Succession readiness is for every person in your nonprofit organization.
Old School: Succession planning applies only to top leaders and the “A Team” of high potential performers. Succession is designed to identify replacements for key roles.
Today: Succession readiness is for every person in your nonprofit organization. Succession readiness is about building mission and organizational capacity.
Nonprofits exist to solve problems and make the world a better place. But old school thinking is entrenched in the organizational DNA of many nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Old school thinking idolizes individual leadership; it gets stuck on Leadership Development and Talent Management. Even the term Human Resources, mostly shortened to HR, takes the personal out of people.
We think that nonprofits will do a better job on their mission – on making the world a better place – if they re-think how they engage with people at all levels.
The people of all levels are what drives most nonprofit organizations. Frontline staff or volunteers create and recreate the mission with every service interaction they provide. Supervisors make decisions every day that impact those mission interactions – are our staff and volunteers satisfied and fulfilled in the work? Where might we bend a rule to help someone? Staff leaders play important coordinating roles and provide clarity of direction. Boards make high-level decisions and connections, sometimes at a real distance from the implications.
We don’t suggest you turn your entire organization structure on end, but we do suggest that as you ask the questions below, you try to shift your organization to yes for all of them.
As you hire for entry level positions, are mission-fit and long-term potential your top considerations?
Have you ever considered doing joint professional development work with other organizations aligned with your mission area?
As you fill supervisory or management roles, is your first set of candidates someone in your organization or in an organization aligned with your mission area? Do you prioritize candidates with strong commonalities to the people you serve?
Have you considered what decision-making authority you can push closer to the people you serve?
How does your theory of change impact the individual decision making of people that you serve?
Does your board include people that you serve?
We believe that a more equitable approach to the people in your organization will benefit your mission and make the world a better place. That’s why succession readiness is for every person in your nonprofit organization.
Get in touch if you’d like to talk about how you might consider succession across the organization.
What clients say:
“In preparation for our upcoming CARF survey, we identified the need for a succession plan. Having no previous experience in creating one and wanting to ensure the plan would meet our needs and protect the organization we reached out to Clarity Transitions for help. Laurie Price was extremely knowledgeable about our sector and CARF. We were impressed with her knowledge, insight, and professionalism. We were able to meet over a period of 6 weeks and produce a quality plan in time for our CARF review. CARF noted our Succession Plan as a strength of the agency.”
Laureen Pagel, CEO
Starting Point Behavioral Healthcare