Early in my career, particularly in politics, I shared a common assumption about leadership transitions. When a new leader was elected or hired, there was an expectation that things would improve. Membership would grow. Fundraising would stabilize. New ideas would refresh tired structures. Past mistakes, implicitly, would be corrected.

I believed this as much as anyone.

Transitions were treated as inflection points, moments when optimism and momentum might compensate for problems that had proven difficult to resolve. In complex organizations under pressure, that belief was understandable. But over time, and across many leadership changes, I came to realize that this expectation placed a disproportionate burden on incoming leaders while allowing deeper governance issues to persist unexamined.

What I learned much later is that successful transitions rarely begin with the leader. They begin with whether the organization itself is prepared for continuity.

Alignment Is Not Consensus

In political environments especially, alignment is neither simple nor automatic. Loyalties run deep. People invest personally in outcomes. Some are disappointed when their preferred candidate does not succeed. Others feel they were insufficiently consulted or that their input was acknowledged in form but not substance. Even when formal processes are sound, legitimacy does not settle evenly.

To illustrate the scale of this challenge, consider the governance landscape of national politics alone: a national board, provincial and territorial boards, 338 riding associations, special-interest commissions, elected officials, and senators. Authority is formal in some places and informal in others. Influence persists well beyond any single decision.

Early in my career, I assumed alignment meant agreement, or at least shared enthusiasm. Experience taught me otherwise. Alignment is not consensus. It is acceptance of legitimacy. Without it, organizations may move forward procedurally while fragmenting operationally.

The Governance Fallacies That Surface During Transitions

Having lived through many leadership transitions, I have seen a consistent set of governance fallacies emerge. In my early years, I believed some of them myself. Later, when I was responsible for managing or supporting transitions, I worked consciously to avoid the ones I recognized at the time. With further experience and formal education in governance, I became better able to identify and anticipate these risks before they took hold.

Four fallacies, in particular, have appeared repeatedly.

The Clean Slate Fallacy is the belief that leadership change resets history. In reality, constraints, unresolved decisions, and strained relationships carry forward, whether they are acknowledged or not.

The Legitimacy Transfer Fallacy assumes that authority flows automatically from a title or a properly executed process. In complex stakeholder environments, legitimacy must be reinforced deliberately and repeatedly.

The Alignment-by-Announcement Fallacy treats communication as acceptance. Boards announce decisions and assume alignment exists, when dissent has simply gone quiet rather than disappeared.

The Interim-as-Buffer Fallacy views interim leadership as neutral or stabilizing. In practice, interims often operate with unclear authority and deferred accountability, which can introduce drift rather than stability.

Each of these fallacies allows boards to believe they have managed a transition when they have, in fact, postponed the most difficult governance work.

What I Learned to Clarify First

Over time, I came to understand that the most important work before a transition was not selecting the right individual, but forcing clarity on mandate, decision authority, and unresolved issues.

Before a transition moved forward, I tried to surface what the organization had already decided and what it was implicitly deferring. Without that clarity, new leaders were not inheriting authority; they were inheriting ambiguity. Ambiguity, in turn, erodes confidence, slows decision-making, and concentrates risk in the very role meant to stabilize the organization.

This work was not always welcomed. Board reactions were often mixed. In many sectors, boards are composed of individuals with widely varying levels of governance experience. Navigating that dynamic becomes an exercise in disciplined and effective communication. Some directors want to move quickly. Others want to reopen settled questions. Few are eager to name what the organization has been unwilling to resolve.

Yet that responsibility rests squarely with governance.

When Boards and Leaders Misread Each Other

When governance clarity is lacking, boards and executives frequently misinterpret one another’s behaviour during transitions. Leaders proceed cautiously and are perceived as hesitant. Boards hesitate and are perceived as disengaged. Risk tolerance narrows because accountability feels diffuse.

This is not a failure of intent. It is a failure of explicit governance.

Leadership frameworks such as The First 90 Days rightly emphasize diagnosis, early wins, and expectation management. What they often assume, however, is a level of organizational coherence that boards themselves have not yet established. Leaders are then judged on outcomes before authority, mandate, and legitimacy have been stabilized.

Leadership Transitions as a Measure of Institutional Health

From a governance perspective, leadership transitions should not be treated as deviations from normal operations. They are among the few moments when an organization’s underlying assumptions, decision structures, and accountabilities are tested directly. Where stability has been doing the work of governance, transitions tend to expose that reality quickly.

Organizations that navigate leadership change well are rarely those with the most charismatic leaders. They are those with boards willing to do the unglamorous work of clarity, sequencing, and restraint.

After many transitions, what has become clear to me is this: leadership does not repair governance. Governance sets the conditions under which leadership can succeed.

Boards that understand this prepare for transitions long before names are attached to them. Boards that do not often repeat the same mistakes, only with different people.

In the end, leadership transitions reveal far more about institutions than they do about individuals. And that is precisely why they matter.