Four Harder Questions About Nonprofit Boards and CEOs

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I’ve been struck recently by how many of the questions nonprofit newsroom leaders and funders want to talk about privately revolve around how boards can best function—and how they often fall short.

I wrote about the basics of this subject a few years ago, when this newsletter was just starting, and, thanks to the generosity of the folks at the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, you can read that booklet, Elements of Nonprofit News Management, for free, or get a printed copy for less than four bucks. I don’t want to repeat those conclusions here, although I do think they have withstood the passage of some time pretty well.

Instead, I want to talk this week about a few of the harder questions about CEOs and boards that I didn’t cover in the booklet, and that seem pressing to people just now. Even if you aren’t in nonprofit journalism, or in journalism at all, I hope they may resonate with businesses you care about. Here they are:

What should a board do when it has serious concerns about the CEO?

Choosing the CEO, and then deciding how long to retain them, is the first and most important job of any governing board. Sometimes, of course, people being human, boards don’t get these choices exactly right. They may make mistakes in hiring, from failures of due diligence or from factors harder to anticipate. Or they may have hired the right person, only to find they’ve later changed, or had to confront a new challenge that proved beyond them, or just lost their spark.

In any of these cases, once a board is confident that a problem is serious, isn’t just transient, and can’t be readily remedied, it’s likely that a change needs to be made, that is, that the CEO needs to be replaced. This is hard, and boards, in my observation, are often too slow off the mark here, in large part—whether they are willing to acknowledge it or not to themselves—because it often requires an implicit acknowledgment of failure on their own part.

That is a poor excuse. There is simply no substitute for a newsroom having the best leaders it can, and settling for materially less inevitably carries steep costs. Of course people can, and often do, improve their performance. But are you getting your CEO a coach, for instance, because they could do even better or just because it feels too soon to admit you made an error in hiring them? If organizational performance is falling short of expectations, is it just that times are tough, or might there be particular problems? Have you looked at how competitors or comparables are doing as one key indicator? Without necessarily deferring to them, do you know how your organization’s staff feels about its leaders? Don’t duck these questions. If you’re a board member, they’re your job to answer.

One related smaller point: If a board makes a clear mistake in hiring a CEO—that is, if it becomes readily apparent, and quickly—accountability is in order, not only for the CEO but also for the board chair. While the former needs to be replaced, the latter should probably also have the grace to step aside. As they say, “you had one job…”

How much should the CEO tell the board about what keeps them up at night?

More than they often do.

Having just discussed the likely need for somewhat more and quicker turnover in CEOs, I understand the irony of saying that. But most CEOs are probably doing as well as they reasonably could, and are in no danger of dismissal, nor should they be. Too many, however, are trying to manage the most challenging issues before them without really engaging their boards.

To do better on this, CEOs need to redouble their efforts to let boards know what they see—not only the accolades and indicators of progress, but also the clouds just at or even over the horizon. Whatever data a CEO finds most compelling, or troubling, is the data they should be sharing with their board, even if it doesn’t fit in the standard package.

This isn’t just a matter of trust (although that’s important), it’s also the only effective way to take advantage of the fact that board members are—or should be—among the few that share the CEO’s perspective on the newsroom, and can advise accordingly. Colleagues have their own careers to consider; unions are focused on the allocation of resources; friendly competitors are, well, competitors; family and personal friends may lack the experience to fully appreciate tricky situations. The board’s interests, objectives and collective experience, in contrast, should be closely aligned to those of the CEO. Lean into that.

How often should boards and CEOs revisit organizational strategy?

First off, the answer is not every ___ years or so. Strategy should be re-set when something changes in a newsroom’s situation. That can mean that a strategy has been achieved (or failed), or that the environment has changed, for instance, with the emergence of new competitors or media or tools, or that capabilities have been mastered or have eroded. Or strategy may need to be revisited if beliefs or assumptions on which it was premised have proved incorrect.

But the mere passage of time isn’t a good reason to alter course—this is one of the great flaws of many institutional foundations’ strategy shifts, which so often seem to be driven by sheer boredom or the need to create work for underemployed staff. For similar reasons, the arrival of a new CEO is not, by itself, a reason to revisit strategy at a newsroom (or a foundation, for that matter). Beware leaders who seek to articulate their “personal vision” without focusing on the sorts of external or internal shifts noted above.

How should a board manage a CEO search if there are both internal and external candidates?

Finally, we come to a smaller but important tactical point, and back to managing a board’s biggest decision: the selection of a new CEO. Frequently, the choices include both internal and external candidates, and I have seen newsrooms (and other organizations) struggle with this. In these cases, I recommend a bifurcated process, first deciding if the internal candidate (or one of them if there is more than one) is clearly a superior choice, and only then, if not, launching an external search. (A board can always revert to an internal choice if an initial judgment to look outside proves disappointing, and the grass turns out not to be greener elsewhere.)

I know this is not the standard practice in newsrooms and elsewhere these days, but I think it should be, for a number of reasons. First is that hiring relative strangers is always a risk, no matter how probing the due diligence. The risks include not only that you may have misjudged a candidate you don’t know well, but also that they may prove a less than ideal cultural fit with a place in which they haven’t worked. Neither risk should apply with insiders. Second, the uncertainty of an external search is disquieting for the remaining staff at any organization. That cost is real, and should be incurred only if necessary.

Let me be clear here: I am not recommending stasis for its own sake. If you think your newsroom needs big change, you will, more likely than not, want an outside leader to drive that. If your current CEO, no matter how effective, has failed to prepare one or more fully capable successors, you shouldn’t hesitate to look elsewhere. This isn’t necessarily a failing of the CEO, by the way: some organizations may simply be too small, or too new, or not have sufficient budget to accommodate two people on staff at the same time with the capacity to run the place.

As always, I hope these reflections prove useful. Management questions like these are especially complicated, and I particularly welcome your comments and other thoughts on these and related issues below, where we can continue to learn from each other and together.

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