You find yourself on the board of an amazing nonprofit organization. You believe in the mission and can feel the impact you are having, in part because of your relationship to the dynamic and inspiring founder/CEO. You took the first meeting because you believe in the mission, but you joined the board because you believe in the person leading.
For any variety of reasons, (both for the individuals and the organization), it’s now time for the founder to move on. It’s been 10-20-30 years that they have been leading this cause. Building from the ground up. Building something phenomenal from nothing. You are either devastated or elated for the organization (or perhaps both, simultaneously) as you imagine a future without this leader in the driver’s seat.
How do you even begin to imagine the organization through a new filter?
Let’s pause and explore together.
If your organization is like a garden, the founder is the gardener. As a board member, you might have a pretty good sense of how much sun and shade the garden is getting, what the soil feels like, what season you’re in, what invasive species have taken over, and what plants are withering. You have a pretty good sense of what efforts your gardener has made to cultivate the plants and tend to the garden’s health. A new gardener, even with the same plot of land and the same sun and water and tools at their disposal, might have a fundamentally different approach or outcome—hard to imagine for the garden you’ve helped tend for so long.
What makes this moment so hard for you and your fellow board members?
- You have conflated the brilliance of this person with the value of the organization, and it is a mental and emotional exercise to peel the two apart.
- You have a relationship with this founder that now needs to evolve.
- The terms of your relationship with the organization suddenly must be rewritten.
- You did not sign up for this. You joined to bring an expertise, leverage your network, and champion the organization, and now you are thrust into a change-management role you may or may not want to take on.
- The financial state of the organization suddenly feels precarious or less certain than before, because we know funders will often “wait and see” how the transition goes before renewing or making inaugural investments, especially those with close relationships to the founder (and let’s be honest—that’s the majority of your funding).
- The line between the board and management is suddenly less clear, as you will all help maintain organizational stability, navigate change, and communicate with stakeholders, including staff.
These are all reasons to take a deep breath and grieve the loss of the existing relationships before moving into a space of action. But where to start?
Here are some questions you as a board member can bring to the full board:
- Who will we ask to provide input in the process of determining what we need in the next leader?
- What are the reasons for the transition and how will that affect what we need moving forward?
- How will our values show up in this process?
- What are the opportunities at this moment?
- How will the board manage the transition?
- Who will serve as interim CEO?
- What do we as a board need to do to divorce the identity of the founder from the identity of the organization?
Organizations will need different leaders for different moments and challenges. The leader who built something from nothing and grew the org to $10M is not necessarily the person who will build it to $20M or $100M. The person who led staff through the 2010s might not be the person to motivate and engage the team in our post(ish)-pandemic moment. The individual who designed and delivered the first program or service is not necessarily the person who will reinvent it to evolve with the changing needs of constituents. There may be massive shifts in the workforce, the sector, the funding, or even your organization’s strategy that require a new type of leadership.
How do we make the most of this transition?
First order of business: assess the organization from top to bottom. What is working today and what isn’t? What is holding us back from our full potential? What are the biggest threats to our programs’ success? What are the organization’s biggest challenges financially? What skills and competencies do we need in the leadership team (yes, the whole team, not just the CEO) for the next 3-5 years?
This is the moment to dust off your succession plan; start planning a more tactical transition; and consider whether the board needs an expert partner like DRG to help with your organizational design review and assessment, the transition plan itself, and—of course—the search.
Next: Redefine the CEO role. Start from scratch and rewrite the job description for your CEO. Get creative. Be clear about what is not part of this role as much as what is. Examine where your biases creep into the crafting of the job. Prepare for the next leader to continue to redefine the job as they join the organization. Take advantage of the fresh perspective that consultant partners and newer board members can bring to this process.
Next: Search. Engage the experts who live and breathe executive search to find your next leader. The transition from founder to new CEO is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: you shouldn’t have to know everything. Partner with us to guide you through the transition and find your next great leader.
And finally: Support. Every moment you engage with new leadership as a board member, you should ask yourself, “How am I setting the new CEO up for success?” because their success is the organization’s success. We see organizations embrace the support role wholeheartedly when they invest in executive coaching for the new leader from the start and consider how the board might refresh practices, meetings, or even membership.
What comes next?
You have hired and are supporting the new CEO. You are beginning to see how this new gardener with the same plot of land and the same sun and water and tools at their disposal will get new, different, and better results. Some flowers will flourish and take up more real estate in the garden. The tree might sprout new growth. What you thought was a weed may turn out to be a native plant taking root.
As the old garden takes a new shape, you can take this moment not to step back into your “old role” as a board member, but to reimagine the role you can play in the future.
Michelle Tafel, Principal, Organizational Consulting
