Managing leadership transitions with succession plans

The phone rings in the middle of the night with the news that your longtime executive director has been in an accident. Or your executive director walks out the door with no warning, leaving staff and board scrambling to find the blank checks and payroll tax information. Nightmare scenarios for a board president, right? They don’t have to be if the board takes a thoughtful, proactive approach to planning for change.

Just as succession is inevitable in an ecosystem, leadership succession is inevitable in an organization. One day your beloved executive director may decide that it is time to retire or move on to a different position. He or she holds lots of information about your organization, its functions and its history. Without thoughtful preparation, a sudden departure can stop your conservation efforts in their tracks.

Ensuring that your land trust is prepared for a leadership transition is an essential responsibility of the board. Creating a succession plan is one way to buffer your organization from risk and guarantee that it is well prepared to meet its perpetual obligations. 

Sara Wilson of Mayes|Wilson, who has worked on many transition plans with land trusts, says, “A good succession plan helps prepare the land trust for a sudden loss in leadership not only by documenting key duties of the leader and having clear steps to follow in an emergency, but by actively identifying and developing the next leaders through training and mentoring so they are ready to step in and lead the organization.”

Having “The Talk”

Many board members know that they ought to focus on succession and leadership development, but the reality is that not enough do. Talking about leadership transitions can be uncomfortable and awkward. You don’t want your executive to think that you have lost confidence in him or her. And you certainly don’t want to bring up retirement as you celebrate your long-time executive director’s 30-year anniversary. On the other hand, you need to know where to find your insurance policy information and computer passwords if he or she suffers a medical emergency.

When land trusts begin the conversation long before anyone is thinking about leaving, it helps reduce the awkwardness factor a great deal. 

“My view is that a succession plan is not something you start discussing when the current executive director starts talking about retirement,” says Ken Murphy, former chair and current board member of the accredited Mainspring Conservation Trust in North Carolina. “Instead, a plan needs to be part of routine discussions about being prepared for short-term emergencies, i.e., who steps in if the executive director is incapacitated, and about robust staff development, i.e., making sure that the organization is investing in staff so that each person has an individualized plan for improving his or her skill set. Ideally, an organization has somebody who could readily step in short term and several candidates who would have the potential to lead the organization at some point, with the right amount of development in the right areas.”

Planning Ahead

Here are a few ways that land trusts around the country are addressing succession:

• Many incorporate a written succession plan into their strategic planning process and include a review of the succession plan in their annual calendar.
• Some use the accreditation process to get their records and policies in order and to document the various processes that are in the head of the executive director.
• Some plan for succession as they build their financial reserves, as additional funding will be needed for the search and orientation process and to buffer any disruption in fundraising from a leadership change.
• Others think about leadership development as part of budgeting and performance reviews.

Murphy adds: “Have an emergency interim executive director planned at all times (not necessarily a long-term succession candidate). And at the right time, incorporate succession planning objectives into the outgoing executive director’s work plan. For example, when succession is imminent, make sure that there’s a ‘hand-off ’ of key relationships with donors.”

In addition to these strategies, think about recruiting younger board members to help to prepare the land trust for a new generation of leadership.

Creating the Path to a Smooth Transition

“Mainspring Conservation Trust is three years past our founding executive director’s retirement and the transition has been an extremely smooth one,” says Molly Phillips, advancement coordinator for the land trust. “The deputy director, who had been with the organization for about 15 years, became the new executive director, so having an internal transition with that much institutional history greatly helped. Still, in those three years, we have changed our name/logo/branding, opened a second regional office, hired three new staff members (including two new positions), and grown our annual fund significantly. It was a lot of change in a short time, so the plan helped tremendously.”

Murphy explains how the process started: “When I became board chair in 2011, I engaged in discussions with the founding director about who would be the emergency step-in. It was an easy answer because a long-time employee was serving as deputy director. That person had the full confidence of the board, the executive director and the rest of the staff, so our ‘emergency successor’ was also our long-term successor. The founding director and I also had ‘no-pressure’ discussions about what his plans were for the next few years and when he envisioned stepping away from the day-to-day operations of the organization. We continued those discussions through the balance of my three-year term, and by the time I was stepping down he was making concrete plans to step away.”

Although the deputy director already knew many of the organization’s key supporters, Murphy says, “We made a point to make sure she had met all key donors and other contacts as well, although I wish we had started that process sooner so that she was able to build a relationship with each one before she took over. As it turned out, we were not disadvantaged, but we could have minimized the organizational risk if those relationships had been firmer.”

Perhaps most important, the succession process afforded the organization the opportunity to take a fresh look at its needs and plans. “For example,” says Murphy, “the board had wanted to change the name of the organization to reflect our expanded mission and geographic service area, but the founding director had been reluctant to make that change and devote the time and resources to a rebranding process. That change was made by the successor executive director, and it has energized the organization and allowed us to think more broadly about our work.”

Getting Started

There’s no better time to get started with succession planning than now, but you can start slowly with these steps: 

• Ease into the issue with a conversation that helps fellow board members see why it is important for them to invest their time and energy in creating a succession plan.
• Set a deadline for completing the succession plan. Develop a calendar of the conversations that will help the board focus on both succession planning and leadership development.
• Create a short-term task force or task an existing committee with responsibility for pulling the plan together and presenting it to the board for approval.
• Look at succession plans from other land trusts and nonprofits in your region.

Heather Yandow brings her experience as a fundraiser, facilitator, outreach coordinator and project manager to third space studio: www.thirdspacestudio.com. This article first appeared as Field Guide, vol. 3 no. 4, published by the Land Trust Alliance. Christina Soto is editor of Saving Land.