TransitionLeader

The e-newsletter on nonprofit executive succession and transition.   

Vol. 2 No. 2, Winter 2004-05   

 TransitionGuides Home Page | Newsletter Page   

• Welcome
• Feature Article
  • The Post-Hire Phase: Launching a thriving relationship - A Step-by-Step Approach
• New Research
  • National Leadership Survey completed by over 900 executives
• New Resources
  • Succession Planning Workbook
  • Stanford Social Innovation Review highlights ETM
• Executive Transition Management (ETM) Field-Building
  • Building the Community of ETM Practitioners
• Recent & Upcoming Events
  • Interest Grows in Succession Planning and Early Attention to Transition Planning
  • Alliance conference ETM session scheduled for July 2005
  • Next Steps Workshops Expand in 2005

We're delighted to celebrate the extraordinary progress of our colleagues around the country toward making ETM widely available to nonprofits as a tool to build capacity, reduce risk and increase effectiveness for organizations during transition. We are also pleased to continue to share with you, through this e-newsletter, ETM practices that draw on the deep and rich experience of a national learning community of ETM practitioners.

The last edition of TransitionLeader included the third part in a series of articles that discusses the "Prepare, Pivot and Thrive" model of executive transition management. We began in the fall 2003 edition with the "Preparation" or "Getting Ready" phase, which is the first phase of an executive transition. In the next two editions we discussed "The Pivot" phase and its two objectives: (1) recruit and hire the next director and (2) ensure that the organization is prepared to work with that new executive. In this edition, we conclude this series with the third phase of ETM, the Thrive or Post-Hire phase.
 

Once an executive search is complete there's a natural tendency for the board and staff to breathe a sigh of relief and try to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible. If the search and selection process has been particularly exhausting, the inclination of the board leadership may be to toss the keys to the new executive and say, "we'll see you at the next board meeting." That's probably overstating the case, but based on our interviews with outgoing executives about the orientation process when they were hired, it's probably not overstating it by much.

While the search may be over and the board and staff have been working on the transition for several months, for the incoming executive, the transition is just beginning. The post-hire phase offers a rich opportunity to help the new executive get off on the right foot, to structure relationships in a positive way and to set the stage for achieving the priorities that you identified in the planning stage of the transition.

Using the Executive Transition Management (ETM) approach, the key post-hire tasks include:

• Announce the appointment
• Provide a solid introduction/orientation
• Understand the taking charge process and address the early challenges
• Identify needs and provide support
• Clarify the 12- to 18-month priorities
• Build the board/executive "social contract"
• Define how performance will be monitored

Step 1 -- Announce the Appointment

The appointment announcement can serve multiple purposes. Obviously it's intended to let your stakeholders know the outcome of the executive search and who's in charge now. But, the announcement message can serve as a tool for creating internal alignment by signaling the leadership's commitment to a new direction or by reinforcing a new vision for the organization that may result from transition planning.

The task of organizing the announcement is usually assigned to the transition committee, with help from the staff in fulfilling the announcement plan. The announcement collateral package typically includes:

• A letter to stakeholders (typically, from the board chair)
• A brief bio of the new executive (ideally 1/2 page)
• A press release

With the collateral package completed, the question becomes, who do we send it to? At TransitionGuides, we use the following guide to help our clients segment their stakeholder audiences: (1) those who should receive a phone call, (2) those who should receive a letter and (3) those who can read about it in the newsletter. Your close-in stakeholders (key donors, collaboration partners, etc.) should probably receive a phone call, preferably from the board chair, the chair of the transition committee or other some key leader with whom they have a relationship. Other stakeholders can be informed by a letter from the board chair or an article in the newsletter.

Step 2 -- Provide a Solid Introduction/Orientation

Starting a new job can be a bewildering and stressful process. If you layer on top of that all of the responsibilities that a typical ED shoulders, you have the ingredients for some serious stress levels -- stress levels that may lead to poor decision-making or even adverse health consequences.

A key source of the stress is that simple human distaste for not knowing what's going on, an aversion that seems especially strong among managers. A thoughtful orientation can provide a new executive with key information and help him/her connect with key people early in his/her tenure, both of which will reduce that "what's going on" anxiety level. A good orientation will also help the new executive prioritize his/her learning needs and relationship-building objectives. Where possible, a "briefing book" with key documents and an index of where to find contracts, grant agreements, personnel files, etc. is quite helpful. (If there is an interim executive, assembling the briefing book is often one of their final "handoff" tasks.)

