By Anthony Tansimore, Olive Grove Consulting
We are pleased to share this post from our colleagues at Olive Grove, an Exponent Philanthropy Professional Sustaining Partner.
Imagine you are running your first marathon. Coming up on the final mile, your energy is flagging, but you know you can make it. Then, all of a sudden, you see a sign that reads “Finish line 4 miles ahead.” Whether you could physically make it or not is beside the point now. Your mental image of the challenge has been upended, and you feel like 4 miles might as well be 40.
We see this over and over with nonprofit and foundation board members’ expectations of a leadership transition. They are exhausted by the search and hiring process and have no juice left over to provide the comprehensive off-boarding and on-boarding activities that can be the crucial link to smooth succession.
During the summer of 2014, Olive Grove Consulting and Vista Global Coaching & Consulting partnered to conduct a national study on leadership succession and transition planning in the nonprofit sector. Sixteen in-depth interviews and 204 survey responses confirmed the anecdotal evidence that transition activities after the hire of the new CEO get short shrift and that this is an area where nonprofits and foundations need considerable support if they are to have successful leadership transitions.
Some of the challenges highlighted in the study included:
- Confusion about and tension around the role, in any, that the departing CEOs would have going forward.
- Lost organizational momentum as the new CEO struggles to get up to speed.
- Board burnout when they feel like yet another task has been dropped on their plate after exhausting search processes.
- Lost institutional knowledge and external relationships when there is not a process to transfer these components.
- Poor morale and distrust of new leadership if the leader appears to be uninformed about key aspects of the organization.
