Author: Doug Eadie

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

Thinking about Senator John McCain this morning – along with millions of my fellow Americans and admirers around the world – reminded me of the critical role that character plays in leadership. Whether one agreed with Senator McCain on one issue or another, I’m sure the overwhelming majority of Americans considered the Senator from Arizona

As I noted in the July 25 post at this blog, turning nonprofit boards into really cohesive governing teams is no piece of cake, primarily because of the diverse agendas and differing levels of governing knowledge and experience board members bring to the boardroom.  No matter how stiff the challenge, however, board-savvy nonprofit CEOs know

Teamwork in the abstract is neither here nor there for nonprofit and public boards. The only serious reason for developing your board’s teamwork is to help it function as a more effective governing body that gets its governing work done more effectively and efficiently. The acid test of an effective team is its productivity in

Retreats have become a popular vehicle for involving nonprofit board members, their CEOs, and executives in accomplishing high-impact governing work that could not be accomplished – at least not as well – in regular board business meetings.  Updating a vision statement and identifying and discussing strategic and operational issues certainly fall in this category.  The

You’ll recall that in earlier posts at this blog we’ve defined “stakeholders” as individuals, groups, and organizations it makes sense to build and maintain relationships with because something important is at stake, for example, political and financial support, credibility, image, etc.  Over my 30 years of work with nonprofit and public CEOs and their boards

Experience has taught me that no matter how well-designed, the chief executive officer-chief operating officer leadership structure can easily fail.  In fact, over my 30 years in the nonprofit leadership business I’ve seen many more CEO-COO duos crash and burn than succeed.  I’m reminded of one of my earliest experiences, when I was chief of

In my experience, the nonprofits that thrive and grow over the long run are headed by chief executive officers who devote at least 75 percent of their time on the average to two critical functions:  governance – developing and supporting the governing board (around 25 percent of their time); and external relations – image building