Free workshop will help organizations plan for executive transition

Thanks to a partnership with the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, CCSR has been working closely with Tom Adams of TransitionGuides in the last two years to deeply understand organizational succession planning – and to make it useful and relevant for Kansas organizations. For most nonprofit organizations, this is specifically about planning for the day when the current executive director leaves.

On October 18^th, 1-5pm, CCSR will offer a free Compassion Kansas workshop in Wichita for nonprofit organizations on succession planning. This workshop will provide an introduction to Succession Basics: Emergency Backup Plan and Succession Policy. Call 316-978-3843 to register.

In his book TheNonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide, Adams says there are six areas to explore when an organization wants to define what a successful transition would look like. These areas also illuminate how close the organization is to being ready.

1. Strategy readiness
   How current is our strategic and business plan?
   What has changed or is changing in the environment that will influence our strategy or business plan in the next few years?
    
2. Financial readiness
   Do we understand our current financial health: income, expenses, assets and liabilities?
   What is the trend in our income and expenses and capacity to sustain a balanced operating budget?
    
3. Systems readiness
   Do we have in place up-to-date policies and procedures to guide and protect our organization? Where are we vulnerable?
   Does our technology infrastructure support the work required to achieve our mission?
    
4. Management team/staff readiness
   Are there key managers or staff who are doing more than one person’s job?
   Is there a culture and morale among managers or staff that results in retention, growth and ongoing advances for the organization in a capacity to achieve its mission?
    
5. Board readiness
   Does the board have effective leaders as chair and treasurer and leaders of key committees?
   Does the board have systems to support board regeneration and succession?
    
6. Executive readiness
   Is the executive clear about her plans for departure or engaged in a personal process to become clear?
   Does the executive support this planning?

This workshop will provide language and tools to begin to answer these questions and prepare organizations for fulfilling their missions beyond the tenure of the current executive.

Executive Director Evaluation | By Heather Perkins

The phone rings.

Photo courtesy of kthypryn

The executive director of a local non-profit organization answers and discovers that the call is from a client who was recently assisted by the organization. The client has called to express his gratitude for the services he received and the hope that he has for the future as a result. Although short, the call is upbeat and encouraging.

An hour later, a staff member comes into the director’s office with a letter of resignation. Although she has enjoyed her position and has performed her job well, she has been offered more money and better benefits at a for-profit business. Her loss to the organization will be significant. 

Over lunch, the director meets with a member of his board who is very unhappy with the state of organization and is causing significant dissention within the board.   

How does the director process and assimilate these various interactions?  Is he being an effective leader?  How does he know?

Providing constructive feedback to the executive director is one of the most significant roles of a board of directors, but also one of the most uncomfortable.  As a result, the task is frequently avoided and the director is left to try to assess his performance based upon often conflicting feedback coming from numerous different sources.  In addition, any weaknesses in performance are left unaddressed and continue to impact the organization. 

Regardless of the context, performance reviews are a challenging undertaking.  However, the personal and organizational growth that can occur as the result of healthy review processes should not be underestimated.  Performance reviews are a gift that every nonprofit board should give to their executive director. 

A free online resource for conducting nonprofit director performance reviews that may be helpful is the Evaluating Your Executive Director (pdf) workbook from The Enterprise Foundation in Maryland. And BoardSource has several resources available (at different price points) for nonprofits evaluating their executive.

Dynamic performance review processes provide the focus and support so desperately needed by many nonprofit leaders. In addition, they facilitate the process of engaging in healthy, growth-oriented conversations. And finally, they allow the director to answer with even more confidence the next time the phone rings.

Elements of Executive Transition Planning

Tom Adams, president of TransitionGuides™, is impressed with the work and mindset of nonprofit organizations in Kansas.

“I think Kansas is sweet. The nonprofit leaders I’ve met care passionately about their work and their community – just kind of a no-nonsense, let’s-get-it-done approach to things,” Adams says. “I think there are many areas in which Kansas has led the region and the country in attention to leadership development.”

Adams has been a valuable voice as CCSR has developed a multi-pronged approach to helping nonprofit organizations plan for the transition of long-time or founding executives:

CCSR will provide subsidized succession and executive transition services to identified nonprofits.  This will include:

Succession Basics: Emergency Backup Plan and Succession Policy
The purpose of an Emergency Backup Plan is to define and clarify short- and long-term unplanned executive absences, clarify who decides such an absence is occurring, and to state who assumes the functions and roles of the executive during the absence.  The service will be provided as a stand-alone capacity building activity provided to individual organizations or incorporated into some if not all strategic planning packages. Succession policy supports this plan, institutionalizing best practices and insuring succession plans are regularly reviewed and updated.      

Departure Defined Succession Planning
Departure Defined Succession Planning includes assessment of strategy, financial, systems, management/staff, board and executive readiness. Work in these “readiness” areas involves preparation for the transition, an organizational review and subsequent succession plan development, and plan implementation support.             

Executive Transition Management
The goal of executive transition management is to hire an executive who meets the current and future leadership needs of the organization. In addition, the organization’s board and staff should be well-prepared to work with the new executive.
   
