Remember the scene in “The Wizard of Oz” when the all-knowing Oz is revealed to be an uncertain man behind the curtain? So often the instinct of organizations when embarking on a chief executive search is to remain behind that curtain and declare that all is as it should be—when it isn’t. Absent Toto tugging on the curtain, the conversation with chief executive candidates often fails to address the most challenging and important issues in play. Is it any surprise that misunderstanding and conflict result?
It is in the nature of every organization to struggle with contradictions. Anyone who is equipped to be a chief executive knows that “complications” are always present: board politics; destructive competition and conflict among factions or ambitious staff; funding pressures that skew the original mission; staff managing complex programs without proper training or supervision. These contradictions are present in most organizations, and they await the new chief executive.
The ideal forum for determining how difficult issues will be solved, and a promising vision fulfilled, is in that space between the chief executive and the Board. It is for the Board – which governs the organization – to establish whether critical issues will be faced openly, or whether sacred cows and elephants in the room will go unacknowledged – even though they define what is possible. There is no better time to establish that standard than when searching for a new chief executive.
The Arts Organization
Here’s an example. A local arts organization had been a vital part of the community for decades, providing inexpensive space and support for artists, opportunities for children and others to explore art, and a stage for local theatre. A new chief executive was to be recruited, and the organization aspired to find someone who would revitalize the organization and its capacity to attract relevant and inspiring art. The major contribution this organization had to offer was space for artists, and the community that grew in that space. However, the artists who had been present at the founding of the organization, 25 years earlier, occupied over 90% of the space. While a few were very active, the majority were semi-retired, or used their space sparingly, but were unwilling to give it up. Implicitly, the ‘plan’ was for space to be occupied by new artists only as people died or retired fully. The rhetoric of the search was for a new vitality, but the reality was something else. The dynamic executive director who was recruited did not understand this – and she was quickly undone when she proposed a criterion that all resident artists must be accepted into at least 3 juried shows each year.
When embarking on the search, the Board implicitly understood that precious studio space was going to be defended by the founding artists. Their hope was that this new executive director would somehow find a way around this. The missed opportunity for the Board was that it could have used the search, and particularly the conversation with top candidates, to explore the difficult question of how to revitalize the organization when the space was so jealously guarded. Treating top candidates as the experts they are, the Board had a real chance to grapple with how this barrier might be overcome together – and to choose the candidate who made the most convincing case for doing so.
The Larger Point
There is yet a larger and more dramatic point here. The ‘demon’ or ‘third rail’ of this issue was powerful in part because it was only acknowledged off-line and in whispers – though anybody familiar with the organization understood these circumstances. A personnel process provides a discreet forum in which to address difficult, defining issues. It is, ideally, a forum in which the Board can raise these questions in a constructive manner – challenging candidates to provide advice and insight. These open conversations often free the Board from the weight of issues that have gone unspoken precisely because they are so critical. With this action, the Board is establishing a critical standard – that the issues and challenges which are most material to the success of the organization are going to be front and center in the relationship between the Board and the chief executive.
One would like to think that this is always the case, but most readers of this article will understand that, sadly, it is not. The Board, which is the supervisor of the chief executive, often signals, intentionally or by default, that there are certain issues that the chief executive should not confront, even, as in the example above, when those issues are central to the rhetoric of the organization. The result is that the Board, which is shaping its relationship with the new chief executive, has begun the relationship by being less than fully honest. Is it any wonder when boards later complain that their chief executive is not being fully open with them?
Dorothy couldn’t get back to Kansas until she and the man behind the curtain together acknowledged the reality of their circumstances. After that revelation, they were able to solve the problem. Dorothy had spent most of her journey seeking the wrong source, and the man behind the curtain had spent his energy pretending to have the answer. Both would have arrived sooner, and avoided that unfortunate incident with the flying monkeys, had Oz signaled that he was ready to deal with reality from the start.
Ted Webb is a principal at Ford Webb Associates, a leading nonprofit search firm based in Concord, Massachusetts.