Year: 2019

In Chicago recently to present a program for nonprofit chief executives on board-CEO relations, I made a side trip to visit a well-regarded nonprofit corporation, Smith Crossing, a retirement community southwest of the city.  During my brief visit, I had the opportunity to observe a master teacher – and leader – in action:  Kay Sue

The innovation process – and the role of the chief executive as your organization’s “Chief Innovation Officer” – has been a major focus of this blog, and several posts have featured real-life cases of successful implementation of significant innovation initiatives. Our focus on innovation makes the best of sense in light of the challenges facing

I’ll be in Chicago this coming weekend, speaking to around 300 chief executives from all over the country about practical ways to build and maintain a really healthy, enduring board-CEO partnership that can withstand the inevitable stresses and strains at the top of every nonprofit and public organization.  I’ll be urging the CEOs in my

Sue Buchholtz, then President & CEO of The Spring, a nonprofit serving victims of domestic violence, made a vivid impression when I first met her in early 2002, shortly after my wife Barbara and I had relocated to Tampa Bay from the Dallas area. Sue was participating in a roundtable of nonprofit CEOs I’d assembled

Early in my career I experienced at close range a CEO not walking his talk.  I was serving as chief of staff to the president of a large three-campus community college.  With the urging of his board’s officers, my boss decided that he needed to focus far more heavily on the institution’s external agenda –

The podcast that Tom Lambert, President & CEO of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, recorded for this blog describes METRO’s new Office of Innovation, which has proved to be a very effective generator of “out of the box” change initiatives.  Reporting directly to Tom, the Office isn’t a traditional planning organization.  Rather, it

The following article is excerpted from Doug Eadie and Dave Stackrow’s forthcoming book, Becoming Your Board’s Chief Governing Partner:  a Practical Guidebook for Transit CEOs and CEO-aspirants. In our travels around the country these days, we see an increasing number of new-style public and nonprofit sector chief executives, including many in the transit industry, who you

The following article is excerpted from Doug Eadie and Dave Stackrow’s forthcoming book, Becoming Your Board’s Chief Governing Partner:  a Practical Guidebook for Transit CEOs and CEO-aspirants. When a public transit board  chooses its CEO, it’s also choosing the de facto captain of the Strategic Governing Team.  Governing really is a collaborative venture, involving intensive, well-orchestrated

Traditionally, at the top of the list of qualifications public transit boards specify when recruiting candidates for the CEO position is in-depth operational experience. So it’s no surprise that over the years the great majority of vacant CEO positions have been filled with executives who have worked their way up the operational ladder in one

To judge from participants’ questions during and after the workshop that I presented on September 25 at the American Public Transportation Association Annual Meeting in Nashville, one of the concepts I discussed that struck a real chord was that “board-savvy” CEOs are a preeminent key to building a solid board-CEO partnership that can withstand the