Hello Reader,

When I was ready to leave my last ED position, I looked for a roadmap.

Not the organization's succession plan. That existed. It named how we would find the next leader, explained how the search would run, told the board what to do. Useful, as far as it went.

What I was looking for was a roadmap on how to transfer my work. The documentation nobody had asked me to write. The years of institutional context that would walk out the door the day I did if I didn't build a structure for it first.

Nothing I found was built for the person leaving. It was all built for the organization, or the board, or the search committee.

So I figured it out in real time. Documented every step. Built what I wished someone had handed me. Transferred what only I could transfer.

Something I didn't expect: the structure I was building wasn't only the operational work. It was also how I was processing the emotional weight of leaving. The two weren't separate projects. They were the same one.

I left in a way I'm still proud of.

Then I realized I wasn't the only one.

Every nonprofit leader I talked to afterward had some version of the same story. Either they were thinking about leaving and couldn't find a map, or they'd already left and learned the hard way what happens when the strategy, the relationships, and the institutional context all live in one person's head and nothing gets structured before she goes.

The strategic planning work came from the same place. Twenty years of watching thoughtful plans die between retreats because no one had built the system to keep them alive. I ran that system inside my own organization first. Now I build it with other leaders.

Different problems. Same root.

Too much of the organization lives in one person's head. My job is to get it out, and into a structure that can hold it without you.

Next week a clear map of where to go from here.

Heather

Heather Hooper ​​​