Leadership Development and Talent Management
This area includes activities designed to align resources and practices to support leader development; strengthen the capacity to manage leader development and talent management; make leader development a central part of annual operational and strategic planning; and create “bench strength” by expanding development and training opportunities for existing and emerging leaders.  CCSR will support these efforts with Kansas Leadership Center principles, competencies, and concepts.  CCSR will provide leadership training to address adaptive challenges faced by agencies.  CCSR will facilitate a planning process to help agencies meet the technical or management related challenges.  One important adaptive challenge to be addressed by organizations will be the intentional development of individuals of diverse cultures and ethnic backgrounds.     
   
Leadership Transition Coaching
CCSR will provide coaching specifically tied to executive transitions as a stand-alone service or as part of Departure Defined and Leadership Development/Talent Management proposals.  The current approach (Kansas Leadership Center Coach Training, 2010) used by CCSR will apply to this service context.      

As with other organizational planning, the biggest mistake organizations can make regarding transition planning is putting it off too long because of daily deadlines.

“Transition planning has great potential,” Adams says. “I think the challenge always for the no-nonsense leaders that we desperately need is to not overlook the important but not urgent work.”

To begin a no-nonsense sustainability review and examine your own organization’s need for transition planning, contact Amy Delamaide at CCSR, 316.978.6773.

National expert on transition planning consulting with CCSR

 Does the executive director (ED) of your favorite nonprofit organization remember The Beatles on Ed Sullivan?

Tom Adams visiting with Scott Wituk

That’s a wonderful memory, but it also might be a sign that he or she is considering retirement.

“A lot of people have a lot of investment in the work of a particular nonprofit organization. They’ve co-created something that’s very meaningful to them and the community,” says Tom Adams, president of TransitionGuides™.  “Unless attended to … there is the risk of it not going forward or not going forward successfully.”

For several years, the Wichita State University Center for Community Support & Research (CCSR) has helped nonprofits plan for and manage transitions of their executive staff. These transitions sometimes happen in unplanned scenarios – deaths or dismissals. Other transitions are planned, as the ED moves on to something else. Increasingly, these departure-defined transitions happen as EDs retire.

Thanks to a partnership with the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, Adams has visited CCSR three times in the last few months to share his expertise in executive transition planning. This is helping CCSR expand and refine its abilities to respond to this key issue for nonprofits.

Adams says, in light of the beginning retirement of the Baby Boomers who remember growing up in front of the Ed Sullivan show, this is a particularly important time for non-profit executives and board members to be aware of this issue. It will not be a one-size-fits-all solution, especially because economic conditions are an incentive for some EDs to keep working longer than they planned.

“[The economy] is leading to more creativity about more gradual transitions and phased retirement and in some cases creative continuation of a role that’s clearly defined and not a threat to the incoming executive,” Adams says. “I think we’ll see more and more creativity as the economy continues to improve.”

Intentional planning by the board and staff members of organizations allows these creative ideas to take shape intentionally, before the pressure of an announced (or unexpected) transition.

“There are a lot of long-term executives and founders,” Adams says. “I find that succession planning is getting deeper and deeper roots each year … and that smart organizations are planning ahead for transitions.”

In addition to planning for the transition of the executive role, Adams feels strongly that to remain successful, organizations must increasingly fill key professional and volunteer positions with younger, more diverse talent. It might help to remember that Ed Sullivan populated his show with all kinds of performers, including the brash young working-class moptops.

“There is a wonderful opportunity over the next 5 years to make some significant change if people come together around that,” Adams says.

To learn more about executive transition planning, look for Tom’s new book, The Nonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide. To begin a sustainability review and examine your own organization’s need for transition planning, contact Amy Delamaide at CCSR, 316.978.6773. We want to hold your hand!

Sustainability in Succession Planning

 "The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, said in a 2007 letter to shareholders that he has long had three internal candidates to succeed him as chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, and had identified four potential candidates for the investment side of his job.

Last year, the company announced that it had hired Todd Anthony Combs, a young former hedge fund manager who may turn out to be the heir apparent on the investment side of the business.

Buffett, now 80, announced details of his succession plan in his typical folksy style, writing in the 2007 letter to shareholders: “I’ve reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death — abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term ‘thinking outside the box.' - Going somewhere? Some CEO exit strategies"

Most of us can appreciate an investor with a sense of humor… or perhaps not.

This quote does elevate a major concern for organizations as baby boomers reach an age of transition from work as they have known it to the next stage of their lives.

CCSR is doing a bit of thinking “outside the box” in response to the “silver tsunami” among nonprofit and governmental founders and executives.  We are reframing our strategic planning emphasis to introduce the idea of sustainability in a framework of succession planning and executive transition support.  

What does that look like?

To start with, WSU CCSR is conducting a study of current nonprofit leadership demographics and transition service needs among Kansas nonprofits.  The study will employ electronic surveys, key informant interviews and focus groups sessions.  This study will be conducted to better understand transition related trends in Kansas, to understand the extent of succession planning needs among nonprofits, and to determine the types of specific supports required to respond to trends.

Based on what we learn we plan to offer regional “cohort” workshops for agreed upon nonprofits which may include funders (of this proposal) and their grantees about succession planning in general and emergency back-up plan and policy development specifically.  Following cohort sessions, CCSR and TransitionGuides will offer follow-up assistance, where appropriate and requested, to individual nonprofits that are interested in follow-up assistance.