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As an organization evolves, it will inevitably face changes in leadership. The key to making any leadership transition a seamless process for staff and clients alike is to develop a thoughtful succession plan that will guide decisions when the need arises. 1. Ensure Organizational Sustainability– First and foremost, having a well-developed, formal succession plan supports organizational sustainability, while preserving the continuous coverage of duties critical to an agency’s continuing operations. 2. Increase Transition Success – Thoughtfully considering succession possibilities will lead to smoother transitions. The executive director or CEO serves as the direct line of communication between the board of directors and agency personnel; he or she is responsible for providing the leadership and guidance to help the organization meet its strategic and operational goals and fulfil its mission. He or she also provides an understanding of the intentions and policies of the board of directors by informing and guiding senior staff leadership, administrative functions, and operational staff in the daily work of the organization. It is important to ensure a continuity of this leadership in the event of unplanned and unexpected changes, as well as during planned changes due to termination, resignation, or retirement of top leadership, including the executive director or CEO. Communicate and keep communicating Communication is essential. Communication means transparency. Thoughtful and timely communication before, during, and after any leadership transition will go a long way in supporting the success of a new leader and the organization – keeping the focus squarely on fulfilling its mission of serving others. Flowers, J. (2017, October 10). 9 Tips for Effective Succession Planning . Council on Accreditation. https://coanet.org/2017/10/9-tips-for-effective-succession-planning/

The only way to reduce the effect of lost leadership is through a strong succession planning program that identifies and fosters the next generation of leaders through mentoring, training and stretch assignments, so they are ready to take the helm when the time comes. Research supports sound succession planning. “Every company has a succession planning document,” says David Larcker, a professor in the graduate school of business at Stanford University. “The question you have to ask is, ‘Will it be operational?” This Roadmap offers human resources leaders a framework and advice on how to create a robust succession planning program that aligns talent management with the vision of the company, ensures employees have development opportunities to hone their leadership skills, and guarantees that the organization has a leadership plan in place for success in the future. This kind of leadership level commitment to training and mentoring the next generation is a vital component of succession planning. And while most executives understand the importance of succession planning efforts, few of them believe their organization excels in this category. As companies begin to develop a succession planning process, they should consider these fundamental issues: High potential vs. everyone: Some companies focus all of their succession planning efforts on “high potential individuals,” whereas others create a succession plan for everyone from the moment they are onboard. The benefit of focusing on high-potential workers is you can channel more resources and coaching toward those employees with the greatest promise. The risk is that you overlook great people and alienate and frustrate the rest of the employees, which can impact morale and turnover. “Most successful organization focus on everyone,” says Dan Schneider, cultural architect at advisory firm The Rawls Group. Hiring from within vs. bringing in someone new: Developing leaders internally takes time and effort, but these homegrown candidates are more likely to be successful than external candidates. According to a 2012 study by Matthew Bidwell, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, external hires are 61 percent more likely to be laid off or fired, and 21 percent more likely than internal hires to leave a job on their own accord. These outside hires also get paid more, but get lower marks in performance reviews during their first two years on the job. However, internal hires aren’t always an option. Fully 38 percent of firms anticipate they will need to recruit externally for C-level roles in the next 12 months. Internal candidates are also not always the best choice. If a company wants to move in a dramatically different direction, or its current leaders leave before the next generation is ready, companies need to be open to bringing in someone from the outside. Factoring diversity into decision-making. Managers often seek people who are like them for mentoring and promotion, which often leads to a plethora of white men leading organizations. If companies want diversity in their leadership, the succession planning initiative should include steps

