Ready4Change�A Dialogue About Leadership Transition and Succession Planning

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Maya Doe-Simkins, Greg Scott & Catherine Swanson

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March 31, 2021, AIDS United Midwest SSP Institute

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“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.”

James Baldwin

Overview

• Talk about the project we’re working on
• Discuss what we’ve found out so far
• Provide you with some ideas and tools to get started with succession planning (SP)
• Objectives:
• Articulate the importance of and challenges to developing an organizational leadership succession plan
• Compare broad succession planning needs assessment results with your own organization or situation
• Adapt at least one short term and one long term organizational succession planning activity

Who we are

• Maya Doe-Simkins, MPH, is a public health practitioner, educator, and researcher. She has worked in harm reduction for 18 years.
• Greg Scott, PhD, is a visual sociologist at DePaul University in Chicago. He has worked in harm reduction for 20 years.
• Catherine Swanson, MPH, is a former sex worker, outreach worker and executive director who now works as an educator, consultant and coach. She has worked in harm reduction for 25 years.

Photo Credits to Nigel Brunsdon

www.injectingadvice.com

www.nigelbrunsdon.com

Project Background and Overview

• What is “succession planning”?
• Laying the foundation by incorporating plans for transitions in leadership into organizational culture
• Concrete tasks and practical activities in advance of transition
• SSPs & harm reduction orgs struggle to prioritize SP
• Some transitions are smooth and seamless, but most transitions and changes include tension, uncertainty, conflict and hurdles

Thanks to AIDS United & Comer Family Foundation

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Project Overview

• First stages are to collect data from several groups including:
• Past work e.g. Capacity Building Leadership Institute (CBLI)
• Focus groups with leaders in harm reduction organizations
• Interviews with leaders in harm reduction organizations who have experienced significant change
• Staff and others from harm reduction organizations who have experienced significant change
• Synthesize insights into a coherent/practical SP guide
• Create a series of workshops to roll out the guide and help organizations get started with succession planning

Discussion Question

• Do you have questions or insights to share at the outset of our discussion?

Leadership Focus Groups Overview

• 3 focus groups with leadership of HR orgs
• About 60 minutes each
• 14 people in total
• Representing HR organizations from across the country

Leadership Focus Group Themes

• Leaders have already been putting some succession planning into play
• Concerns about philosophical fidelity/mission drift and similarly dedicated or skilled mentees
• Limited time and support to build systems resulting in minimal succession planning

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Quotes: already Planning

• “I was involved a little bit in the succession planning stuff with [a harm reduction organization] which like really really opened my eyes to a lot of needs within my own organization. I was used to running a one woman show and just telling everybody what they needed to do. And then as we grew and as we started creating this like shared leadership model. So now we've got like the ED and the deputy director who oversees the Director of Programs who oversees the program managers who oversee the staff and, you know, a few years ago, I would have been appalled at that idea.”

Quotes: already Planning

• “And one of the things that we have done and all the organizations I work with is that there are two people who have access to all the codes and you know even have people and having chunks of that. But as long as there's two because as long as one person is one person disappeared for whatever reason you would have access to a 501(c)3 contact information, your incorporation papers like all of that detail to two people just need to have access, just in case.”
• “Letting things through and letting things go and having faith said this younger generation, in the next wave of folks. They've got it and I need to stop being such a hard ass.”

Quotes: Concerns About Mission Drift

• “But my, my biggest fear is the difference in what harm reduction means to different people.”
• “All that work that [names redacted] did get taken over and- excuse my language- but by a bunch of conservative boot licker right wing Christians is just absolutely heartbreaking, you know, to see people who are not peers, in a way, have no lived experience.”

Quotes: Limited Time/Support

• “[T]his spring. I got ill and, you know, had to go get COVID tested and sit at home and wait for the results and while I was doing that, it occurred to me that if I was to be, you know, sick for a really long time, or to die or crash my motorcycle or something to that effect, that nobody would really be able to turn on my computer and figure out what the hell was going on, right, like how this was all put together and what needed to happen on a day to day basis.”

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Quotes: Limited Time/Support

• “If something were to happen, because it's all here and I'm the link between the old agency and the newer and I'm the one that implemented the programs- I'm the one that has all the history in my head.
• So, I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what I don't know. I don't know how to make a spreadsheet. I mean, you know, really like so legitimately the big concern for me is being able to maintain the amount of energy that it takes to not only learn how to do this full time but also have like the three full time jobs that is doing this.”

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Discussion Questions

• What have you seen as the challenges to succession planning?
• What are your concerns about doing succession planning?

Funder Focus Group Overview

• 1 Focus Group
• 60 minutes
• Six participants
• Representing a variety of harm reduction focused funders
• Private foundations
• Public/government entities

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Insights from Funders

• “Executive directors/organizations don't do enough to see funders as partners. People want to have everything in place before you talk to a funder and it should be the other way around it's like go to a funder before you make any decisions and elicit the support of the funder because essentially the funder it they might fund a person's sort of because you are charismatic or whatever, but really they're funding the mission of the organization, so they want the mission, they want the organization survive and thrive.”

Insights from Funders

• “It will take a long time to undo- the fear of funders is come by honestly that people have had terrible experiences with funders. And, so, for those of us who are harm reduction is first and funder second- you can say that till you're blue in the face it just doesn't change the fact that the experience is often really brutal. So I think it's really probably up to us to continue to say that we want partnership and that the thing that they're giving us is equally valuable to the thing that we're giving them and that the relationship is a collaborative relationship in which we give something that is overvalued: money.”

Insights from Funders

• “The biggest misconception for me is that being honest with me is going to result in the loss of current or future funding. You know, that if they share with me what's going on, that I will either pull funding from them now, or when they come to reapply in the future I'll say, “oh no, this thing happened last time we funded them so we're not going to fund them this time.”

Discussion Question

• What insights would you like from funders?

Staff Survey Overview

• On-going
• Looking for staff/others in non-leadership positions
• Open until the end of April

Emerging Themes

• Communication & information access are recurring themes
• People seem to have had pretty good or really bad transition experiences
• The bimodal distribution -- either good or terrible -- seems concentrated around issues of leadership style, grace, communication with staff, etc. Might also be worth noting the Qs where there is skew in one direction or the other and ALSO that where daily work activities are concerned, the experience seems more even.

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Take the Survey!

• www.surveymonkey.com/r/F9ZJ33T
• $25 incentive in the form of POD surprise package or credit
• If you are in leadership now, but weren’t during a transition, please take it anyway!

"Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole." Maya Angelou

DRAFT Action Items: Short Term

• Talk with BOD
• Ask ED/leadership about succession planning (if that’s not your current position)
• Collect login & password info in one place and make sure that at least one other person has access
• Save important personnel & organizational documents in one place and make sure that at least one other person has access
• Share checklist draft

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DRAFT Action Items: Long Term

• Conceptualize plans for 3 different transition scenarios: short term/temporary, planned permanent, unplanned permanent
• Include succession planning in strategic planning
• Look for potential leadership mentees
• Consider the ways that organizational culture supports or inhibits advance planning for things like succession
• Talk about leadership transition as a normal situation that organizations should expect to happen, thus planning for it is part of an organizational sustainability process

Discussion Question

• What would you like to see in a toolkit?
• How would you like the info shared/ presented/ disseminated?

Keep in Touch!

• Reach out to us at:
• mdoesimkins@gmail.com
• greg_scott@me.com
• Catherine@balancedimperfection.org
• And don’t forget the survey!

www.surveymonkey.com/r/F9ZJ33T

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“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”

Anne Lamott