TOOLS

Often succession planning naturally reveals strengths and gaps in an organization’s existing board of directors, particularly in founder-led organizations. This matrix can be used to identify and gaps in skills or qualities in an existing board. It can be useful for narrowing in on the board recruiting process. Add or delete qualities that most accurately reflect your organization.

This is a list of documents that, if your organization has them, should be collected in one place where more than one person has access. Access to these components will allow your organization to continue operations during and following an unplanned leadership transition. This checklist can be used during an unplanned succession to organize what is readily accessible and what needs to be located.

This is a list of documents that, if your organization has them, should be collected in one place where more than one person has access. Access to these components will help ensure that the organization can continue as smoothly as possible during and following a transition. This checklist should be completed in advance of a planned succession and revisited at regular intervals.

Implementing an emergency succession plan for a sudden or unplanned leadership transition is overwhelming and confusing. The following timeline can help you prepare for the emergency succession-planning process. It should be used in combination with other tools in this toolkit. These steps assume that the suddenly transitioning leadership is not available to be part of planning and implementing. However, if the current leadership is available, that person should be included in all steps along the way.

Implementing a succession plan for a planned leadership transition is usually smoother than an unplanned leadership transition but is can still be overwhelming. The following timeline can help you prepare for the succession-planning process. It should be used in combination with other tools in this toolkit. The exact timeline is less important than the succession of events. Depending on the Board’s available time, the weeks could turn into months. Whenever possible, be sure that the outgoing leadership is part of planning and implementing.

Data gathered through a culture assessment are meant to create conversations between the culture manager or culture consultant and the people participating at the organization being assessed (the employees).

The intent of organizational culture assessment questions is to signal where individuals need support, where collaboration is happening and thriving, and how the workplace is performing across key areas of organizational culture.

When you run your employee survey questions about culture, include the questions below in your assessment. These corporate culture survey question templates, in truth aren’t positioned as questions, but rather statements to agree or disagree.

If you’re responsible for ushering in or facilitating leadership change in your organization, then you are what they call a “change leader.” As such, you should be thinking creatively (and pretty much constantly) about ways to engage all staff (paid and unpaid) in continuous dialogue about organizational culture in relation to leadership changes that are occurring now or will occur in the future. There are many ways to engage staff in this dialogue – team meetings, one-on-one consultations, anonymous suggestion/comment boxes, and an anonymous open-ended survey of the sort presented here.

When administering this survey, keep a few things in mind:

• It should be anonymous. You can use SurveyMonkey.com or some other free survey service that allows staff to respond openly and honestly without fear of backlash;
• Make sure you are prepared to compile and report the results promptly so that staff know they’ve been heard;
• When reporting results back to staff, be sure to remove any identifying indicators (e.g., a particular staff member’s “signature” phrase or way of saying something).
• Once you’ve shared the compiled results, have face-to-face meetings with staff to discuss the results and the implications for the path to finding/building new leadership for the organization.
• Re-administer this survey on a fairly regular basis, not just in times of crisis or massive change.