In this one-hour webinar offered by GRF CPAs & Advisors, Trevor W. Williams, CPA and Don Tebbe cover:
The term “succession plan” can mean different things to different people. Some think it’s an “insurance policy” — a plan to ensure continuity when a leader is unexpectedly unavailable. Others, especially corporate board members, think it’s about leadership development — a plan to groom a single leader or a program to create a pipeline of leaders. Still others believe it’s an exit strategy for a soon-to-retire executive. All three of these interpretations are correct.
There are three types of succession plans that do all of these things plus a lot more. This article outlines those three succession planning approaches, when to use them, and what they can do for your organization.
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The Nonprofit CEO Succession Roadmap: Your Guide for the Journey to Life’s Chapter is now available on Amazon!
This is the first book ever to…
It’s based on practical experience gleaned from nearly three decades of helping hundreds of nonprofit leaders prepare for and manage turnover in their chief executive position, plus a ton of fresh information based on extensive research from fields ranging from the neuroscience of change to successful aging.
For a limited time, Kindle Unlimited subscribers can read the book for free!
Smart leaders – whether they’re running a business or a nonprofit – know that they’ll leave their job, even their career, at some point. They understand that every job and every career will end in a transition, eventually. It’s just a matter of when, how, and how well managed when that transition finally occurs.
When a CEO moves on – especially if they’re a founder, a long-tenured executive, or a transformational leader – their organization needs to devote time and resources to managing the transition. The longer an executive has been in place, or the more significant their impact on the organization, the harder they are to succeed and the more challenges their successor is likely to face. Regardless of the circumstances, an exit strategy can help pave the way for a smoother transition.
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CEO succession — planning for and managing the change from one chief executive to the next — is one of the board’s most important responsibilities but possibly their least understood job. This isn’t surprising. Executive transitions happen infrequently, and managing them requires skills that fall far outside routine governance roles. Plus, succession projects are complicated and time-consuming. On top of that, succession planning is still a touchy topic in far too many organizations.
This article outlines some of the frequent mistakes of CEO successions, what drives those mistakes, and how good preparation helps you avoid them.
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Nonprofits need to get serious about employee retention. That’s the takeaway message from an important recent study by Nonprofit HR.
The 2019 Talent Retention Practices Survey chronicles staff retention strategies and practices in over 350 organizations from across the US (and some from Canada). Respondents were evenly distributed across the spectrum from small employers (fewer than 10 employees) to large (more than 500 employees), and across budget sizes, from less than $1 million to more than $40 million.
The report is one of the first (if not the first) to identify and quantify the challenges around employee retention in nonprofits.
A lot of nonprofits have an “extraction mentality” when it comes to staffing their organization.
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I’m delighted to be Mary Hiland’s guest on episode #23 of her podcast, Inspired Nonprofit Leadership.
Our topic is nonprofit leadership development. Here are the points that we cover:
We managed to pack a lot into just 34 minutes! I hope you’ll have a listen.
Available on the Inspired Nonprofit Leadership podcast page, or on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.
It’s unavoidable. Your nonprofit’s executive leader will leave sooner or later, maybe even sooner than you think. And yet, if your nonprofit is like most, a succession plan has not been discussed.
Too often considered an awkward or uncomfortable conversation, many choose to avoid the issue or wait until it happens. While this choice is very likely to have a negative impact on the organization, preparing for succession opens up a whole range of dialogues that lead to a stronger, better prepared organization.
This article addresses how to prepare for a smooth transition regardless of how or when your executive leaves.
If your nonprofit is like most, there’s an 80% chance your organization does not have a succession plan in place for the chief executive position, even though there’s a 100% chance that he or she will leave the role eventually.
There seem to be two mindsets behind this lack of attention to leadership succession: the denial mindset and the replacement mindset.
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Work can be viewed as a job (a source of money and security), a career (a source of achievement and advancement), or a calling (a source of meaning and purpose).[1]
Since the days of Martin Luther and John Calvin, the notion of a “calling” has been associated with religion. But researchers have found strong parallels between secular and sacred callings.
In the secular sense, a calling has been described as “an approach to work that reflects the belief that one’s career is a central part of a broader sense of purpose and meaning in life and is used to help others or advance the greater good in some fashion.”[2] Others say that it also involves a sense of “duty, sacrifice, and vigilance.”[3]
Researchers say that regardless of whether the source is religious or secular, callings have the following three characteristics:
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Nearly every board faces the challenge of hiring a new chief executive at some point. And when it comes to managing the CEO transition, every board seems to remember that terse line in the bylaws. You know — the one that reads, “the board is responsible for hiring and supervising the chief executive.” Unfortunately, that directive is terribly short advice. It doesn’t come close to addressing the board’s full responsibility for managing CEO turnover.
CEO transitions are complicated, but managing them well is easier than you think. This post outlines the board’s six tasks for managing the transition the right way. But before we talk about what to do, let’s cover what not to do.
The first common mistake is seeing the transition only as a hiring problem. In reality, hiring the new chief executive is a part of a much larger transition process. It’s a process that involves more changes than who occupies the chief executive position. Ignoring this larger process means you’re ignoring a lot of the related changes and risks — leaving them to chance rather than being intentionally managed.
The second common mistake is rushing through the process. When boards discover that their executive is planning to leave, many rush to fill the position as soon as possible.
The pressure to jump in the search mode is understandable. Hiring a new chief executive is among the board’s biggest responsibilities. And, it’s foreign territory for nearly every board. Faced with complexity and the threat of the unfamiliar, the board is experiencing a form of pain. And we all want the pain to go away as quickly as possible.
But rushing leads to cutting corners and skipping over aspects of the transition that can yield big dividends. A CEO transition is an opportunity to level up an organization’s game plan and capabilities, not just manage the potential downsides.
Now, let’s take a look at those six tasks. This figure outlines how these tasks fall along the three phases of the CEO Succession Timeline, discussed in a previous post.
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