Building a Bridge
At the Society for Public Health Education, resourceful interim leadership steered a stable course from a long-time CEO’s retirement to the arrival of a permanent CEO.
When the CEO of the Society for Public Health Education opted to retire in 2021 after 25 years, the prospect of shaken organizational equilibrium was front of mind for the organization’s board of directors. Understanding that it would take time to source and hire a successor CEO with the management and public health education background SOPHE desired, the board sought an interim CEO to focus on two primary objectives: delivering the organization’s upcoming annual meeting and providing steady, stabilizing leadership to a 10-member staff and consultant team in transition. Through Vetted Solutions, SOPHE found Susan Robertson, CAE, hiring her for an interim CEO engagement lasting from November 2021 through March 2022.
Making the Match
SOPHE—whose 2,000-plus members are health promotion professionals, public health educators, and students in chapters throughout the United States and beyond—is a small though complex organization. The society’s primary revenue sources are membership dues, three scholarly journals, grants for exploration of public health issues, and an annual conference and other meetings. Robertson, formerly the president and chief executive officer of ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership, fit the bill. While lacking the public health education background that had proven advantageous during the retiring CEO’s tenure, Robertson’s exceptional association management expertise made her well-suited to navigating the organizational complexity and achieving the primary objectives of the interim engagement. For subject matter expertise, she leaned on member-volunteers, staff, and others in the community, including the retired CEO, whom she engaged to help with annual meeting content development.
Interim CEOs can help organizations with any of a range of situation-specific objectives—from stabilizing finances to introducing more effective operational practices to making strategic inroads. Clear expectations constitute the vital ingredient in the relationship between interim executive and organizational leader. For an interim, notes Robertson, “understanding that you are being a steward of the organization is critically important. My role wasn’t transforming the organization. It was setting the stage for the permanent CEO.” For the organization’s leadership, she continues, it’s important to “be certain that the expectations are realistic and clear, and SOPHE did that.”
Targeting the Objectives
Robertson knew how to get an annual meeting to the finish line, but she encountered some immediate challenges. Not only was the ramp to the virtual annual meeting in March a short one, but key positions in professional development, membership, and marketing were vacant when she arrived. Fortunately, Robertson was able to tap into her network to hire skilled consultants—one for marketing and another with deep learning experience and familiarity with the virtual meeting platform being used—to fill the gaps. Thanks to volunteer subject matter experts, the content was in good shape, so Robertson and the team added value by staging an engaging, and successful, event.
Robertson’s other primary objective—stabilizing operations after the retiring CEO’s departure—was more nuanced, in effect calling on her to be a calming force. She sensed staff members’ worry about how work gaps would get filled. Her position to staff: “My job is to build a bridge to the new CEO, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get things done.” To help galvanize the team, she lived three key practices:
1. Listen closely to the staff. “They knew more than I did,” and careful listening paid dividends in mistakes avoided.
2. Probe the details. Robertson reasoned that by digging deeply into operations, she could identify where staff could deliver solutions—sometimes in areas they had not previously contributed.
3. Encourage professional growth. She encouraged staff to learn new things and empowered them to do so. “I looked at what the potential of every person on staff was to add value during the time period we had,” says Robertson, “and I showed them there were opportunities.” For example, she was able to move one promising staff member from the individual’s office management role into a professional development job.
Establishing Trust
Interim CEOs have no choice but to build trust in a hurry. With staff, helping team members feel heard goes a long way. For example, the promotion of the former office manager to the professional development role affected another staff member, who had relied on the office manager for administrative support and was concerned about the move. Robertson and the team member discussed the situation, finding a way to provide the individual with the needed support. The conversation built trust.
With respect to board relations, appreciating the culture is vital. At SOPHE, board members were accustomed to being close to the programmatic work of the organization, so it was critical for her to keep them regularly informed about the decisions she was making and the ones she needed them to make. Helping solve problems engenders trust, too. During Robertson’s SOPHE engagement, the society was moving to electronic journals, a transition that can elicit stakeholder emotion. Drawing on her experience, she provided the board with multiple options for navigating the situation—and the board embraced one of the approaches.
At the end of the day, a successful interim paves the way for a permanent CEO’s transition into the organization. At SOPHE, turning over a staff that recognized its impact and was open to change was as important as delivering a solid annual meeting. At the same time, notes Robertson, “an interim leader has to know when to let others lead so that the proper grounding for the new CEO to be successful can occur.”
