Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to work with nonprofit boards and CEO’s as they hire new C-level staff. Each of these selection assignments is unique but there are some common challenges that emerge as organizations narrow down their applicant pool.
For the last decade or so, nonprofit agencies have said they wanted people with a business mindset. When a Board Chair, volunteer, or nonprofit professional says this, you really need to dig below the surface. Often, they mean that they are looking for someone with a good sense of urgency who keeps his/her eye on the bottom line. It also often leads to a person whose experience may have been predominantly in the for-profit world. This is where it starts to get tricky.
Many times the person with the extremely high sense of urgency is appealing to an interviewing committee. Also, this person frequently comes across as passionate and willing to stir things up. These qualities may indeed be positive but they are only part of the answer. I remember a phrase from my training (too many years ago) where it was said that a person’s strength, taken to the extreme, can eventually turn and become a liability. What do I mean by this? The person with a great sense of urgency may be impatient for process and may get very frustrated working with a Board or committee.
I have frequently seen the independent person described as the change agent who is willing to challenge the status quo. Independence is a good thing, I agree. Too much independence can lead to a lack of collaboration and buy-in. When a nonprofit executive is too independent, the Board can become disengaged. It is typically a recipe for disaster when the overly independent nonprofit professional believes he/she alone should be setting the strategic direction of the agency.
What can one do in these situations? You need to step back and describe in behavioral terms what type of leader you are looking for. In my work at PRADCO, we always have this discussion with the nonprofit entity. You really need to dig down and agree on what the most critical leadership behaviors are for the agency. Beyond the description of the leader, it is always vital to have an understanding of the lay-professional relationship in the organization. Some boards can have 100 members and other may have a dozen or so. This often impacts the relationship between the C-level executive and the Board Chair. Some boards may look to the top professionals for fundraising abilities while others may want the professional to be focused mostly on internal operations.
Another challenge with these assessments is that they are typically high profile in nature. If a COO or a VP of Sales does not succeed, the public is unlikely to know. If a nonprofit executive fails, is can be in the newspaper or talked about by leaders in the community. You may ask why a company like PRADCO would want to deal with all of these complexities. The answer is two-fold. The challenge is exciting, but more importantly, nonprofit organizations in a certain sense, serve as the conscience of society. I would hate to think where our society would be if these mission-based organizations did not exist.
I really appreciate your perspective and getting it out there to help us Organizational Improvement professionals who are passionate about finding the right fit for a position in behavioral and competency terms. Raising awareness and education are important to making that long term change!
I think the process of assessing CEO candidates – for the very reasons you suggest – must include a down-deep with the Board/Executive Committee. For the partnership to work, there must be total clarity of expectations in all sides. Some boards truly want to act as the CEO’s “cabinet” and, as such, would likely want to be more engaged in the operations of the agency, so an independent CEO would cause disengagement. A Board that really believes its greatest responsibility is fiduciary may be more inclined to appreciate a more independent CEO. I guess this is all to say that an effective CEO assessment should includes some candid and probing discussions with key board members, because the relationship bewteen the two is key to the success of any agency.
We face this challenge on every nonprofit executive search assignment we conduct. While we always provide candidates from the for profit industry, once faced with the reality of those candidates our nonprofit boards tend to hire the nonprofit executive who shares those for profit qualities. We have seen for profit executives make the transition successfully but they usually have a long history of significant nonprofit involvement as a volunteer. Our belief is for profit executives who have a flexible style and demonstrated history of that flexibility can adjust to the slower pace due to increased need for collaboration and consensus building.