If you're confident that the activities above are occurring at your organization, then you've laid the groundwork for managing leadership transitions. Now it's time to adopt an approach to succession planning.
Depending on the size, complexity, and culture of your organization, your approach to non-CEO succession planning could be either formal or informal for certain roles. Generally speaking, succession planning for non-CEO roles will be far less formal than CEO succession planning, since there is no need to engage the board in planning for leadership transitions of other key staff.
The NRMC team often recommends a collaborative succession planning approach, allowing the relevant departmental or functional teams to participate in the search and hiring process for their own staff colleagues and even department heads. Team-based hiring enables you to seek and select new hires based on the perspectives of your diverse team members, and team-based hiring also encourages the recruitment of new staff leaders who are truly welcomed and approved by many of their soon-to-be peers and direct reports. These benefits can cultivate feelings of positivity and ownership among staff while reducing stress associated with leadership transitions.
If your HR team typically takes the lead on employee recruitment, then consider involving both HR and the department with open roles. Breaking down these silos will produce myriad benefits including gratification for HR staff whose employment practices expertise might be overshadowed by the work of programmatic staff, and an appropriate division of labor between HR and the initiating department, which promises to ease common recruitment pains that occur when these functions are out of sync (e.g., unrealistic expectations for personnel budgets and hiring/screening timelines, inaccurate position descriptions, ineffective onboarding that is either too general or is too role-specific, etc.).
If an executive staff member is leaving your organization--whether planned or unplanned departure--we recommend that one or more leadership team members (e.g., other department heads, other C-suite leaders, etc.) collaborate with the departmental team of the departing executive (with the exiting executive participating if possible). A similar approach could be used when planning the transition of any staff member within a specific department. A leadership representative and the department team can collaborate to facilitate informal, candid team discussions about the nonprofit's near future and shifting personnel priorities, using questions like:
· Is the staff member's position description up-to-date? Are there other critical responsibilities or personal qualities that the individual brought to our team, that are NOT listed in the position description? (If the answer is 'yes,' be sure to update the position description.)
· What elements of the role should remain the same in the distant future? What elements need to change based on our internal and external environments and any opportunities or challenges that lie on our organization's horizon?
· Are there any special considerations for the role based on other personnel gaps that exist within our department? Are there any other personnel gaps in our department that could potentially be filled or be partly filled by a single new hire? How might this type of role be structured or developed?
· As we begin the search process, how will we support the departing staff member's role in the interim? What are the critical responsibilities that should be delegated to other members of our team for the time being?
· Will the departing staff member personally be available to help onboard the new hire? If not, how will we capture and share the institutional knowledge needed to provide the new hire with a solid foundation during onboarding? If so, how can we ensure a positive and productive experience for both the exiting and incoming individuals?
· As we identify candidates for the role, how do we foresee this transition occurring? What can we do now to ensure that a smooth, positive transition occurs? Are there any gaps we need to address in our screening/hiring processes or our onboarding/training programs?
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