A former Board Chair recounted how an innovative program garnered national recognition and sparked demand for their visionary CEO to speak at conferences and consult with other organizations. Unfortunately, this meant the CEO began to neglect their own organization. The Board Chair described how the Board learned about and addressed the challenges. 

Innovative Program Creates Demand for Visionary CEO’s Insights

As told by a Board Chair somewhere in the US.

I served on the board, and later as Board Chair, of a state-wide direct service organization that had developed a groundbreaking and effective program. The CEO, a respected innovator with a PhD, is an expert in the field. I was invited to serve on the board due to my previous work in this area. I was also part of a Program Advisory Committee comprised of board members, community members, and staff. So, I got to know the program staff as well as the CEO pretty well over time.

Great Press Leads to Lots of Inquiries and a Dedicated Staff Role

We got some great local and state press on this new impactful program. The staff also sent information to a national association of similar organizations. As a result, we started having nonprofits from other parts of the county calling to learn more. While our mission is state-focused, we were thrilled about an effective program being adopted more broadly. When the CEO proposed dedicating a portion of a staff person’s time to working with other organizations, we agreed. The increased donations resulting from the program’s publicity made us confident that we could not only adapt and expand the program but also help others learn about it by dedicating a few hours of staff time each week. The CEO was thoughtful and hired an attorney to help. The staff person developed great materials and handled inquiries.

I don’t remember exactly, but after a half year, maybe more, the CEO wrote up in her board report that she was traveling to talk about the program. I did not pay that much attention at the time. Our staff had come up with some additional ways to make the program more effective for diverse clients, so both board meetings and Program Advisory Board meetings were focused on that expansion.

CEO Is MIA

Then I became Board Chair and started spending more time at the organization and working more closely with the CEO. That’s when I started to realize that the CEO was traveling a lot. It seemed that she was gone more than she was there. At one of our one-on-one meetings, I asked her about her travel. And she told me she was going to other cities to talk about our program. She said that she was also asked to speak more broadly about fostering innovation, fundraising for new programs, and sometimes managing the legal side of licensing a program. She said she did not address that last topic much because she was not an attorney.

I thanked her for being frank and said I was concerned about how much she was traveling and hoped she would not neglect the staff and organization she ran. She assured me it was not a problem. I trusted her and let things go. As Board Chair, I got more involved with fundraising and other board issues while  still serving on the Program Advisory Committee.

Staff Raises Concern About CEO’s Absence

Time passed. Maybe another six months, when the Chief Program Officer asked to meet with me. She said she wasn’t sure whether to bring this up or not, but the CEO was literally never in the office. She had not done performance reviews for her direct reports – including the one for the Chief Program Officer – in the past year. The CEO had essentially delegated responsibility for programs, finance, and fundraising to her Senior Leadership Team. The Chief Program Officer told me the CEO was out all over the country speaking. The Chief Program Officer wanted to know if the board knew of and had approved this change to her job description.

I thanked the Chief Program Officer for her candor and assured her I would follow up. I acknowledged that I was aware of the CEO’s speaking engagements, but not their extent. I knew the travel budget had been increased and that the board approved it. I asked her if the organization was suffering due to the CEO’s travel. She reflected that the Senior Leadership Team were experienced and generally managing well, but they missed the strategic thinking the CEO formerly provided as well as her guidance in setting priorities,  strategizing, and hiring. The Chief Program Officer also said the Senior Leadership Team continued to meet weekly even without the CEO. She said the Chief Development Officer was frustrated because the CEO was frequently not available to go on donor calls.  

CEO Excited and Open About National Recognition

Unsure of how to handle this information, I convened the Executive Committee. While the board had not explicitly authorized the CEO to go on the “speaker’s circuit,” we had been happy to encourage adoption of the innovative program. We decided that the Vice Chair and I would meet with the CEO to learn more. We chose not to disclose that a specific staff person brought this to our attention. Instead, we noted that we had observed her increased travel, reduced office presence, and larger travel budget, and we wanted to understand the situation.

The CEO was completely open about speaking at conferences and individual organizations nationwide. She was clearly very excited about this. She said she sometimes got paid, but this revenue came back to the organization and was in Miscellaneous revenue. Travel expenses were also covered most of the time. The amount was not significant, so she guessed we had not noticed. She said she had started a blog and a discussion group and had a great following. We were unaware of this, though upon review, she had mentioned this in a CEO report.

We expressed our concern about the organization being neglected and asked about her responsibilities – managing her direct reports, fundraising, financial responsibilities, setting priorities and strategy. We also asked how staff felt about her absence. She did admit she was behind on performance evaluations and assured us she would get them done in time for the next budget cycle. She believed her public presence helped fundraising. We told her that we would be doing her performance review – as we always did – but would be expanding it due to our concerns. We all left the meeting in a congenial fashion, but I was troubled.

