Embracing the Unknown

Why your board’s success depends on succession planning

“The regulatory world is not like the marketplace where if someone becomes absent for whatever reason, another psychologist will fill that place,” says Dr. Tony DeBono, the registrar and executive director of the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario. “Not only does a registrar or executive director role require a specialized skillset not taught in graduate psychology training, but the responsibility to the public is huge. With regulation, we’re often the last stage in protecting the public. So if you do not have a registrar, there is a downstream effect of not getting to  complaints, not addressing when patients are harmed,  and not getting to licensee applicants so professionals can enter the field to provide care to the public.” If regulators aren’t stable, says DeBono, a critical duty to the public isn’t being met. “We’re the ones who bring justice, who bring equity, who serve the public regardless of their social positionality. Without regulation, it’s buyer beware, which is not how I want to learn about my psychologist. And that’s why we in particular have to have good succession planning.”

Dr. Stacy Waldron, who serves on the Nebraska board as its chair and is currently an ASPPB Board member, agrees. “We can all have amazing minutes, but there are usually term limits in regulatory work, and while that term limit is critical, important history can get lost. We had a situation in which our board administrator had been with us for 41 years, and she knew everything. And whenever we didn’t know something, we just called out, ‘Kris, Kris…’. Well, Kris retired,” laughs Waldron, the implications clear. “The other thing about our work is you’re dealing with so many different individuals: legislators, the governor, board members and volunteers, staff. Not to mention integration with the guild, how that works. In our political landscape, we can see a whole shift at times, so that historical background is really important. A succession plan creates consistency.”

Succession planning has increasingly drawn greater interest in the corporate world, but governmental work—where such a concept may be even more crucial—is only starting to catch on. The reasons for that are manifold. “It takes work to do succession planning,” explains Dr. Michelle Moore, who served as chair of the Louisiana board from 2023-2024. “Depending on your bandwidth, you may be more focused on today, or the shorter term.” De Bono concurs. “We’re short-term thinkers and we’re reactionary as human beings,” he says. “But we have to do both. It’s the same thing in our lives, making time for living wills and powers of attorney—there’s always the next day to do that. It’s challenging to put ourselves in that mindset. But all these things are critical.”

During Nebraska’s succession planning process, Waldron realized that the aversion to it was akin to adolescence. “We think we’re invincible and going to go on forever, so why bother, why do we need to? It’s similar to why people may not save for their retirement. Unwillingness or denial. I think about some of my patients who are dealing with problems, and we don’t want to go too far into the future, but we do want to be a little bit into it.”

Aside from recognizing the public protection agenda implied in succession planning, what else might make a board willing to put themselves in a mindset for it? “Seeing that if we don’t do anything, it’ll be a mess and so our legacy is important,” notes Waldron.

“What attracted me to this work,” says Moore, “is understanding the difference between replacement planning and succession. ‘Replacement’ is sticking someone in a role to fill a void. Succession planning is about really thinking through how you gracefully leave a role and prepare the next person.”

Moore maintains that too often leadership can be determined by how “nice” a person is, not whether they understand the job best and are the most skilled to do it effectively. “When focusing on succession planning, we need to stop and think about the skills needed to perform the job rather than focusing on which individual person we know who might be a good fit. From a board member side, you really want to be sure someone has an awareness of what government work is. Candidates for the board write statements about their vision, but those things are often advocacy related, and there’s a real difference between your professional role as a psychologist and a regulator’s role. Someone has to know how to run an effective meeting, manage people, manage debate, manage communications styles. There’s also a different level of leadership as a board chair: how well do you work with your executive director, how well do you build relationships—those are important things to think about.”

So, what are the tips and tricks of successful succession planning?

• Admit you need to.
  • Buy-in can be the most difficult challenge, but as DeBono, Moore, and Waldron express, the upsides are enormous. “Using words like ‘legacy’ and ‘sustainability’ will motivate people to do things,” says Waldron. “Turn their sense of pride into preservation.”
• Determine which roles demand succession planning, and tier them so planning doesn’t become overwhelming.Then, ask important questions for each role:
  • What kind of skills, competencies, and experiences are you looking for in this role? Also, what kind of historical knowledge might you seek in any successor? Does this role, for instance, need to understand how to navigate a legislature?
  • What does the person in the job need to have developed before coming into the role, and what should they be expected to develop after? And on the latter, where should they acquire that knowledge?
  • Craft a job description based on the above. Can you now identify actual individuals who may make good potential successors?
  • Is the job new or does it currently exist? How does that affect recruiting? “If you need a culture shift, and there’s a need to create change, that may be an external hire,” says Moore. “If there’s a strong need for institutional knowledge that needs to be maintained, then maybe it’s an internal recruitment.”
• Avoid common pitfalls
  • Supplement with onboarding and socialization. “Good onboarding and socialization can be assisted by succession planning,” says DeBono. Include how both might reinforce the roles you’re planning for in order to embed the process even more effectively.
  • Allocate time to consider the key qualitative attributes inherent to each role. “People join boards and they have no idea what a regulator does or why. So, identifying clear competencies might be a way to shorten that learning curve,” says DeBono, and then cites several competencies that may be particularly necessary for a regulator: “relationship-building, the ability to hold ambiguity, reflective decision-making, being mindful of conduct in and out of the workplace, knowledge of jurisprudence and ethics. And for the executive area: leadership, finance and banking knowledge… It is a bit of a balance because you don’t want to hire for personality, but you do want a qualitative aspect. For instance: Can they actually communicate?”
  • Don’t reinvent the wheel. “Look at what’s already out there, and adapt it your jurisdictional needs,” says DeBono. “Start with a template. Reach out to us who have already done it. This is also where people should make use of their associations, like ASPPB. They can be really helpful.”

“Succession planning does not lead to an immediate outcome,” Moore grants, which is part of the challenge in making time for it. “But a future person will thank you for it. Because that person will have a whole planning document that they get to pass on to every future executive director. There’s no reason to have to do this when you’re in a bind. Far better not to.”

Resources

Want to delve deeper? Check out Ontario’s succession plan here. Review Dr. Moore’s slides from ASPPB’s 2024 Midyear Meeting session on succession planning. You may also find helpful an article about the role of predecessors, as well as the NIH toolkit for succession planning.