In the last few years, the nonprofit sector has been buzzing with a looming leadership deficit as the Baby Boomer generation approaches retirement. Regardless of the hype around a potential Generation Gap, every organization needs to be proactive about planning for the future and ensuring their organization’s sustainability.  

As a tenured executive contemplates stepping down, it is critical that your organization plans for the most successful leadership transition possible.  Thinking about succession planning between the board and chief executive must occur before it is needed.

Emergency Success Plans are developed in partnership between the board and chief executive as a contingency in case key leaders are either unavailable or unable to continue functioning in their role.  There are both short term and long term succession plans that need to be developed. Minimally these plans identify the individuals responsible for dealing with the transition, a timeline for decision making, interim options and the identification of the holders of important and confidential organizational information such as finance, IT, and risk management resources.

Our experience has been that board chairs, boards and executive leaders avoid this topic.  If the board brings it up, the chief executive can feel threatened.  If the executive raises the topic, the board can start to treat the executive as a lame duck with one foot out the door.

Leadership development and planning needs to be part of any healthy organization and is essential to organizational sustainability.

Key Questions that need to be asked include:

• In an emergency- what are our short term plans for dealing with the loss of key personnel?
• How is key organizational information stored and retrieved?
• How do we groom individuals for leadership within our organization?
• What competencies are critical for organizational functioning?
• Do we have interims in place and available if we need them?
• What is the appropriate role of the board and staff in addressing these issues?
• How long is too long to prepare for an executive transition?
• What is our experience in dealing with a crisis or managing a crisis as an organization?
• How do we best plan for the unexpected?