Is anyone on deck? Succession Planning Before You Need It

Have you ever been to a baseball game? The most exciting moments come when the bases are full and you see a great player on deck getting ready. You can’t wait to see them step up to the plate and hit a home run. It is in that moment you just know it is going to be a great game.

Now imagine you are a passionate supporter of a mission driven organization. The organization has been meeting a critical need, there are a strong bench of supporters, and the vision for the future is engaging. You just know they are poised to do great things! Then the founding director, the one with the vision who built the organization, says the time has come for them to step back or step away. You look to see who is on deck – who has been groomed to take over – and there is no one there.

That is a reality in far too many nonprofits. When we are in the early stages of starting a nonprofit, succession planning seems like something to tackle at a later date once the organization has matured. Yet, we all know what happens. The challenges don’t stop and the demands on our time only increase. We just never get around to it.

 Ideally, there is a board that has been preparing for that moment, however, too often boards have high turnover and are populated by passionate supporters versus strategic planners. Even when they try to plan, fundamental challenges like budgets and the ability to attract the right person hamper effort.

Small nonprofits operate with such a lean bench that they may feel it is unrealistic to expect to hire, groom and retain the person who could become the next director. Then there is the concern that planning for a successor will cause the current director to feel (or become) irrelevant. No one wants to drive away a good director, so we avoid the conversation until it is a pressing problem that needs immediate resolution.

So how does an organization overcome these challenges? Of course the ideal is to integrate succession planning into your strategic planning sessions long before you ever need it. However, without the benefit of a do-over, the next best thing is to design a succession plan now.

Fair warning: as you begin to talk about the skills and abilities of a successor the conversations can be difficult, and if the founding director is still in the picture, there are often deep-seated opinions that can create challenges in designing an effective succession plan.

The good news is that once you go through the work to design a great succession plan, your staff, donors, and volunteers will all feel more confident in the long-term sustainability of the organization and it will show in their commitments.

To get you started, here are three questions to start asking at your next meeting:

1.     What knowledge, skills and abilities do we want from the next director? Are we looking to hire someone with the same skill set as our current director? Or are we in need of something additional?

2.     What outcomes do we want from of our next director? Are we looking for someone who can keep the organization moving forward on the same path? Or are we looking for someone who can identify new ways of delivering our services or expanding our mission?

3.     Are we willing to make sacrifices to get the right fit? If so, what are we willing to give up? What is non-negotiable?

These questions should spark some lively conversation, and if you get to #3, you’ll probably need to go back and revisit the first two questions. While good design thinking embraces the idea of getting it all out there with the first two questions, at some point in order to get to a workable idea you have to start narrowing in on the possible. That is where the last question provides a boundary marker.

If you start the conversation, make sure there is an outside voice that can act as a facilitator and keep you from swirling without resolution, so you can get to the next step of developing a plan for implementation. That is where innovative thinking will allow you design options and find solutions to your succession planning problem.

And, the next time you go to a ball game, check out whoever is on deck. Odds are they will be rooting for the person at bat, wanting them to be successful. Now imagine that happening in your organization. Picture a successful director backed up by a great person on deck who is cheering them on. That is the picture of a healthy leadership team and one we should strive to create in our organizations. .