Managing Executive Transitions

Tim Wolfred

Description

The Essential Guide for Managing Leadership Turnovers A leadership transition can be a time of high vulnerability for a nonprofit organization. On the other hand, an executive turnover offers unique opportunities for renewal and fresh thinking. Managing Executive Transitions shows how this state of transition can give board and staff members a chance to put things back together in new and creative ways—to discard some old pieces and to bring in fresh elements. Nonprofit boards and executive directors will find practical advice on how to manage leadership turnovers in ways that can heighten mission impact while avoiding potential downsides. Author Tim Wolfred recommends a transformational process of three phases: Prepare, Pivot, and Thrive. In the Prepare phase board members, staff, volunteers, and funders engage in an efficient process for updating the agency's strategic directions and crafting a profile of the skills needed in the next executive. In the Pivot phase a search ensues, conducted by a board reinvigorated and excited about the agency's future impact. In the Thrive phase the board engages the newly hired executive as a leadership partner and gives him or her clear performance priorities derived from the strategic directions. Engaging case studies and hands-on tools such as planning agendas, timelines, sample letters, and communication tips will smooth the transition to new executive leadership.

Sujets

• Gestion et management
• Economics
• Business
• Management

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 09 juin 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781618589224
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright 2009 CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
Managing Executive Transitions: A Guide for Nonprofits is one of a series of works published by Fieldstone Alliance in partnership with CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. Together, we hope to strengthen the impact of nonprofit organizations and the people who work and volunteer for them as they strive to make our communities more vital and our democracy more just.
 
Other titles in this series include:
The Accidental Techie by Sue Bennett, et al.
Best of the Board Café by Jan Masaoka
Financial Leadership for Nonprofits Executives by Jeanne Bell and Elizabeth Schaffer
 
Fieldstone Alliance is committed to strengthening the performance of the nonprofit sector. Through the synergy of its consulting, training, publishing, and research and demonstration projects, Fieldstone Alliance provides solutions to issues facing nonprofits, funders, and the communities they serve. Fieldstone Alliance was formerly Wilder Publishing and Wilder Consulting departments of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation. For information about other Fieldstone Alliance publications, see the last page of this book. If you would like more information about Fieldstone Alliance and our services, please contact Fieldstone Alliance at
800-274-6024
www.FieldstoneAlliance.org
 
Edited by [to come]
Designed by Ann Sudmeier, BookMobile Design and Publishing Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Manufactured in the USA
First printing, [add month year]

Limited permission to copy
We have developed this publication to benefit nonprofit and community organizations. To enable this, we grant the purchaser of this work limited permission to reproduce forms, charts, graphics, or brief excerpts from the book so long as the reproductions are for direct use by the individual or organization that purchased the book and not for use by others outside the organization. For example, an organization that purchased the book to help its staff or board make plans relevant to the topic of this book may make copies of material from the book to distribute to others in the organization as they plan.
 
For permission to make multiple copies outside of the permission granted here—for example, for training, for use in a compilation of materials, for public presentation, or to otherwise distribute portions of the book to organizations and individuals that did not purchase the book—please visit the publisherís web site, www.FieldstoneAlliance.org/permissions .
 
Aside from the limited permission granted here, all other rights not expressly granted here are reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wolfred, Tim, 1945 –

Managing executive transitions : a three-phase guide for nonprofits / by Tim Wolfred.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
9781618589224

