You’re on a Board that has finally parted ways with a CEO who wasn’t what you’d have hoped for.
Maybe it was competence, maybe it was the relationship. Maybe they quit, maybe they’ve been ousted. Maybe you’re still grappling with potential employment tribunal threats that will disturb your sleep for the next few months.
But whatever happens, you say, you’re going to recruit differently next time.
You seek ideas and input. Get advice from recruiters and experienced Trustees. You involve staff. You design the best, most consultative, most impactful recruitment process the world has ever seen, so that you can be sure that you have picked the right person.
You’ve done so much reflection and learning on the last recruitment process, you’re feeling really confident that, this time, it will be the right person.
But you’ve missed something.
Something absolutely huge.
Vital. Central.
And that is that it’s not all about the recruitment process.
This focus on recruitment is really common. And it’s not wrong. Who doesn’t want to appoint the right person? It’s valuable, and time well spent.
But if you don’t spend a similar amount of time turning the mirror on the Board and its oversight procedures, it may end up being wasted effort. It’s focusing on one half of the problem and not the other.
Because even the best leaders need a good and challenging Board who asks the right questions. And the bad ones need to picked up quickly and early…or you’ll be right back in crisis again.
In my experience – 8 time CEO, 7 as interim, as well as now supporting dozens of interim CEOs through Interims for Impact – I am yet to come across a crisis in a situation where Board oversight was on the right track.
“Assurance not reassurance” is a mantra many will remember from Trustee training. This means you must, as a Board, be assured of what the CEO and SMT tell you, not just reassured.
That means getting robust financial reports, not just being told that ‘there’s plenty in the bank’.
It means having clear KPIs or targets, and having ways of measuring those that are connected to real impact and data.
And it means asking for more when there’s not enough. Even if you think the CEO is the bee’s knees and the cat’s pyjamas all rolled into one (and they might be, I know many of them myself!), if they tell you all the staff are happy, you need to see something that is more than just the boss saying so. How about a staff culture review, or survey, carried out by someone not on the SMT?
At a more basic level, it means actually overseeing the charity’s strategic plan. That usually means turning that plan into a business or action plan that the CEO reports against every meeting. If there’s an outcome, outputs, KPIs, leads and deadlines, you should be able to see exactly how well things are going.
It also means having a clear annual budget, getting robust reports against that budget, and asking questions when things don’t turn out as expected.
I know this seems like Trustee 101, but in every single crisis role I’ve gone into, the oversight hasn’t been doing what it needed to do, and there has been too much trust in the CEO. I don’t want Boards to distrust their CEO, but they do need to be robust in what they’re requiring CEOs to demonstrate is happening.
It’s not because those Trustees didn’t care. It’s usually because the assurance mechanisms weren’t giving them the information they needed to spot issues early, and then they weren’t prepared to take action quickly enough.
In a number of charities I’ve seen first-hand, even after a crisis was averted, the oversight didn’t change and poor leaders were able to do more damage. In a few cases, this led to closure.
So, Trustees, when you’re thinking about your recruitment process for your next CEO, also think about assurance. What did you miss? What would you do differently? If you need help in this process, I’m here and able to work with Boards and leaders to get this right.
It’s not about self-flagellation or pinning the blame, it’s about ongoing learning and building the organisational resilience and robustness you need to make sure that your (hopefully) brilliant, amazing CEO has the oversight and challenge they need to succeed. And, it also means that if they’re not what they seem, you pick it up earlier and take action before they can do any damage to your charity.
Felicia Willow is a consultant and founder of Interims for Impact, where she places interim leaders and supports governance development in Boards, as well as through her brand Willow Charity Consulting, where she delivers governance reviews and advice, assurance and oversight development, strategic planning and facilitation, and much more. Check it out at interimsforimpact.co.uk and willowcharityconsulting.co.uk and feel free to connect via LinkedIn.