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Introduction to Executive Transition

In any given year, about one out of ten nonprofit boards will face the challenge of searching for a new executive director. That number is projected to climb by 15 percent or more as the bulk of the baby-boomer generation begins to reach retirement age.

Under the best circumstances, replacing an executive director is a time-consuming and risky endeavor. The top leadership role in an organization in today's environment is exceedingly complex. Too often these transitions happen unexpectedly, leaving the organization and board scrambling.

Properly managed, a leadership transition provides a pivotal moment, enabling an organization to change direction, maintain momentum, and strengthen its capacity. This overview provides background on the need for executive transition services, outlines of the process involved and summarizes the research findings and lessons gained from direct experience of over 200 executive transitions.

Whether you’re currently involved with an executive transition, beginning to think about leadership succession, or if you are a funder or consultant interested in this topic, the material that follows will help you understand, prepare for and manage one of the most difficult and unavoidable aspects of nonprofit life... and manage it in a way that sustains and builds organizational capacity and effectiveness.

Executive Transition Programs and their Roots

There is a growing field of organizations and consultants providing executive transition services to nonprofits.  These include CompassPoint Nonprofit Services in San Francisco and the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations as well as emerging programs in New England and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. 

The roots of these programs are long and many.  Influences include: Tom Gilmore's writings on executive transitions, William Bridges' distinction between change and transition, and the pastoral transition and interim ministry movement begun by the Alban Institute in the 1970s.

The nonprofit programmatic history includes the groundbreaking work of TransitionGuides' Senior Associate, Tom Adams, starting in the early-90s while he was at the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, later with the development of the program at the Maryland Association of Nonprofits, and recent work on the emerging program at the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  On the west coast, there is Tim Wolfred's history as an interim executive and his work to develop CompassPoint's transition services in the late-90s, as well as their rich body of direct service and research work.

Through TransitionGuides other voices have joined the conversation: Denice Rothman Hinden's and Paige Hull's work to map the influences, identify and quantify executive transition programs and ongoing efforts to ground our work with better outcome measures;  Don Tebbe's 1995 work to reengineer executive search, his recent efforts to bring systems thinking into executive transitions and his work to add shape to the role of the interim executive director.  The conversation continues as other associates and collaborators join TransitionGuides.

"Properly managed, a leadership transition provides a pivotal moment, enabling an organization to change direction, maintain momentum, and strengthen its capacity."

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1/16/03