1. Nonprofit organizations—Management. 2. Chief executive officers. I. Title.
HD62.6.W653 2009
658.4’07—dc22
2008055092
Table of Contents
Title Page Copyright Page About the Author About CompassPoint Nonprofit Services Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: - Leadership Transitions as Opportunities for Agency Renewal Chapter Two: - Essential Elements of a Successful Leadership Transition Chapter Three: - Prepare Chapter Four: - Pivot Chapter Five: - Thrive Chapter Six: - Transition Topics Afterword Appendix A: - Stepping Up: A Board’s Challenge in Leadership Transition Appendix B: - Emergency Succession-Planning Template Appendix C: - Resources Notes Index More Results-Oriented Resources from Fieldstone Alliance Free Resources Related Books
About the Author
Before founding the Executive Transitions program at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services in 1997, Tim Wolfred served sixteen times as interim executive director of San Francisco Bay Area nonprofits. Tim began his nonprofit career in 1971 as executive director of an Illinois child welfare agency. He was an early organizer of local and national responses to the AIDS epidemic as executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation from 1985 to 1989. He is coauthor of two seminal studies of nonprofit executive director tenure and experience, Daring to Lead (2001 with Jeanne Peters) and Daring to Lead 2006 (with Jeanne Bell and Richard Moyers). Both studies were published by CompassPoint. He has also written two monographs in a series on executive transition issues published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Interim Executive Directors: The Power in the Middle and Building Leaderful Organizations: Succession Planning for Nonprofits. With training partner Karen Gaskins Jones of JLH Associates, Tim created a three-day workshop for nonprofit consultants on the use of the transition model presented in this book. More than 150 consultants across the country have been through the training over the past four years.
About CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
CompassPoint Nonprofit Services is a nonprofit consulting, education, and research organization with offices in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, California. Through a broad range of services and initiatives, CompassPoint serves nonprofit volunteers and staff with the tools, concepts, and strategies necessary to shape change in leadership, nonprofit strategy, finance, fundraising, governance, and executive transition management. CompassPoint frequently publishes books, articles, and research reports on topics of relevance to nonprofits, funders, and capacity builders. For more information, visit www.compasspoint.org .
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge several valued colleagues who have contributed to the body of knowledge and practice that is detailed in this book: The members of CompassPoint’s executive transitions consulting group, past and present, who with the author molded many of the tools and protocols in this book: Mim Carlson, Viveka Chen, Margaret Donohoe, Natasha D’Silva, Kerry Enright, Anushka Fernandopulle, Byron Johnson, Diane Johnson, Ken Kurtzig, Karen Robbins, Amari Romero-Thomas, Ted Scott, Debbie Wu, and J. R. Yeager. Visionary leaders, Jan Masaoka and Mike Allison, who first conceived of an executive transitions service during their tenure at CompassPoint and brought the resources and people together to create it. The consultants of TransitionGuides, especially Tom Adams and Don Tebbe, who were critically important thought partners with the author as the Executive Transitions Management model was being codified. Tom gets a special founder’s recognition for having created an early prototype for the ETM model in his work for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (now NeighborWorks America) in the 1990s.
The author especially thanks the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund for generously underwriting a large portion of his time in writing this book, for being readily available over the years for advice and counsel as the executive transitions program at CompassPoint has evolved, and for promoting to the nonprofit sector the benefits of a thoughtful approach to leadership turnovers.
The author also appreciates enormously the early and ongoing leadership and financial support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Casey Foundation has generously funded CompassPoint and others, both for the creation of this practical model for assisting nonprofits with their transitions and for promoting its availability. The Foundation has underwritten the training of more than 150 transition consultants from all parts of the country and has funded transition assistance for its grantees.
And, very importantly, the author owes a huge debt of gratitude to Cristina Chan, the publications director at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. Cristina did her best to keep him on task and on time and provided invaluable editorial assistance throughout the writing process.
Introduction
This book presents the executive transition practices and tools as they’ve been honed by CompassPoint consultants over the past decade with more than three hundred nonprofit organizations.
CompassPoint Nonprofit Services created its Executive Transitions program in 1997 in response to seeing so many nonprofit agencies struggle with their leadership turnovers. Community agencies, especially medium-sized and smaller ones, were having trouble getting the help they needed to recruit good candidates to succeed their departing executives. The available search services were often unaffordable. And while most local corporate recruiters did great work in the for-profit sector, they weren’t often attuned to the culture of community-based nonprofits, where broad staff inclusion in decision making and a nonmonetary bottom line were highly valued. The majority of nonprofit boards were left to their own devices, often relying on a board member or two who had some sort of recruiting experience in their day jobs.
I was recruited to CompassPoint after having served as an interim executive for some sixteen organizations. I now lead a group of eight transition consultants. The CompassPoint team has assembled a transition toolkit containing over two hundred items, some of which are featured in this book. The transition framing, tools, and advice in this book have been created and honed through my interim executive experience and in our client work at CompassPoint.
Our CompassPoint practice was inspired initially by the pioneering work of Tom Adams in the 1990s at what is now NeighborWorks America. And, importantly, our practice has been augmented over the years through learning exchanges with TransitionGuides, Tom’s current Maryland-based firm. The work of Third Sector New England in Boston has been a further influence.
I’ve further developed ideas about transition leadership by teaching other consultants. With funding support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Karen Gaskins Jones of JLH Associates and I created a three-day training for nonprofit consultants interested in our transition specialty. More than 150 transition consultants from across the coun