Case Study: OD & Leadership Transition
WHAT WE DID: NFG’s organizational development and leadership transition journey
NFG engaged in a 2-year process of accountability and action, which included taking stock of the past; measuring the cost and impact of actions, structures, and practices; and addressing pain points. Faced with a pattern of abbreviated tenures and difficult exits of three women of color, NFG went on a four-part journey to seek truths and lessons and settle the most complex parts of its leadership history by applying the insight to its future. The journey included:
exploring and gleaning lessons from its history of leadership--with an emphasis on looking at that history through the lens of race and gender equity;
exploring different leadership models in the progressive philanthropic and movement organization sector to inform the Board’s decision making on a new leadership structure best suited for NFG in this season of its history;
engaging NFG stakeholders in discussing perennial questions about its identity--including its changing membership base and the broader context in which NFG works;
Creating shared understanding among the Board and staff of NFG’s “current state” to best inform NFG’s new leaders on organizational health, challenges, potential opportunities, and priorities.
WHAT WE LEARNED There is no “right” leadership model. It’s about choosing the right model for the org at the moment and working to ensure its success.
From Leadership History Look Back: Seeing how NFG’s systems, practices, and culture contributed to their experience and resulted in abbreviated tenures and difficult exits. Elements of the structure and culture that needed attention include: challenges in the hiring process; inadequate understanding of the organization’s state; challenges of navigating staff unionization; and lack of ongoing board engagement.
From Leadership Models Research: Understanding that no form of leadership or structure is a fix-all. What’s most important are: clarity, explicitness, and intention in roles; attention to equity, power and balance; developing a clear plan for transition and support; designing for resilience in changing conditions; a strong financial cushion; and, a strong organizational culture.
From Exploration of Identity: Understanding of the unique form of NFG - a network set of aligned programs working with relative autonomy and a supportive infrastructure. Further, we learned that we need to clarify and make transparent where power lies in influencing priorities and strategic direction.
From Examining NFG’s Current State: Using hiring as an opportunity to go beyond the surface and explore everything you can about the organization. NFG discovered that gaps in knowledge were not intentional, but signaled the Board’s lack of deep understanding about aspects of the org’s sustainability.
WHAT WE APPLIED: How we evolved organizational systems, practices, and culture to reverse a negative pattern of leadership transitions.
To support the implementation of NFG’s new Co-President Leadership Model, they invested in the following changes:
Structural Changes
Created a “ruthlessly realistic,” more sustainable new leadership structure with clarity about the two, distinct equally visible and important external and internal roles the leaders are expected to play, responsive to the true demands and opportunities of the role.
New hiring practice including early engagement of a recruiter, deeper staff engagement, and willingness to pause and collaborate.
There is a need for an adequately staffed and consistently supported executive leadership.
Used the OD/T process to practice sharing power as a newly unionized organization that will continue in the co-president model.
The board adopted an “onboarding and ongoing” orientation to cultivate a clear, sustained working relationship between the board and new leaders.
Cultural Changes
Finding new ways to act upon our intersectional equity and inclusion lens at all levels of the organization.
A high value on transparent leadership at all levels at NFG
Rigorous assessment of the organization’s current state and pathways to address challenges as a condition of success.
Naming and addressing the invisible labor put on BIPOC women leaders to caretake at the expense of their own personal needs
Creating opportunities for staff and board to learn about the new leadership structure, their relationship to it, and their role in contributing to its success.
Honoring the hardest parts of our leadership history with acknowledgment and applying lessons to our future work and organization structure and culture
Collective engagement of stakeholders by creating ways for board, staff and member leaders to work together in ways that build and strengthen trust that is useful beyond the OD/T process.
Being willing to face the past by being in genuine conversation with former leaders to hear and see them - especially their invisibilized contributions and the hardest parts of their experience; and co-creating resolution (if desired)
Acknowledgment with the sector of how our systems, practices and culture impacted the experience of former leaders - you can’t fix what you can’t face.
Doing things differently – bringing the recruiter into the OD/T process before the hiring process began; new leadership model (for now, maybe not forever), Board onboarding and ongoing commitment
Sharing what we’re learning - beyond the organization for transparency, accountability and hopefully for the benefit of the field.
Positive ecosystem implications
Investment in accountability and action and structural resilience is costly (time and financial resources). The questions are: What’s the cost of our inaction and who pays for the lack of investment? And, what’s the likely return on investment now and or the future of social movements?
The practice of accountability and action among movement organizations and philanthropy
Coordination to build structural resilience across the ecosystem of movement leaders and organizations
Experimentation with supportive peers around organizational transformation that not only meets the moment but creates our desired future.