that actively promote women and minorities for leadership opportunities, and train managers on how to encourage diversity on their teams. Making sure you have support from the top. HR can build a great talent development plan, but without active support from leadership, it won’t have the desired impact. HR leaders can’t force executives to support their efforts but they can align talent management efforts with strategic plans and educate executives and managers about the business value of succession planning efforts. “Having a robust succession planning and talent review program and culture is just good business,” To do that, HR has to create a succession planthat links talent development with the strategic goals of the board, the business and the staff. Glen Gilkey, Fluor’s senior vice president of HR. “It helps mitigate the risk that leadership will be a constraint to growth.” A succession planning program compiles the skills, abilities and goals of each employee, compares them to the needs of current and future roles, and tracks employee progress toward being ready to fill those roles. Fister Gale, S. (2013, March 11). Succession Planning Roadmap . Workforce.com. https://workforce.com/news/succession-planning-roadmap/ Knudstorp and Beddoes exercised a style of leadership called strategic leadership. They enhanced the long-term viability of their companies through the articulation of a clear vision and, at the same time, maintained a satisfactory level of short-term financial stability. And they accomplished this while maintaining relatively smooth day-to-day operations. Strategic leadership is different than two other popular leadership styles, managerial and visionary. Managerial leaders are primarily immersed in the day-to-day activities of the organization and lack an appropriate long-term vision for growth and change. For reasons we will touch upon later, this is the most common form of leadership, especially in large, diversified organizations. Conversely, visionary leaders are primarily future-oriented, proactive and risk- taking. These leaders base their decisions and actions on their beliefs and values and try to share their understanding of a desired vision with others in the organization. While there are many different definitions of strategic leadership, we define it as the ability to influence others in your organization to voluntarily make day-to-day decisions that lead to the organization’s long-term growth and survival and maintain its short-term financial health The most important aspects of strategic leadership are shared values and a clear vision, both of which will enable and allow employees to make decisions with minimal formal monitoring or control mechanisms. With this accomplished, a leader will have more time and a greater capacity to focus on other, ad hoc issues, such as adapting the vision to a changing business environment. In addition, strategic leadership will incorporate visionary and managerial leadership by simultaneously allowing for risk-taking and rationality.

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While managerial leaders are focused on the past, visionary leaders are oriented to the future. Their main tool for achieving goals is their ability to influence followers, influence they use to create a shared vision and an understanding of what is to be achieved. These leaders rely heavily on their own values, and they invest in people and their network of relationships in order to ensure the viability of the organization. They articulate a compelling vision, and then empower and energize followers to move towards it. 5 The formal structures of the organization will create few constraints for these leaders, as they make decisions and shape their vision based on their values, beliefs, and sense of identity. Strategic leaders envision a future with the present circumstances in mind and pay attention to short-term financial stability, with an understanding of what is to be achieved in the long term. Strategic leaders encourage innovation in the face of changing environments and contexts, seeking innovation and change in moving forward. The presence of a strategic leader leads to a number of outcomes for an organization that are eventually linked to share values in both the short and long term. 1. These leaders tend to pay particular attention to building their organization’s resources, capabilities and competencies in order to gain appropriate, sustained competitive advantages. Strategic leaders know that focusing on the short term and forgetting about core competencies in the face of changing circumstances and a turbulent environment are likely to lead to organizational failure. 2. Strategic leaders view human capital as an important factor in innovation and the creation of core competencies, and they expend considerable effort sustaining the health of this resource (human capital). While managerial leaders focus on the exploitation of current resources and capabilities, strategic leaders combine this focus with a search for new resources, capabilities, and core competencies, which will, when needed, be exploited to create wealth. This dual focus on exploitation and exploration, often referred to as ambidexterity, is a prerequisite for long-term organizational success. 9 We believe that while managerial and visionary leaders are busy exploiting and exploring, strategic leaders exploit and explore in a way that maintains organizational financial stability in the short term, while building a foundation for long-term viability. 3. Organizations led by strategic leaders are more successful in learning, both at the individual and group levels. Studies have shown that both the managerial and visionary aspects of leadership are essential for organization-wide learning initiatives to succeed. While a strategic leader’s articulation of a vision helps alter the institutionalized learning of an organization, his or her managerial approach helps spread and reinforce current learning initiatives. 10 This combination is necessary, since the organization always needs to learn new things and at the same time, to institutionalize newly discovered avenues of learning. Organizational learning and the creation and sharing of knowledge within an organization are important prerequisites for long-term viability and are better practiced by an organization led by a strategic leader.

