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Find Your News SolutionBe prepared for leadership transitions, get started with this guide, and share what you’re learning
Succession planning is a key part of being prepared for leadership transitions. But the transition itself takes place over a much longer period of time and entails much more than what is considered traditional succession planning. That’s why I created the News Executive Leadership Transition Guide.
When I first started thinking about my fellowship pitch to RJI in late 2021 and early 2022, I based my idea on a hunch.
It consisted of two, interrelated ideas: 1) We were on the cusp of an acceleration of founders and executives departing from digital-only, independent news organizations. 2) As a result of those transitions, we would see a high degree of interest in planning for succession where there had been none before. Therefore, my pitch was to help fill the coming gap — to create a succession planning guide for those news organizations.
It wasn’t long before several high-profile departures became public. Once I received the fellowship and my project was announced, I started to (and continue to) hear from executives and organizations who are clamoring for help in how to plan for these transitions. It seemed I was onto something, and I felt extremely lucky to explore this topic and provide something useful to the industry as a result.
Along the fellowship journey, with assistance from accomplished and generous people inside and outside the field of journalism, I expanded the concept of my idea from succession planning to leadership transition planning.
These important nuances came up again and again:
The launch guide consists of four main parts:
Because the guide has multiple checklists and worksheets, I encourage people to make their own copies and to adapt the templates as needed. That’s a big reason why I decided to use a Google doc as the way to publish.
I have grown more and more interested in this topic over time. So I will continue to research, write and advise on leadership transition and will make updates to the guide.
Two sections I’d like to add soon are — communicating and orchestrating departures and another on onboarding and welcoming a new leader. I’d also like to widen the topic to individuals and teams that aren’t executives.
I invite folks to suggest updates to this first version of the guide, whether they are small tweaks or ideas about other sections. Please share those suggestions or any questions about this work with me here. And thank you for reading and supporting this work!
This article was originally published by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. Amy is a member of the RJI Fellows Class of 2022-2023.
The Lenfest Institute provides free tools and resources for local journalism leaders to develop sustainable strategies to serve their communities.
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