In short, a good orientation can help flatten out the executive's learning curve, which can be steep at the outset. The board and organization have made a significant investment in finding a new executive. Further, you have a lot riding on this new leader's success. Wouldn't you want to make the most of that investment?

There are few absolutes about orientations except that the executive should be strongly encouraged to make personal contact with all board members early in his/her tenure. Early meetings with staff are equally important. The executive should be reaching out to all staff members if the organization is small or, at a minimum, all members of the management team in a larger organization.

Step 3 -- Understand the "Taking Charge" Process and Address the Early Challenges

The process of fully assuming the top leadership role involves several developmental stages that take some time to complete. There is much to be learned, much to be addressed, and many adjustments to be made. An understanding of this process and a recognition that both the board and executive will face early challenges will help keep the early-stage work grounded.

John Gabarro of Harvard studied managers in a variety of settings and identified five distinct phases of the "taking charge" process:

• Entry or Taking Hold -- usually encompasses the first three to six months of the new executive's tenure and involves the new director's introduction, orientation, relationship building, early-stage learning and beginning to take the reins of the organization. Organizational changes are typically limited and usually relate to corrective actions and solving problems left over from the transition.
• Immersion -- typically lasts an additional four to eleven months in which the executive begins to manage the organization in a more informed fashion. His/her learning continues, but usually at a less hectic pace and involves a finer-grained exploration. During this phase, executives often plan the actions that will take place in the Reshaping phase that comes next, either by revisiting the current strategic plan or instituting a new planning process.
• Reshaping -- generally encompasses another three to six months that often involves the implementation of the planning work done during the Immersion phase. Typically this phase results in the most significant organizational changes either in quantity and/or importance.
• Consolidation -- follow through on the reshaping work and addressing unintended consequences of the Reshaping phase.
• Refinement -- ongoing. The final phase in the taking charge process at which point the executive is no longer considered new, and the job is no longer new to him/her. The pace of change often slows down and involves mostly the refinement of operations and exploration of new opportunities.

Gabarro's research found that it takes two to three years to move through all five of the phases. At TransitionGuides, we track executives for the first year. We find that by the end of their first complete budget cycle, most executives are deep into the Reshaping phase, where they are working with the staff to pursue the objectives in the strategic plan that the executives inherited, or they are working with the board and staff in a new new cycle of planning that they initiated.

Early Challenges -- Both the board and executive face their own set of early challenges. Every executive moving into a new position faces a similar set of challenges no matter the extent of their prior experience as a manager or work in a similar role. The executive's challenges include:

• Gaining an understanding of the organization and acquiring knowledge—quickly.
• Figuring out "who's who" and establishing solid working relationships.
• Setting good priorities.
• Meeting pent-up demands for change and decisions that may have been deferred during the interim period.
• Managing expectations and negotiating competing demands.
• Building a support coalition to back the changes he/she may have identified.
• Balancing both organizational and personal transitions, which can be a challenge to maintaining personal equilibrium and well-being.

Similarly, the board faces its own set of post-hire challenges:

• Shifting gears after the search and finding the energy to address the important relationship-building work.
• Effectively launching and supporting their new executive.
• Adjusting to new executive's leadership style as well as his/her expectations and needs from the board.
• Attending to the trust-building phase.
• Avoiding the dangerous polarities of micromanagement and excessive confidence.
• Avoiding "savior thinking" and dealing with buyer's remorse.
• Ensuring that legacy issues and "thinking ruts" don't derail the work.

It's important that the board's or executive's particular post-hire challenges don't gain magnitude such that they inappropriately derail the new executive's tenure with the organization. An important tool in managing these challenges is communications. The new executive and board chair should be having a frank discussion if these challenges are becoming particularly acute. It's the executive's responsibility to manage his/her own challenges, and it's the board chair's responsibility to ensure that the board's challenges are addressed effectively.

Step 4 -- Identify Needs and Provide Support

In almost all cases the hiring decision ends on a high note with the board enthusiastic about their choice of the new executive director. This is a good thing, but sometimes this exuberance results in a false sense of reality. While the board should certainly extol the virtues of the new executive, it should also be realistic about the places where the new executive might need support. About 60% out people coming into the executive director role have not held that position previously. In all likelihood, there are areas where the new executive director will want or need either support or professional development. We encourage new executives to think critically about their professional development and support needs and proactively seek out training, coaching and other forms of support.

