The Top 3 Onboarding Mistakes You're Making

Bringing in a new CEO to a nonprofit is an exciting time for an organization. For the board that makes the decision, it brings equal shares of excitement and anxiety, and for good reason. As a board member, you feel the weight of your stakeholders on you – your membership, your public, your partners, your funders, and those that you serve. As an on boarding specialist, who has guided over 50 on boarding transitions for nonprofits, I understand the significant pitfalls and mistakes made during this significant phase of your organization's history. Here are three of the most common pitfalls.

1. Hoping For The Best - You are putting the future of the organization into new hands, hands that you hardly know. Typically, the board’s job ends with the hire. You hope that the new leader is smart enough to figure out the transition plan. In most cases, the staff pulls together reams of documents. If you even have an HR resource, they help to set up the first staff meetings. Then, you leave the new CEO in the hands of the former CEO and allow them to transition the new person in, along with staff and some board support. If the former CEO is no longer available, the new CEO is buried in just trying to execute the day to day without a compass.

2. Leaving everything up to the new CEO - Invariably, the new CEO is overwhelmed with the stories of all the reasons the organization needs them and all the ways they are expected to fix everything (quickly). They are left to on board themselves into the organization while drinking from a fire hose. Whether that new CEO is entering a start up nonprofit, coming in to sustain success, turn around an under performing organization or following in an icon’s footsteps, they will – guaranteed- be underwater for a period of time. And all the while, it’s the person transitioning out (wasn’t there a reason for that?) that you trust to teach the new person the ropes. This is kind of crazy.

3. Failing to Apply On boarding Best Practices from the Corporate World - In our corporate roles, we are familiar with the structured process of on boarding new employees and we know from years of research that, especially for executives, the first 90 – 120 days in a new role with a new company significantly affects their success moving forward. We do all the right things – surround the new executive with mentors, key staff support, on boarding road maps, education around company strategy, help from HR, cultural immersion, structure and process. Nonprofits, of course, are laggards when it comes to business best practices. We learn from corporate and we try to apply what we know works in our corporate lives to our meagerly resourced, regulated, all-things-to-all-people organizations. Shouldn’t we be less lazy with the nonprofits that are trying to move our society, our industries and our agendas forward?

We created "INBoarding90," the executive on boarding process with a deep, immersive, intentional and integrated, road map to get your new CEO completely immersed in your organization. One that results in the Board, staff and CEO being completely aligned to the organization’s strategic plan, and ensures a successful first year and beyond. Within 90 days, a great "INBoarding" process should result in shattering the typical learning curve and making hay out of that “honeymoon period.”

#onboarding #notforprofit