Orchestrating a Successful Presidential Transition
Planful onboarding of a campus president or chancellor has received scant attention in higher education circles until recently. Robust transition support is commonplace in other...
Planful onboarding of a campus president or chancellor has received scant attention in higher education circles until recently. Robust transition support is commonplace in other industries, however, helping to plan for inevitable turnover at the top while setting the new leader up for success and ensuring their alignment with the organization’s strategic vision. Still, most CEOs, no matter how prepared, wish they had handled their transitions better. As one expert puts it, “No one is prepared to become CEO, no matter how much they think they are.”
Many who have served in presidential roles – myself included – can attest to the fact that boards and search committees often consider their work complete once they have hired the new campus leader. Trustees, having gone through the exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) process of a year-long presidential search, assume an incoming president will create their own transition plan or get the support they need from Human Resources. Others may believe an axiom from an earlier era – that a president should spend the first year listening, not doing.
In this age of heightened political tensions, campus demonstrations, uncertain enrollments, increased cabinet-level turnover, and additional urgent challenges, the contemporary campus president no longer has the luxury of a “honeymoon.” The new president must come in ready to make decisions and move their campus forward, and as fiduciaries, trustees have a duty to accelerate the new leader’s impact. It is time to consider a well-constructed transition plan table stakes.
Essential Early Steps
Transition Advisory Council: Boards should recognize that a thoughtful transition begins before the president (officially) does. At the time of selection, the announcements to the community should begin sowing the seeds of transition. My colleagues and I recommend that a Presidential Transition Advisory Council (TAC) be established with dispatch. The TAC should be comprised of a small number of the institution’s trusted ambassadors, and necessarily include a member or two from the search committee and the board for continuity. These individuals should be selected not by title, but by the trust the community places in them and by their ability to help accelerate the president’s learning, and therefore success. These individuals are quintessentially “horizontal” thinkers, motivated by the good of the enterprise not their own units or “verticals.”
The TAC should assist with tactical aspects of onboarding, including the communications plan and introductions, but also point out potential pitfalls that lay ahead. The TAC also relieves the president of certain tactical obligations early on in order to make space for the president’s thinking about his or her goals for their presidency; the values they wish to convey and how those values align with the institutional mission; and the “voice” the president wants to establish on campus and off.
The Chair as Champion, Collaborator, Confidant: The development of the president/board chair relationship can also begin immediately upon selection, or better yet, beforehand with a thoughtful finalist interview process. A well-designed search process culminates in multiple interactions between the finalist(s) and the board, but especially the chair. Through a collaborative contract negotiation, understanding and trust grow and mutual admiration is established. Rough negotiations or residual resentments over terms confer no benefits to the president or the institution, so all sides should be entering into those conversations with the long-term health of the relationship in mind.
In addition to the support of the TAC, the chair can step in with a series of informal calls with the new president leading up to the official start date. These calls can have structure and to-do’s but more so serve to give the two individuals time to get to know each other and forge a working relationship.
Coaching and Mentoring: Coaches and mentors can provide confidential one-on-one thought partnership to the new president, apart from the TAC. With a trusted personal advisor, especially one who has sat in the presidential seat themselves, a new president can have an instant confidant – someone to bounce ideas off, vent to, and confide in. The coach or mentor optimally serves in the early stages of establishing the TAC and may have even been involved in the search process, thereby coming to the mentoring assignment with institutional awareness and relationships on campus. She or he also serves as a critical partner with the board, encouraging their meaningful involvement in the president’s onboarding process and sharing knowledge with them regarding proper roles and responsibilities through transition and beyond.
The Outgoing President: The exiting president has a responsibility to convey publicly and privately their complete faith in their successor. For the institution’s benefit, the outgoing president can also accelerate their successor’s learning curve and impact through knowledge and relationship transfer. If the outgoing president remains in the area and in good standing with the institution, it is imperative that they only speak well of the new president, and largely stay away from university business unless explicitly invited by the new president. The board and senior leadership should quickly transition their communications to their new president, signaling a clear and affable transition of authority. The outgoing president can, in many situations, be an ongoing resource for their successor. My predecessor at Marylhurst University – who coincidentally had long been a personal friend – invited me to her home several times during my first year as president to provide her perspective and council as I grew to know the institution.
Unfortunately, some presidents leave precipitously, due to a personal or family illness, for example, or irreconcilable differences with the board or campus community. In such cases it is imperative that the outgoing leader be instructed to refrain from public comment or private interaction with the new president. The board may request that other key cabinet members – the provost, CFO, and most prominent deans – play a larger role in transferring institutional knowledge and providing a support network before and after the president’s start date.