A good tool for incoming executive directors is an entry plan, which typically is a short document (a page or two) developed by the new executive that outlines how he/she will tackle his/her learning needs, the relationship building process with board and staff and how he/she might address the challenges that he/she faces. The entry plan is a good place to make notes about any support needs and professional development plans. Entry planning is really a process of reflection and prioritization. The process of putting it down on paper is often just as important as what's on the paper. The process creates time for that reflective thinking and prioritization that is essential to good leadership -- a time to step out of the fray, reflect on what's been learned, rethink assumptions, and figure out what's next.

Similarly, during the ETM process the board may have identified areas for its own growth and development. They may also have identified some behavioral changes that they would like to make in order to be a more effective partner with the new executive director. The board chair and board development committee chair should ensure that those insights about board performance are translated into a developmental program for the board.

Step 5 -- Clarify the 12- to 18-Month Priorities

As you may have concluded from the discussion under Step 3 above, the first 12 to 18 months in the new executive's tenure is a critical period. There's a "taking charge" process that all executives go through in which they gradually assert more control over the organization. To help bring clarity and focus to the early months we suggest developing a list of no more than six priorities that are crucial to success in the organization during the initial stage of the new executive's tenure.

In our work with clients, we begin this priority-framing process during the Prepare phase of the ETM process. We encourage the board to think of that early list of priorities as a draft that will be further refined when the new executive comes on board. Once the new executive has started, we encourage him/her to discuss this initial list of priorities with board members as a focal point to the relationship-building conversations mentioned earlier in this article. Discussing the priorities with board members provides useful perspective on the priorities and insights into individual board member's sense of commitment to items on the list. These conversations also yield a wealth of related background information about the organization as well as the board and its members.

After the executive director has conducted the board interviews, to refine and hone the list, we suggest that the executive director discuss the board interview results with the board chair and prepare a candidate list of items to discuss with the executive committee. Following the executive committee discussion, this further polished list is presented to the board for discussion, refinement and, ultimately, approval. The board-ratified list then becomes the platform for the social contracting session discussed in the following step.

We typically refer to this list of key priorities as the leadership agenda in order to signify that it's not the board's priorities nor is it a "to do" list for the executive director. It's a set of priorities that the board and executive agree are crucial to the success of the organization over the near term -- and that they are committed to achieving together.

Step 6 -- Build the Board/Executive "Social Contract"

Organizations exist in a sea of agreements that frame their interactions. Some of these agreements are written (literal) contracts, but most are unwritten (implicit) agreements. Social contracts are those implicit agreements that guide behavior in social settings in a way that allows us to feel safe and to be effective. One of the most crucial relationships in a nonprofit organization is that relationship or social contract between the board of directors and the executive director. The health and vitality of the organization is often in direct proportion to the health and vitality of the board-executive relationship.

We encourage new executives and the board to have a social contracting session as early in the new executive's tenure as possible -- typically within the first 60 days. The purpose of this session is to ensure that everyone on the leadership team is clear about roles, responsibilities and the board's and executive's respective expectations. A specific conversation about communication between executive and the board and the chair also reduces risk of misunderstandings about the frequency and content of information the executive is providing the board and in what form.

A fundamental tool in clarifying the social contract is up-to-date, clear job descriptions for the board and the executive that articulate their areas of responsibility. The social contracting discussion typically begins with a review of those job descriptions to ensure that everybody on the team is aware of the responsibilities of their job. Building on that fundamental understanding about responsibilities, the discussion then turns to what the board and executive will each contribute toward the achievement of the 12- to 18-month priorities.

The social contracting discussion should also surface the underlying assumptions and expectations, which often aren't articulated without some prompting. It is important to bring these assumptions and expectations out into the open, as they typically are more powerful in shaping behavior than anything that is said in the job descriptions.

Often these expectations and assumptions need to be realigned, particularly in organizations that need to make a big pivot or change to ensure that the organization thrives. For example, the board needs to make a pivot in its behavior in order to support its new executive more effectively, or the board needs to step up its role and involvement in fundraising in order to address one of the priorities on their leadership agenda.

Step 7 -- Define How Performance Will Be Monitored and Evaluated

Now that you have established what should happen (the 12- to 18-month priorities from Step 5) and how it should happen (and clarified the respective roles, responsibilities and expectations from Step 6) the question for Step 7 is: did it happen? A good plan to monitor and periodically evaluate performance will answer this question and provide important performance improvement feedback to the board and executive. Accordingly, the concluding step in the ETM process is to develop a plan for monitoring and evaluating performance.

There are two sides to the leadership equation in a nonprofit – the board and the executive. Consequently, the performance monitoring and evaluation process should be seen as a two-way street that reviews the contributions of both the board and the executive. Performance monitoring typically involves an ongoing process of keeping tabs on performance relative to your priorities. Performance evaluation usually involves a periodic formal assessment process.

