The Onion, the satirical news site, can be cynical, but it often draws on uncomfortable truths. Several years ago it ran a fake story titled:
“Study Finds Young People Remain Apathetic About Office Politics.”
In the accompanying video, older workers expressed frustration that younger employees showed little interest in backstabbing colleagues, currying favor with supervisors, or navigating organizational intrigue. The younger workers seemed genuinely puzzled by the concern. They simply described their lack of interest in what one called “the office BS.”
The joke works because it contains a kernel of truth.
A new generation of leaders is stepping forward to lead our institutions. They bring different assumptions, different experiences, and often a different relationship with organizations than the generations that preceded them. Change is coming either way. The question for governing boards is whether they will understand it well enough to make effective leadership choices.
Over the past three decades, I have recruited hundreds of chief executives across nearly every imaginable sector: nonprofit organizations, public agencies, universities, foundations, hospitals, advocacy groups, utilities, technology companies, research institutions, and international organizations.
The successful candidate almost always arrived at the chief executive role through a sequence of experiences that prepared them for the assignment. They developed subject-matter expertise. They learned to manage people and resources. They acquired budgeting and operational experience. They raised money. They worked with governing boards. They developed relationships across their field. Over time, they accumulated a deep understanding of how their organizations functioned.
The Traditional Leadership Model
For decades, organizations tended to select leaders who had mastered the institution itself. The implicit assumption was straightforward. The person best prepared to lead the organization was the individual who understood its systems, culture, operations, stakeholders, and internal dynamics.
This approach produced many successful leaders. But it also reflected the realities of the time. Institutions were relatively stable. Careers were often linear. Professional advancement occurred through increasingly responsible assignments within a field or organization.
The future looked like an extension of the present. Leadership preparation followed accordingly.
Something Different Is Happening
More recently, I have encountered a different type of finalist in executive searches. These candidates are every bit as intelligent, principled, and ambitious as their predecessors. They often possess exceptional strategic ability, communication skills, and political judgment.
What distinguishes them is not their capability. It is the nature of their experience.
Rather than building careers around increasingly broad operational responsibilities, many have concentrated their efforts on strategy, advocacy, coalition-building, communications, public engagement, and organizational transformation. They have become experts at mobilizing people, shaping narratives, building alliances, and advancing change. Many have spent less time mastering institutional systems and more time influencing them.
This is not a criticism. In many circumstances, it may be precisely what organizations need. The question is what that shift means for boards charged with selecting leaders.
Beyond Office Politics
The Onion article points toward a deeper reality.
Many emerging leaders appear less interested in the traditional rituals of organizational advancement. They are less attracted to hierarchy for its own sake. They often place greater value on collaboration, transparency, project-based achievement, and measurable outcomes.
They are not necessarily less ambitious. Their ambitions simply express themselves differently.
Where previous generations often sought influence through position, many younger leaders seek influence through ideas, networks, and results. Where previous generations frequently navigated organizational politics as an unavoidable reality, many newer leaders view such behavior as an inefficient distraction from the mission.
This shift carries both advantages and risks. Organizations benefit from leaders who are collaborative, adaptable, and focused on outcomes. At the same time, institutions still require management, discipline, accountability, and operational competence. Vision alone is not enough. Neither is strategy. Every successful organization ultimately depends on execution.
The Board’s New Challenge
The most important question facing governing boards is not whether one model of leadership is superior to another. It is whether the board understands the leadership needs of the moment.
Some organizations require operational excellence. Some require transformation. Some require political skill. Some require institutional discipline. Others require a leader capable of building coalitions among stakeholders with competing interests.
Increasingly, boards find themselves choosing between highly qualified candidates whose strengths reflect fundamentally different models of leadership. The challenge is no longer simply identifying the strongest candidate—it is understanding what kind of leadership the organization actually needs.
Change Is Now
Organizations are increasingly selecting leaders whose greatest strengths lie in strategy, communication, coalition-building, and change rather than in the traditional accumulation of institutional experience. This development is neither inherently good nor inherently bad—it is simply a reality.
The organizations that navigate this transition most successfully will be those whose boards recognize it, understand it, and incorporate it into their leadership decisions. The future will require both institution builders and change agents. The difficult task for governing boards is determining which is needed now.
The boards willing to sit with these questions—before the search begins, before the candidates appear, before the pressure of the moment takes over—are the ones most likely to make a choice they can stand behind.
The boards that get it right will not do so by accident. They will begin not with candidates but with candor—an honest assessment of where the organization stands, what it genuinely requires, and which model of leadership is suited to that moment. They will resist the temptation to default to familiar credentials or to select in the image of a successful predecessor. They will ask harder questions before they begin.
Clarity about the kind of leader required also sharpens the questions that follow. If the choice is a catalyst, the next question is no longer simply who—it is how the organization will sustain operational performance alongside the change that leader will drive. That question has real answers.
Leadership is a system
A strong deputy, a deliberate leadership structure, a clear division of responsibility between strategic and operational authority—these are the mechanisms boards and incoming leaders can design together.
During a leadership transition, boards should also assess the organization’s capacity to adapt to the new leader—not only to evaluate candidates, but to understand what structural or cultural conditions may need to change alongside them. Where gaps exist, the board can insist they be addressed. The CEO will ultimately determine the structure and staffing; but the board, acting on the clarity the search has produced, can hold that expectation through the transition and beyond.
This is the deeper value of a thoughtful search. It does not simply produce a hire. It produces a shared understanding—between the board and the new chief executive—of what the organization needs, what each party is responsible for, and what success will look like. That understanding, established before the leader walks in the door, is among the most valuable outcomes a search can deliver.
Ted Webb is a principal at Ford Webb Associates, a leading nonprofit search firm based in Concord, Massachusetts.