry, Spencer Stuart – the leadership advisory world has produced thousands of pages on the subject, and I’ve read a lot of it. It is, by and large, excellent work.
It is also almost entirely built on data from large, listed corporations (mostly the S&P 1500 and the Fortune 500). In other words: companies with significant onboarding and ‘restructuring’ budgets.
Which means that if you are stepping into the CEO seat at a privately-owned mid-sized business, a nonprofit, a PE-backed portfolio company, or a founder-led organisation navigating its first real succession – most of what has been written about your transition was not written with you in mind.
The variables that actually determine what a successful first quarter looks like are specific, contextual, and heavily reliant on key stakeholders. Company size. Ownership structure. Board composition and maturity. The capacity – and sometimes the fragility – of the leadership team you’re inheriting. Whether you were promoted from within or arrived as an outsider. Whether you are stepping into a CEO role for the first time, or the fifth.
And now, in 2026 and beyond, one more variable sits at the top of the list: what the organisation expects of you in relation to AI. That expectation is reshaping the first-quarter conversation in ways no prior playbook could have anticipated.
The AI Complication
Half of CEOs surveyed in BCG’s 2026 AI Radar research believe their job stability depends on successfully integrating AI this year. Further, 72% of CEOs now identify themselves as the primary decision-maker on AI in their organisation – double the figure from the previous year.
What does this research tell us? To me, it sounds like acute pressure for a newly appointed CEO – on top of every other transition demand.
Worth noting: BCG’s research draws on the same pool as most leadership studies – large, listed corporations. So the AI imperative in its most acute form may apply to some newly appointed CEOs, but not all. Not yet. That said, the direction of travel is unambiguous. Soon enough, it’s coming for everyone.
And my point is – this is new. The CEOs who were onboarded even three years ago were not navigating this as a Qu 1 expectation. The frameworks they used, the playbooks they followed, the advisors who supported them – none of it was built with this massive KPI in mind.
In other words: the 100-day expectation needs a proper re-think.
The Questions Worth Asking as you Re-think
What follows is not a checklist. Rather, I’m offering some prompting questions to interrogate your specific situation before you start importing someone else’s answers into it.
On context and mandate:
What problem, exactly, was I appointed to solve? Is that the same problem the board thinks they hired me to solve? Have I tested that assumption explicitly, or am I working from inference?
On the organisation you’re inheriting:
What is the real state of the leadership team – not the org chart version, but the honest version? Who is carrying the place, and who is coasting? What has been tolerated for too long? What has been underfunded, avoided, or managed around?
On the board:
What does success look like to your board at the end of year one – and is that written down anywhere, or is it a set of unspoken expectations waiting to become a disappointment? How much do they know about the industry and the key macro and micro variables influencing performance?
On AI and technology:
What is genuinely expected of you here – and by when? Do you have the fluency to lead this conversation, or do you need to build/buy it quickly? Who in the organisation is already doing interesting things with AI, and have you found them yet? (The early adopters and experimenters are always there…).
On yourself:
What kind of CEO does this organisation need right now – and is that the same as the kind of CEO you are most comfortable being? Where is your edge? Where is your blind spot? Who is going to tell you the truth when you need to hear it? (This is probably not going to come from your leadership team for the first while, even when you specifically ask for it).
On the 100 days themselves:
Is 100 days the right horizon for your situation – or is it borrowed from a context that doesn’t apply to yours? What would a more honest timeframe look like, and are you willing to have that conversation with your board?
So Where Do You Find the Answers?
Probably not in someone else’s strategy doc.
The most useful thing a newly appointed CEO can do in their first quarter is invest serious time in building the conditions that make good thinking possible. This may sound somewhat abstract, but I’m always practical. So here’s a road-map:
- Find the peer networks and CEO forums where people speak candidly about the things they don’t put in board reports. The experience of other CEOs – particularly those who have navigated the specific context you’re operating in – is among the most underutilised resources available to anyone in this seat. These include YPO, EO, Vistage, Endeavour…etc.
- Identify a trusted board chair or mentor who has seen enough transitions to know what is normal difficulty and what is a real warning sign. Someone who will tell you the difference, and who has no incentive to tell you only what you want to hear.
- Take executive coaching seriously – as a genuine investment in the cognitive and relational demands of the role. The CEO seat is structurally lonely. That’s not a weakness; it’s a design feature. The question is whether you have built something to counteract it.
And more than any of these: decide, early, that you are going to be a serious student of leadership and of people. Stay genuinely curious about why humans behave the way they do in organisations – and what that means for how you lead. The CEOs who navigate their transitions well are not always the most experienced, or the most strategically gifted. They are almost always the ones who remained learners.
The 100 days will pass whether you are intentional about them or not. The question is whether, when they do, you have built a foundation that is yours – or borrowed someone else’s and hoped for the best.