Making a Place for Retired Staff Leadership

YESTERDAY AND TODAY I'M ATTENDING ONLINE sessions from the 2009 American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) conference that's being held in Indianapolis. In addition to about a dozen sessions, AASLH also has a blog and Twitter feed going. We were told in our first online session that the attendance from the online component (about 250+ of us) was making the total conference attendance a record-breaker. Impressive.

A conference blog post relating to a session on leadership succession talked about the trend of retiring staff to stick around as paid staff or volunteers to work on special projects of interest to them or to fundraise. Here's the observation by conference-goer Barbara Walden of the session she attended:

As the economy has taken a turn in our least favorite direction, a number of long time museum professionals are opting out for early retirement. Although their positions are coming to a close, a number are choosing to continue their involvement with the organizations but in a variety of roles (as a board member, consultant, fundraiser, etc.). This decision is based both on the retiree’s passion for their profession and the newly found freedom to focus on raising funds for the long term sustainability of the organization.

Is this or will it be a growing trend? Certainly, there are numerous examples of retiring directors who receive emeritus status that can bring an office and support staff, as well as access to collections, libraries, studios and other facilities, files and staff to pursue research, writing, artistic creation or fundraising. In the last five or six years, I know of one colleague who has chosen to do this and I admit I was surprised (OK, a bit aghast) when he told me. But as more and more boomer leaders plot their "retirement" paths, I have no doubt that the possibility of their continuing involvement in their institutions is an increasingly likely scenario.

This is a trend that deserves some serious attention. No matter the personalities or the structures of these relationships, directors emeriti can pose delicate triangulations of power with their successors and boards. These power triangulations also occur with their successors and staff/donors/the media/the public. The same holds true for any longtime staff who choose to remain in some "official" capacity after retirement.

Because this is an official capacity we're talking about, it makes sense to me that emeritus status needs to come with a written job description that establishes parameters of integration with staff, the board, and stakeholders, and articulates institutional expectations. I don't think this is too much to ask, even of a venerable or beloved leader.

As for board service, I remain uneasy with the prospect of former staff serving on the boards that once oversaw them, because I believe it blurs the lines of authority that must exist between the governing board and its staff. (Guess I've seen/heard too many examples of valuable board seats being take up with ineffective or naysaying former staff -- former staff can carry a heck of a lot of baggage, not all of it good.) I also believe that you can't get anything from former staff serving in a governing capacity that you couldn't get from them in a non-governing capacity, so why risk the inevitable power trip?

Photo: Day 195: Passing the torch from Steve Moraco

Back in the Saddle

MY LAST POST WAS NOVEMBER 2012, A LIGHT YEAR AWAY it seems, that marked the beginning of a long push toward completing a manuscript on history museum leadership with my co-author, Joan Baldwin. We finally submitted 350+ pages to our editor at Rowman & Littlefield this week. If all goes well, we expect the book to be available in early 2014. It's taken us two years to get to this point, so six more months or so of revision and production don't seem too long to wait until we can hold the final product in our hands (and you can, too!). The project put a lot of things on hold, including this blog. I'm glad to be back writing about intentional leadership -- leading by design -- for nonprofit boards and staffs. Certainly, my thoughts are now informed by the forthcoming book, in which Joan and I posit that nonprofits need to focus resources on leadership, not just management. Most cultural nonprofits are at a crossroad, as is the sector in general, where nothing is qu

Change for Your Board in 2010: A Polling Update

WE'RE A DAY INTO MY LAST POLL (SEE RIGHT) AND the responses are clustering in two areas: 1) removing dead wood from the board and 2) using better/different tools to make decisions/evaluate performance. There are still six days left for your colleagues to cast their vote! In the meantime, those of you who are in need of tools for decision-making might want to check my posts on taking stock here , here and here .

Three Most Important Nonprofit Executive Director Soft Skills

If you were asked to narrow down the list of executive director qualifications to the three most important, which ones would you identify? Would the list consist of soft skills, hard skills, or some combination? Would your list be based on the great ED you are or one you've worked for, or would it be your wish list for the ED you haven't been fortunate yet to work for? This was an assignment in my recent online class in leadership and administration for the American Association for State and Local History . I asked the class to review three-five advertisements for museum directors and analyze what these listings intimated about the organization’s past experience, current focus and goals, and future aspirations. Then, I asked the class to identify what they consider to be the three most important qualifications they would look for in a director. (Okay, so there's more than three if you dissect my three big groups.) Soft skills outnumbered hard skills, although

Leading by Design

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