My last post I talked about going through an executive director transition and what I see as important to focus on at the start. That message was to game plan what you are going to do; in addition to that I want to say that part of that is not rush into anything. When an association losses its executive director it can be natural to think that the position must be filled right away, and that thinking can get you rushed into a position you may not want to be in.
Moving on to my next idea; communicating with your membership. During a transition it is important to take the membership into account. Ask yourself “What is the membership’s overall mood or feelings of the organization right now?” Give yourself a chance to think about what their reaction could be to your decisions whether it be the announcement of your executive director leaving or the hiring of a new one. It is important to take your time with your messaging. Understand that your announcement and the changes are going to affect a lot of people. Get a plan in place to deal with questions and comments that will be coming in from not only the membership but the media as well.
Make sure everyone knows the plan. That goes for the staff as well as the Board. Whoever it is that may have interactions with the membership or media should know the situation and what the plan is. This plan can be as simple as directing everyone to a certain person, keep it simple if nothing is set in stone, just avoid having 10 different people telling 10 different stories of what’s going on. Try to avoid surprises like releasing information before you are ready to react. Members want transparency; they will want to be the first to know what is going on. Knowing what is being said by the organization can also avoid saying different things to different people.
So as you can tell the overall message in this post is to take your time with your messaging. While it may seem that things need to get done quickly, it is important to make sure you are getting things right.
[...] Last, but of course not least, Joe Sapp continued his series about how an organization should handle a change in leadership. In part three, Joe reminds readers to consider how their membership feels during the transition [...]