So You Want to be an Executive Director?
Colleagues: As you many of you may know, I am retiring effective July 2. Today I have uploaded two files to the shared documents area of the ASAE CEO Community that I created to assist in my own executive succession. If are you progressing towards becoming an Executive Director or Chief Staff Officer position, or are a first time or newly hired ED or CSO, these files may be of some future use to you. Even if you are a long-tenured ED/CSO, the two files may be helpful as you need to communicate about the ED/CSO role with your volunteers.
Of course, each of our organizations is different—different cultures, different governance models, different business processes. Nevertheless, you may find some topics or information that is useful in your situation.
The files are:
“A Day in the Life of an Executive Director”: A 29-slide PowerPoint presentation designed to help our volunteer search committee have a common understanding of what an Executive Director does, and the knowledge and competencies required. The deck includes some strong graphic slides borrowed from Tom Peters public web site and his file of publicly available slides.
"Executive Director Succession Manual”: A 70-page Word document designed to support the succession of my replacement. It will be much longer and focused specifically on the role of the ED in our Society, but may be a useful reference tool for others in terms of “hands-on” roles, responsibilities, processes, etc.for an Executive Director, as well as a useful transition document.
Enjoy. Let me know if you find the information helpful. Cheers!
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Comments
Thanks for sharing, Virgil, but this post is an oxymoron. It's addressed to those who are "progressing towards becoming an Executive Director or Chief Staff Officer", yet we're not allowed into the CEO community if we're not already CEOs. Any way you could somehow smuggle them outside the walled garden?
Posted by: Ben Martin, CAE | March 26, 2008 3:02 PM
The Succession Manual is a great idea, and more important than most Board members realize.
When I left my last CEO position, I wrote a 33-page Transition Manual that provided my successor with a road map. It was all factual - location of files, people with whom we have relationships, important deadlines - and did not include my personal opinions about people or organizations (my successor will develop those without my help).
Boards often want the outgoing Executive Director to finish key projects. But it is more important to estalish a process that will help the new ED succeed.
Posted by: David M. Patt, CAE | March 26, 2008 4:09 PM
Ben - I pinged Lisa about that topic exactly. She is working on geting them out in public.
Posted by: Matt Baehr | March 26, 2008 4:24 PM
Ben, Matt is exactly right. Lisa is working her magic to enable file access via Acronym (as well as through the CEO Community). Shouldn't be long.
Posted by: Virgil Carter | March 26, 2008 4:31 PM
Thanks Lisa!
Posted by: Ben Martin, CAE | March 26, 2008 4:34 PM
Ben and Matt (and others looking for Virgil's files): I am continuing to work on this, and I hope to have them up soon. There seems to be a technical issue that I'm trying to work around; if I can't figure it out today I'll get our IT folks to help me. I'll definitely get those files up so they're available ASAP--and thanks to Virgil for sharing them!
Lisa
Posted by: Lisa Junker | March 27, 2008 1:25 PM
These are great resources! Thanks so much for sharing them. Succession planning is such a touchy subject so it's great to be talking about it. I think it helps others broach the issue when they have tools like these.
Posted by: Rosetta Thurman | April 7, 2008 11:58 AM