October 29, 2019 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Successful leadership transitions require thoughtful preparation, planning — and time. Ideally, planning should begin one to three years before an executive’s departure.
To help board members and others managing an executive transition understand what needs to get done at different stages of the process, BoardSource put together a timeline.
“This could be used by a full board to understand and realistically calculate the time commitment for a successful transition,” says Jenifer Gager Holland, associate vice president for consulting and learning practice at BoardSource. This document should be viewed as a template that organizations can tailor based on their own circumstances.
Boards are wise to ask themselves really tough questions and really difficult questions at the time of executive transitions.
Think of the process in four stages:
The first stage will look different for an organization that plans for a successor well ahead of an executive’s departure — when a leader announces plans to depart far in advance — as opposed to a exiting abruptly.
“Boards are wise to ask themselves really tough questions and really difficult questions at the time of executive transitions,” says Holland. That means considering whether the organization should continue in its current form — or at all. “It’s a really ripe time for them to think about what the sustainability of the mission means in the absence of its chief leader,” she says.
In the second stage, the board and transition team work together to ensure that the organization is ready to hire a new executive and is prepared to start the search. During phase three, the search and hiring stage, the team might redefine the job description and conduct a series of interviews.
The second and third stages take at least several months.
And lastly, the team thoroughly briefs and orients the new leader — a very important step.
“That’s a place where in practice there can sometimes be some flagging effort or some waning motivation,” she says. But the final stage, once the new leader is at the helm, should last for a full budget cycle, according to BoardSource.
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