Onboarding with Intention: Breaking the “Figure It Out” Cycle

The first few weeks of a new hire often determine everything that follows. Yet for many organizations, onboarding still follows an unspoken rule: If you’re smart enough, you’ll figure it out.

Too often, new hires are expected to navigate complexity, build trust, dive into the work, and deliver results without enough clarity, context, or structured support. This “rites of passage” approach is sometimes mistaken for resilience-building. In reality, it can slow a person’s ability to add value and build momentum. Over time, it may create unnecessary strain and shape a negative perception of the organization as disorganized, overstretched, or indifferent to employee success. While problem-solving in the moment, navigating ambiguity, and adapting to organizational culture are essential skills, expecting new hires to prove themselves through endurance alone comes with real drawbacks. Specifically:

• Leaders spend their early months decoding systems and norms instead of advancing strategy.

• Teams experience uncertainty, misaligned expectations, and stalled momentum.

• Organizations risk disengagement before a new hire has a fair opportunity to adapt, contribute, and succeed.

Effective onboarding isn’t about shielding people from challenges; challenges are part of growth. It’s about creating the conditions for success early and intentionally. When done well, onboarding becomes a strategic investment with shared responsibility between the organization and the individual, that goes well beyond introductions and checklists. At its core, it is the process of integrating someone into the organization’s culture, systems, and goals so their skills and experience can be applied with clarity and purpose.

So, what should intentional onboarding include?

• Structured opportunities to build relationships with those directly impacted by the role (supervisors, leadership, peers, direct reports, cross-functional departments, and external partners/stakeholders). These early connections build trust, surface expectations, and reduce misalignment before it becomes friction.

• Access to institutional knowledge. Understanding organizational history, vision, strategic plan, decision-making norms, team and partnership dynamics, and existing processes and constraints allows new hires to experience and clearly assess gaps and opportunities in context. When this knowledge is shared intentionally through documentation, conversations, observations, and listening sessions, people are better positioned to lead with credibility rather than assumptions.

• Clear guidance around decision-making. New hires need to understand where authority lives, how priorities are set, and how success is measured. Without this clarity, even the most capable individuals can hesitate, overcorrect, or inadvertently create confusion. When expectations and performance measures are transparent and co-developed, teams become more focused, aligned, and consistent.

As organizations prepare for new hires or transitions this year, consider these questions:

• What assumptions do we make about what new leaders should already know about your organization?

• Where could clearer onboarding expectations reduce friction and confusion?

• How is success being defined for this role, and how do we set leaders and their teams up for shared success from the start (tools, resources, development, etc.)?

This approach shifts onboarding from an afterthought to a strategic lever. Breaking the “figure it out” cycle doesn’t lower standards. It raises them by ensuring people are positioned to contribute at their highest level, sooner and more sustainably. Spending less time surviving and more time contributing.