Once on Campus
Cultural Conditioning: What specific challenges do presidents face upon landing on campus? All contemporary presidents – regardless of their experience or unique paths to the presidency – face time-sensitive matters requiring decisions upon their arrival. Whether or not they have served in the seat before, the uniqueness and immediacy of the current environment eliminates the luxury of a honeymoon period where the president listens to constituents and takes time to knit together their institutional vision.
What makes this need for action challenging is that learning a college’s culture takes time. The need for quick decision-making can run headlong into the reality that acclimating to a new institution requires steeping oneself in the environment. Even seasoned presidents must learn their new campus culture or risk implementing decisions that worked elsewhere but simply won’t work at their new institution.
And nothing can set a new president back faster than a cultural faux pas. I was once saved by a faculty senate president who kindly instructed me that, although the adjunct faculty lounge was rarely used, its existence had been a hard-fought battle and should remain a symbol of the administration’s respect for those faculty. Any attempt to repurpose that precious space would have been a gaffe hard to recover from. Something as simple as a long-held informal tradition can be a landmine: as a new president I was expected to mount a 20-foot ladder to install the star on top of the humongous Christmas tree – fear of heights or not!
The board and Transition Advisory Council can assist with the new president’s delicate balancing act between moving quickly and respecting traditions and norms. Campus constituents will welcome thoughtful change with a new administration as long as it is informed by culture and respects what makes the institution special.
Shedding Reputational Baggage: Compounding the demands of quick decision-making and slow acculturation is the need to shed a prior professional identity. Presidents who come from the provost seat need to relinquish direct oversight of accreditation, curricula, and faculty to their provost, or inadvertently undermine that colleague. Former deans may be suspected of carrying disciplinary biases into the presidency and need to pay close attention to their new institution-wide perspective. New presidents from outside higher education may need to work harder than traditional candidates to learn our industry’s traditions, lexicon, and processes. These particular learnings, based on the individual president’s path to the seat, augment the universal transition issues all presidents face, making for a unique set of challenges for each person. The board, as well as a coach or mentor, can facilitate the shedding of baggage by keeping the new leader laser-focused on presidential matters and cautioning against unnecessary involvement in their prior domain (e.g., meddling in provostial or decanal issues).
The First Year
Establishing Structure: As a necessary function of the transition, the board chair and president will collaborate on a set on first-year goals and objectives by which the president will be measured during the annual review process. The goals in a first year can vary greatly depending on the condition of the institution’s budget; where they are in cycles of accreditation, capital campaigns, or external partnership development; and whether there are significant vacancies at the leadership level that must be quickly filled.
The chair and president will establish a regular cadence of check-in meetings, with more lengthy information sharing during regular board meetings. The best presidents request early and ongoing feedback from the chair to establish trust and to make any necessary and timely course-corrections. I was fortunate in several chair relationships to enjoy social time with them away from the university. There we got to know one another as people; and that served us well each time a challenge or threat to the institution arose. In addition, the board should have a planned executive session at each and every board meeting in order to address any issues of concern early on. Feedback to the president should always be delivered with an eye to supporting improvement, not delivering criticism.
A typical framework for orienting the new leader and establishing a plan for success should include the following core “PACE” components:
- Purposeful priorities: The board and president determine what truly matters and is the best use of the president’s time.
- Alignment: All parties take steps to ensure the president is on the “same page” as the board, the cabinet, and community; this includes time for re-assessment and recalibration if needed.
- Culture: The president should be intentional about which aspects of the culture they hope to sustain or shift, with feedback loops built in to allow refinement over time.
- Energy: Self-care is critical if the new leader is to find and sustain success.
Coaching and Mentoring (continued): As they can prior to assuming the presidential role, a coach and/or mentor can play a fundamental role in helping the new leader focus on what’s truly important and serving as a sounding board.
Networking: Recognizing that the presidency can be a lonely position (though one is rarely alone), the new president can seek out presidents and peers across academia who share similar experience and with whom one can truly commune and commiserate. They can find “friends” wherever they may be. The board, coach/mentor, and executive search consultants (if involved in the recruitment) can assist in making connections.
Succession Planning: Just because the current president is new to the role doesn’t mean that the institution can’t begin the groundwork for one or more potential successors. Succession planning has not traditionally found much traction in academia but, at a minimum, it can be an exercise in assessing the president and other mission-critical roles and determining leadership needs for the future. Whether succession happens in an orderly, expected fashion or is more precipitous, boards and campuses are well served by a succession plan.
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Presidential success doesn’t just depend on the skills and abilities of the person assuming the office. There must be forethought, planning, and systematic support on the part of the board and institution to enhance the likelihood of presidential initial success, to set the stage for what is hopefully a long, accomplished tenure. With intentional planning, and a little luck, the presidency will be a joy.
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