a strategic leader is more likely to create synergy by envisioning a desired future and growth strategy, while influencing employees to voluntarily make day-to-day decisions that will help maintain the financial stability of the organization, as well as its future viability. Table 1: Strategic, Visionary, and Managerial Leadership Strategic Leaders  synergistic combination of managerial and visionary leadership  emphasis on ethical behavior and value-based decisions  oversee operating (day-to-day) and strategic (long-term) responsibilities  formulate and implement strategies for immediate impact and preservation of long-term goals to enhance organizational survival, growth, and long-term viability  have strong, positive expectations of the performance they expect from their superiors, peers, subordinates, and themselves  use strategic controls and financial controls, with emphasis on strategic controls  use, and interchange, tacit and explicit knowledge on individual and organizational levels  use linear and nonlinear thinking patterns  believe in strategic choice, that is, their choices make a difference in their organizations and environment Rowe, G. & Nejad, M.H. (2009, September/October). Strategic Leadership: Short-term Stability and Long-term Viability. Ivey Business School Foundation. https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/strategic-leadership-short-term-stability-and- long-term-viability/ Strategic thinking helps your business achieve its goals more rapidly. A strategic mind-set also encourages you to determine the best use of resources at your disposal and how to align them with your action plan. Strategic thinking helps you recognize and take advantage of windfall opportunities Windfall opportunities are those that could result in rapid business growth, such as a chance to recruit away disgruntled workers from your competitor or buy out inventory from a competitor's liquidation sale.

Focus on problem solving: Strategic thinking also encourages you to take a long view of your company's business model and operations. Creating a Clear Strategy: Being Proactive: Bianca, A. (2021, January 1). Why Is Strategic Thinking Important to the Success of Business? https://bizfluent.com/why-is-strategic-thinking-important-to-the-success-of-business.html Strategic thinking involves developing an entire set of critical skills. They have the ability to develop a clearly defined and focused business vision OR personal vision. They are skilled at both thinking with a strategic purpose as well as creating a visioning process. They have both skills and they use them to complement each other. They have the ability to clearly define their objectives and develop a strategic action plan with each objective broken down into tasks and each task having a list of needed resources and a specific timeline. They have the ability to design flexibility into their plans by creating some benchmarks in their thinking to review progress. Then they use those benchmarks to as a guide and to recognize the opportunity to revise their plans as needed. They have an innate ability to be proactive and anticipate change, rather than being reactive to changes after they occur. They are committed lifelong learners and learn from each of their experiences. They use their experiences to enable them to think better on strategic issues. Robert Bradford ? President of SSP Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc. (2008). Strategic Thinking: 11 Critical Skills Needed. https://www.cssp.com/CD0808b/CriticalStrategicThinkingSkills/ Empower change Visionary Leadership Ethical and Value Driven Leadership Initiate and lead change Encourage and promote flexibility Anticipate change

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Drive organizational learning See the bigger picture Envision continuous organizational future Ability to acquire, recognize, and apply new information – absorptive capacity Recognize growth opportunities – seize opportunities Demonstrate flexibility and resilience Drive innovation Lead courageously Demonstrate strategic ability to lead and influence with integrity and respect Inspire others Establish trust and respect; display fairness and objectivity; display empathy Demonstrate accountability Exhibit a positive and optimistic perspective – maintain optimism Committed to communicating and promoting organizational values Deliver compelling presentations Coaches and develops others Manage risks Vision and goal setting Designing strategy and structure Creating and maintain change Corporate intrapreneurship Leading people - Team Building – inspire, motivate, and guide others; encourage and facilitate cooperating with the organization - Cultural Awareness - Integrity and Honesty – Foster a high standard of ethics and instill mutual trust and confidence - Conflict management – climate issues by identifying and precenting potential negative confrontations Leading change - Demonstrate openness by employing a continual spirit of learning - Apply new thought Communicating and building coalitions - Employing interpersonal skills - Communicating through both the spoken and written word - Influencing and negotiating Exercising business judgement Being results-driven

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