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Building and Sustaining Leader-Full Organizations

Summer 2007   

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• Feature Article: Leaving a Lasting Legacy
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Why Founder and Long-Term Executive Transitions Are Complicated

At the end of May (2007), Board members, staff, colleagues, and friends of Bill Ewing  gathered to celebrate Bill’s 28 years of leadership of the Maryland Food Bank and to say thanks as he exited his Executive Director’s  role.

Bill is a well-known and unique Maryland leader. As he is fond of saying, Bill was an out of work, burnt-out school teacher driving a rundown Volkswagen Bus when his aunt, Peggy Waxter, told him the newly opened Food Bank needed help.  In the beginning (1979), he worked out of a 10,000 sq. ft. converted salad factory and sourced food by diving into dumpsters.  That first year Bill and the leaders of the Food Bank provided 400,000 pounds of food to hungry Maryland residents.  As Bill exits the Food Bank, the organization this past year provided 13.4 million pounds of food, which translated into 10.5 million meals, to hungry Marylanders. The organization now operates an 87,000 square foot state-of-the-art warehouse outside of Baltimore, and a 10,000 square foot building in Salisbury that serves residents on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Bill’s story is a happy one, an example of an executive and Board who made leadership transitions a priority.  Marty Brunk, a managing partner with RSM McGladrey and the Food Bank’s Board chair explained: “The Board and I knew this was a big deal and absolutely had to be handled well. When we began to focus on the twin goals of insuring a good ending for Bill and a good beginning for his successor, we got outside help from TransitionGuides, and what appeared to be an overwhelming job became manageable.”

The Food Bank transition had its challenges.  Bill is a passionate hands-on leader.  Shifting gears and beginning to let go was difficult.  “I knew how to do what I had been doing to build the Food Bank.  I am a hustler, and I get up each morning and pour myself into what I think is going to help us feed more Marylanders better.  For the last six months, I had to learn how to temper that energy.  I needed to begin thinking about what I could do to make it more likely my successor would succeed.  And, I had to swallow my pride more than once as the Board and staff began to plan for what they imagined the Food Bank might be able to do without my leadership.”

The Food Bank Board selected Deborah Flateman, a seasoned Food Bank executive who until recently ran the Vermont Foodbank, to follow Bill and lead the next chapter.  The Board worked out an appropriate overlap period in which Bill’s tireless energy and “best in the world rolodex/data base” remained available to Deborah.

Deborah added: “I’ve known Bill for a number of years and am honored to follow him.  I also have my own experiences and leadership style.  We’ve been able to establish a great hand-off and beginning.  A testimony to that is the fact that the Food Bank was able to hold its second Blue Jean Ball ten weeks after I became executive and raise nearly $250,000 net.  That’s a stunning legacy and part of an amazing transition success story.”

Bill summed up his experience: “I went into this having heard all the horror stories of transitions that failed and organizations that faltered or went out of business when a long-time leader left.  I was determined to not have that happen. I’ve learned a great deal from working with TransitionGuides and have a great appreciation for their amazingly simple and successful approach to ‘good endings for the departing executive’ and ‘good beginnings for the new executive.’  I consider myself a poster boy for successful transitions.”

Unfortunately, there are far too many painful stories of founders and long-term executives who had horrific endings.  Common stories include the founder who hung around and became a block to growth, the Board that got angry at a founder and created an unnecessary bad ending, and the organization that is so economically dependent on the founder or executive that it collapses when he/she leaves.

After working with hundreds of founder/long-term executives, TransitionGuides has identified the biggest danger zones:

1)      Poor communication between executive and Board about when and how the executive will leave.  How things begin are often the way they end.  If the executive feels disrespected or pushed by the Board or if the Board feels trampled or manipulated by the executive, communication breaks down and may never fully recover.  These are emotionally loaded conversations that require an executive to be clear about his/her plans and to want the Board to be ready to step up and guide the organization through this major milestone.  A strained start at the beginning of a transition often gets amplified without help and attention.

2)      Lack of appreciation about the full impact of the executive’s departure on the organization.  How will the departure impact funding and the organization’s ability to get things done?

3)      Failed searches.  Poorly managed searches sometimes do not allow enough time to release an attachment to departing leader or become an effort to find an exact replica of a departing leader.

4)      Lack of attention to how hard it is to be a successor.  The successor role is challenging.  Without sufficient support from the Board and positive transition management, a successor can easily stumble. 

Fortunately there are numerous resources available to reduce these unnecessary risks and their devastating consequences for leaders, organizations, and the work organizations do to make the world more just and fair.

The first job for a founder executive is to gain a better understanding of when to leave, how to leave, and what the next steps should be.  Until there is clarity about that, it is very difficult for the executive and the Board to communicate positively.  The Board’s job is walk a narrow path of supporting and acknowledging the executive’s contributions and clarifying where they believe the organization needs to go next and the leadership team needed to get there.  Some Boards have internal capacity to manage this well, but  most benefit from some outside help. Good endings and positive beginnings are possible. Just ask the Maryland Food Bank!

Staying Engaged, Stepping Up Succession Planning and Executive Transition Management NonProfit Boards of Directors An Annie E. Casey Foundation Monograph, Vol. 5 (PDF)

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