When a new CFO joins your company, how long before they’re truly effective?
The uncomfortable answer: 90 days. Sometimes longer.
They spend their first month figuring out where things are. The second month understanding why things are done that way. The third month finally forming opinions about what to change.
Meanwhile, the business doesn’t pause.
I’ve watched this pattern repeat across six CEO roles. Every new executive goes through the same discovery process—asking the same questions that were answered for their predecessor.
The real cost isn’t just the executive’s ramp time. It’s the institutional knowledge that evaporates every time someone leaves.
Think about your own organization:
• What strategic decisions were made last year—and the reasoning behind them?
• Which customer segments were tried and abandoned—and why?
• What transformation initiatives stalled—and what would change if they were revisited?
If that knowledge lives only in people’s heads, you’re rebuilding from scratch every time leadership changes.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to capture institutional memory.
It’s whether you can afford not to.
What’s one critical piece of institutional knowledge that would be lost if a key leader left your organization tomorrow?