In the wake of changing work culture, workforce shortages, and leadership transitions, change is inevitable. Is your Nonprofit organization ready?
In 2020, Momentum Nonprofit Partners’ State of the Mid-South Nonprofit Sector report revealed a frightening statistic: 51% of nonprofit executive directors planned to leave their position within five years. We began shouting from the rooftops, encouraging our organizational partners to prepare for an impending leadership transition.
That was three years ago. Here we are now in the middle of a new world. We are not only seeing the prophesied leadership transitions occurring, but the change is happening at the same time as a nonprofit workforce shortage, a change in work culture, a renewed concern with work/life balance, changing trends in fundraising, and oh-my-gosh-I’m-already-exhausted-just-typing-this-sentence!
I can’t say that we were the first voice to sound the alarm on this issue. Academics, research organizations, and national nonprofit associations have known this transition has been coming for years, but the pandemic and its unintended consequences to the workforce and office culture have only made the issue even more urgent to address. At Momentum, we’re seeing many organizations in the midst of challenges, change, and occasional implosion. Some of these are caused by the exit of their leaders. Others are the byproduct of changing trends in the nonprofit sector and organizations’ response (or lack of response) to them. Either way, the nonprofit sector is shifting far more quickly than anyone expected, and many organizations are struggling to adjust.
Change is inevitable. It’s difficult. It’s scary. It feels icky. No wonder, then, that many times the possibility of change is met with clenched fists and sour faces. So your nonprofit founder is retiring, eh? Sure, it’s scary, but imagine all of the possibilities now that the organization’s programs aren’t trapped by the limited scope of their founder’s syndrome. You lost your big funder? What a great time to rethink your program delivery and cut some of the fat that needed to be trimmed years ago. Your staff turnover is horrendous? What a fantastic opportunity to examine your pay structure and organizational culture.
Though change could and should be welcome in a stagnant or ineffective organization, change is often met with problematic behavior from staff and board that limits the organization’s ability to rethink, adjust, and renew. Below are six behaviors that will most likely kill a truly transformative process for nonprofits.
Gatekeeping
Remember the old Saturday Night Live skit featuring David Spade as a smarmy receptionist? He was the ultimate gatekeeper, not allowing anyone to talk to his boss. While Spade’s portrayal is a funny example of a “gatekeeper,” this behavior can have dangerous consequences to an organization’s transformation, renewal, or turnaround. Whenever there is organizational change, those with power who are fearful that they will lose power will often exert unnecessary force to swat away potential changes. They will limit access to resources and information, forbid changemakers’ ability to access staff or board leadership, or deny access to other stakeholders. If someone dares reject their power plays, you’ll feel their wrath. When you find yourself face-to-face with a gatekeeper, you have to ask the question, “Are they gatekeeping to protect the communities we serve, or are they gatekeeping to maintain their power and the status quo?” Gatekeepers who are interested in protecting the communities served will often need to earn trust of changemakers, whether that’s an interim CEO, a new boar chair, or a turnaround consultant. On the other hand, gatekeepers who are only interested in maintaining their own power are, unfortunately, often difficult to move in any direction other than towards the door.
Hoarding
We’d like to think that we’ve evolved over the last few millennia, but our natural instincts kick in when we’re faced with existential threats, even if those instincts are detrimental in the long run. Hoarding, like gatekeeping, is a way people exert their power when faced with the threat of change. This behavior is a byproduct of scarcity thinking, a “mental shift due to the perception of scarce resources.” We may begin hoarding information, resources, or contacts as a way to protect ourselves, but this behavior can have consequences to the change management process when information and supplies aren’t readily available. I’ve seen versions of self-protection where a person refuses to provide financial information to their staff or board, and I’ve even seen people hoarding office supplies because they were scared they would lose them!
Echo Chambers
One of the most dangerous phenomena during an organizational change is to make decisions in an echo chamber. What do I mean by that? You or a small group make all the decisions on behalf of all stakeholders instead of providing two-way communication between everyone affected by the change. This could take the form of the board of directors writing the strategic plan with no community input, or the interim CEO axing a program that is truly effective based on their uninformed gut instincts. Sometimes these behaviors are spurred on by self-preservation or ego. Other times, it’s willful ignorance. Either way, if the community and stakeholders aren’t actively involved in and informed of the organizational change, you are most likely destined to fail.
Lack of Urgency
Have you ever watched an organization drag its feet in hiring a new executive director? Continue a program that doesn’t work (or even has negative consequences)? Take three years to fire their problematic executive director? I certainly have. If you truly want organizational change to occur, you must create a sense of urgency for all stakeholders. The first component of Kotter’s organizational change model is to create a sense of urgency. Without this sense of urgency, “we’ll get to it eventually” will become the thinking of your board and staff leadership. Problems will metastasize. Inefficiencies will continue. The communities you serve will be harmed.
Ultimately, leadership must not lose sight of how a change—leadership transition or otherwise—can harm the clients you serve. Clients will still need food, shelter, and education. Animals will still need to be spayed and adopted. Deleterious public policy will continue to threaten our communities’ well-being. The world won’t wait for you to change, but how much harm will your organization’s leadership bring by not moving fast enough?
Too Much Urgency
On the opposite end of the spectrum, sometimes too much urgency isn’t a good thing. Sometimes boards are too quick to find a successor to a recently-departed CEO without taking stock of what is needed or following an equitable and strategic process (often this is due to the board not wanting to or not knowing how to effectively manage a transition). Other times, an executive director will eliminate an entire program when funding is cut, hurting the participants of that program and killing chances at alternate streams of funding. When a major change is looming over your organization, urgency is important, but so is being strategic. You must assess the organization, its threats and opportunities, and even its existence before making hasty decisions.
Lack of Reflection
The final problematic behavior is a lack of reflection. Whenever a change occurs, we have to pause an ask ourselves,
“Have we fulfilled our mission?”
“Can we ever fulfill our mission?”
“Why do we exist?”
“Does our organization even need to exist, or do we just want it to exist?”
“Does our organization need to exist in its current format?”
“Is anyone doing it better, and why aren’t we collaborating with them?”
Reflection is essential during periods of change or transition, and overlooking the opportunity for reflection is often most detrimental to the change process. Without proper reflection (after proper listening and assessing!) by the board and staff leadership, you may end up with an organization that’s completely irrelevant, duplicative, or—worse yet—detrimental to the communities you are trying to serve.
If you’ve seen these behaviors in action, comment below. What were the consequences? What did leaders do to combat these behaviors? Sound off in the comments section!
Kevin Dean, Ed.D.
Kevin is the Chief Executive Officer at Momentum Nonprofit Partners.