Performance Review Reveals Stresses But Also that CEO Is Happy

We had a board member with HR background, so enlisted his help to enhance the surveys we used for the review. In the past, we interviewed the CEO’s direct reports. But this time, we added an anonymous online survey to all internal staff and reached out to several community partners. The feedback was not good. Staff felt that the Senior Leadership Team were overworked and covering for the CEO. The CEO’s Executive Assistant was especially unhappy and told us she was thinking about moving on. She said she was doing a lot more work with a lot less direction and not getting any additional pay. Everyone saw that the CEO was neglecting the organization. But many said that they had never seen her happier – that she clearly enjoyed speaking, being in the limelight, and evangelizing the program and the innovative culture of the organization. Staff also said that the culture that had encouraged innovation was changing. The CEO was the one who really encouraged new ideas, found funding to pilot them, worked with staff on evaluation. The Chief Program Officer was more focused on making sure the programs ran efficiently and supporting program staff.

Board Chair Works with Full Board and CEO to Identify Solutions

At the next board meeting, we had an extensive executive session to talk about the feedback. We felt we had a couple options: 1) tell the CEO to refocus on the organization and reduce her travel, or 2) hire someone to focus internally while the CEO focused externally. The discussion was animated – was it a good use of our funds to provide a national evangelist? Could we fund raise specifically for this purpose? Should the CEO be CEO and the new person be a COO or Chief of Staff or something like that? Or should we get a new CEO and have the current CEO have a different title? What would be best for staff? What would be best for clients? How could we keep the culture of innovation?

After the long meeting, we had more questions than answers. So, the Vice Chair, the board member with HR experience, and I met with the CEO. She was not surprised by the feedback. We told her that we needed someone to focus on running the organization, fundraising, and fostering a culture of innovation. We told her that having overworked staff was not aligned with our values and that her extensive speaking was not part of her current job description. We asked her to come back with some ideas. We set a meeting for two weeks.

I was surprised with the CEO’s proposal. I thought she would want to stay CEO and hire a COO or Chief of Staff. But she proposed that we hire a new CEO and that she remain with the organization as an Ambassador or Champion. She said she would try to raise money to cover this new role. She also thought the current Chief Program Officer was well equipped to be a champion of innovation, especially if we could hire an assistant to help with administrative tasks. Finally, she thought we could spread responsibility for fundraising more broadly. The new CEO would obviously be involved as would the Chief Development Officer. She said she could help, and she thought the board should step up more. Even the Chief Program Officer could have a role. It seemed clear that the CEO really liked being on the speaking circuit, writing a blog, and receiving lots of attention. She seemed to prefer it to the work of running the organization.

Proposal Discussed with the Executive Committee and Full Board

I brought this proposal first back to the executive committee and then to the full board in executive session. We had questions – what would be the CEO’s compensation in her new role? Could we reliably generate enough revenue to afford two senior positions? Did it make sense for us to even fund a champion like this? If it did not work out, would the CEO want her old position back? How difficult would it be to hire a new CEO when the former one was still involved? Would the former CEO genuinely relinquish her role? We talked to the CEO more about her intentions. We suspected she might not stay if we rejected her proposal.

We had many meetings and lengthy discussions. We consulted lawyers. We ran numbers (we had to bring the CFO into this discussion confidentially). In the end, we decided that we lacked confidence in our ability to sustainability fund two high-level executives, that a new CEO might be uncomfortable with the former one still around, and that demand for the current CEO on the speaking circuit might wane once our innovative program was no longer new. So, we asked the CEO to stay based on her current job description with some modifications to acknowledge she had speaking engagements and was writing a blog. We emphasized that we wanted her to be in the office, managing the organization most of the time.

Amiable Parting of Ways

We had a productive discussion and the CEO requested time to consider it. She came back in a week or so and said that she would like to move on. She really liked what she was doing. She had other ideas around innovative management that would keep her engaged both speaking and writing. She was thinking about writing a book. She gave us three months’ notice and committed to ensuring everything was in good order when she left.

At this point, I was not surprised by her decision. We thanked her for agreeing to stay on for three months and we put together a search committee.

Lessons Learned

• Read CEO reports carefully and ask questions about them. Our CEO did inform us that she was speaking and writing a blog. We just did not think to ask how much time she was devoting to these activities.
• It’s crucial to have ways to understand how the CEO is spending their time. I had this strong relationship with the CPO who had the courage to raise the topic. I also noticed the CEO frequent absences. But I don’t think we would have asked if the CEO had done performance reviews, and I don’t think we would have done the expanded performance review for the CEO if we did not have an inkling of what was going on. I think we may not have known until other staff started leaving which would have been bad for the organization and the mission.
• The entire board was very thoughtful. They asked good questions. They brought their expertise and experience. They maintained confidentiality. All boards invest a lot of time selecting board members. We had done a good job and had competent people who rallied to deal with an unusual situation,
• Be willing to let a good employee go. The CEO was excellent. But we also knew we could find a good replacement – and we did. It was better to do it in a friendly manner, which we also did. We never blamed her. We just said we wanted someone focused on the organization and we did not want to commit to a much larger budget over time.