Have you had it happen? You get the call and the board President tells you she’s moving to accept a new job. Next month. The annual campaign kicks off in six weeks. There is no one who could come close to stepping up and leading well. Uh oh. There is no succession plan, and a big hole to fill.
Your nonprofit’s volunteer leadership team is designed to be temporary. Therefore, planning to develop new leaders is not only sound business, but a critical step in creating stability. Succession planning refers to the intentional process of identifying and developing people with the potential and interest to fill key leadership positions in the organization.
There are several reasons for investing in a strategic process for succession:
* Avoid uncertainty and instability
* Provide professional and personal growth opportunities
* Retain talented individuals
* Ensure continued progress toward goals
* Identify competency gaps among the team
* Provide leadership continuity
* Energize and build excitement for the future
Since you know the officers and committee chairs will be rotating out of those positions, what are you doing to prepare for the transition?
Succession Planning 101
1. In order to identify the right people for the right spots, you must understand what you need. First, develop a leadership profile for each position that aligns with your strategic goals. This process relates to lining up your leaders in key positions to set the tone and direction of your organization. Some examples of competencies, attributes or experience might include the ability to manage change, make sound decisions, work well with diverse groups of people or being financially astute, culturally competent, an expert communicator, as well having previous leadership experience.
2. Next, if there are people on the board who seem to meet the criteria outlined for the key leadership positions, be sure to ask: * How did they perform in a recent leadership role?
*How are they perceived by other board members?
*Do they work well with staff?
3. If all systems are go, then determine if the potential leader is interested in assuming this key role. Great leaders may politely decline for various reasons. Sometimes it’s a lack of confidence, sometimes they truly aren’t interested, sometimes they have too many competing priorities and just can’t commit – another time might be better. And trust me, trying to convince someone to step into a key role they don’t want, is asking for trouble.
4. Usually, strong candidates don’t possess all the desired traits. No need to panic. This is where the very meaningful art of developing board members comes into play. It is up to you to provide that opportunity to best prepare them for a bigger role. Do NOT just skip it and decide they are so great, they will just figure it out. That’s a disservice to them and the organization. You want to position them for success in the best possible way. Furthermore, the criteria were developed for this very reason – stick to them or you will soon realize you have a diluted leadership team, incapable of meeting expectations for the organization.
5. When you do all this work to encourage individual advancement and empower the human capital in your organization, one essential component of the plan is to step back and evaluate if it’s working. Initially you set some goals to keep moving your organization forward through succession planning – how are you measuring results?
* Did the training and development work?
* Did you identify the right folks?
* Do you need to adjust the leadership profile?
Then take the results of your evaluation, and adjust the plan.
By the way, when you first create a succession plan, if you look around and don’t have a deep bench of leaders waiting to be placed in key positions, don’t worry too much. It’s what you do next that matters. Be sure to focus on recruiting new board members with your succession needs in mind and you will be ahead of the curve.
For a deeper dive on this and other critical board issues, check out “The Impact Triangle” on Amazon.
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