During the early stage of the executive's tenure, the priorities on the leadership agenda should be the principal focal point of the performance monitoring and evaluation process. A great way to monitor progress against your 12- to 18-month priorities is to include them on the board meeting agenda. As for the performance evaluations, we recommend to our clients that they conduct an informal, "how's it going" review with the new executive 90 days into his/her tenure, a more formal review at the six-month point and an annual evaluation on the executive's one-year anniversary.

We also encourage the boards we work with to commit to a formal board self-evaluation process to be conducted annually -- timed to roughly coincide with the executive's annual evaluation. The board's performance can have an incredible impact on the executive's effectiveness, particularly in those areas where the board and executive roles touch or overlap -- as often is the case with fundraising. Accordingly, an effective evaluation of the organization's leadership needs to look at both sides of the leadership equation -- the board as well as the executive.

Conclusion

A few simple actions in the post-hire phase can help reduce the steep learning curve that an executive faces, ensure that crucial relationships are built early in his/her tenure, and generally set the stage for a high-impact leadership relationship between the board and executive.

About this series of articles

This is the final installment in this series of articles that present the ETM process in a step-by-step fashion. Starting with the next edition of the newsletter we will begin to explore related topics, such as the role of the interim executive director. If you have any questions about the topics discussed here, feel free to call TransitionGuides at (301) 439-6635 or use the "ask a question" form on our web site.
 

Stanford Social Innovation Review highlights ETM
The Toolkit section of the Fall 2004 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review featured an article on executive transition management by TransitionGuides co-founder and president Tom Adams, "When the Boss Bails: Surviving – and even thriving – after a change in leadership." See www.transitionguides.com for a free copy.
 

Twenty-one nonprofit consultants from 13 states traveled to Baltimore in early December to participate in a three-day training on ETM.  Tim Wolfred of CompassPoint in San Francisco organized the seminar.  Karen Gaskins Jones of JLH Associates developed the training methodologies and the participant workbook.  Tom Adams, President of TransitionGuides, joined Tim and Karen on the training team.

The training covered the various ETM protocols for helping a nonprofit agency to exploit the capacity building opportunities in a leadership turnover and to avoid the pitfalls.  The participants reviewed several of the consultant tools in the electronic ETM "tool kit" they received.  To develop their familiarity with the protocols and the tools, the participants were divided into three "consulting firms", each of which role-played with a practice client through the three phases of ETM work.

A majority of the trainees intend to establish an ETM practice in their home communities -- some as individual practitioners, others as members of a nonprofit consulting firm.  One session on the final day focused on how to market ETM services, with the realization that a primary audience is the foundations and government agencies on whom community agencies depend to support their consulting and training needs.

The participants gave the seminar high marks -- an average rating of 3.8 out of a possible 4 -- on anonymous feedback surveys.  Written comments included:

• "Great facilitation. I appreciated the variety of styles. There was a good balance of instruction and practice."
• "Excellent design (obviously prepared with a significant investment of thought and time). Required the three facilitators and these facilitators worked very well together. Packet of information was also excellent."

Alliance conference ETM session scheduled for July 2005
If you are a consultant or manager with a management support organization interested in an introduction to the ETM model plan to attend the Alliance for Nonprofit Management conference in July 2005 in Chicago. Our pre-conference session on ETM has been sold out the last two years so sign up early. See www.allianceonline.org  or the www.transitionguides.com for more info.

Next Steps Workshops Expand in 2005
The popular Next Steps workshop is in great demand for 2005. CompassPoint Nonprofit Services and TransitionGuides co-led a sell-out two-day workshop in October in Oakland. Offered twice a year in 2003 and 2004 as a unique learning and networking opportunity for founder and long-term executives, we are now completing our 2005 schedule. We are planning two sessions in New York in collaboration with the Support Center of New York (May and October 2005) as well as  sessions in Baltimore and  and the San Francisco/Oakland area. Discussions are underway for offerings in other sites. Call Tom Adams at (301) 439-6635 to explore hosting this effective and popular workshop for founders and long-term executives.

TransitionGuides offers customized training on a variety of executive transition topics for foundations, nonprofit associations and other groups.  Please call us at (301) 439-6635 for more information.
 

TransitionGuides

1751 Elton Road, Suite 204 | Silver Spring, MD 20903
Phone (301) 439-6635 | Fax (301) 439-6638
info@transitionguides.com

© 2004 - 2005 TransitionGuides, all rights reserved. | Privacy Information | 12/30/04
 

An Annie E. Casey Foundation ETM Partner