Joining Forces
When merger talks moved forward, the leadership challenge of an interim CEO at Point of Purchase Advertising International was two-fold: advancing the combination of organizations while engaging staff in impactful work.
When BK Allen, CCIM assumed the role of interim president and CEO at Point of Purchase Advertising International, she approached the job as she had other interim engagements: by assessing the organization and its situation, getting to know the team, and emphasizing communication with both the staff and the board. Presented by Vetted Solutions and hired by POPAI for a two-month period while a global search for a permanent CEO was under way, she did not yet know that she would spend seven months with the organization, helping to engineer a merger with the Association for Retail Environments, or ARE. The new organization was Shop Environments Association, today known as Shop!
Skilled Interim, Will Travel
Allen had recently returned from Chicago, following an extended interim CEO engagement with the CCIM Institute, when Vetted Solutions approached her about the POPAI job. The assignment worked out, and she packed her bags to head back to Chicago, where the trade association was headquartered. The mandate: Move the organization forward while the permanent CEO was being selected.
A seasoned executive with an association management and consulting background, plus experience running her own commercial real estate brokerage and advisory firm, Allen brought important skillsets to the job. Not only is she adept at ferreting out operational challenges that need to be addressed, but she is good at quickly establishing productive working relationships and approaching an assignment with open eyes. “An interim has to be a strategic thinker,” notes Allen, and “has to go in knowing that they do not have the whole picture. Something will come up.”
Taking Stock
Something rather big did come up but not before Allen did her onboarding and initial organizational assessment. During the first week, she says, she likes to set up the rules of engagement with staff: among them, setting expectations for behaving professionally and communicating with one another, as well as conveying that “we are all in this together.” She also makes it a point to have telephone conversations with each member of the executive committee and asks them which other stakeholders she should contact.
Allen took her usual methodical but efficient approach to her assessment at POPAI. It encompassed the following:
1. Locating the organization’s origination documents, taking care that they are safely scanned and accessible.
2. Bringing the full team of 14 together, noting how open they are in talking with one another and the degree to which they understand one another’s roles.
3. Studying the association’s history and competition as a way to get her head around the organization’s ecosystem and situation.
4. Holding one-on-one meetings with staff members, asking them for their job description, what they do day to day, and what they think the organization can do better. She might also share something about herself and ask them to share something personal if comfortable.
5. Researching the program of work—what programs are on the books, what is the organization’s involvement with chapters, and so forth.
6. Assessing finances through a meeting with the top finance staff member.
At POPAI, she found a number of operational issues—from payroll and financial management systems to planning and coordination—on which she and the team could make inroads. But the biggest challenge was POPAI’s major meeting. The association was in its 50th-anniversary year, the meeting was five months away in Las Vegas, and lots remained to be done. Through the help of a consultant, the ingenuity of a staff member, and Allen’s leadership, POPAI pulled off a successful meeting. It was in the intervening period that the POPAI-ARE merger took shape.
Setting Up Shop
About six weeks into Allen’s POPAI tenure, the board told her a merger was under discussion and moving ahead. Skilled interims are well-suited to supporting mergers—they bring objectivity because they are not in line for the permanent leadership role at the new organization. Allen was most capable. She was responsible for POPAI’s due diligence, and she coordinated with the ARE CEO, who would be the chief operating officer of the merged organization. The responsibility demanded that she strike a delicate balance between focusing on the work of the merger and keeping staff mobilized in work that ultimately would bring value to the whole. Further, she had to exercise discretion—while needing to request certain information from POPAI staff members to support the merger, she could not tell the team about the merger, which would be announced to them at the 50th-anniversary meeting in Las Vegas.
Allen’s approach? Keep the staff focused on executing the meeting, collecting dues, and otherwise running the business. She did need to rely on two key staff to organize files, as she wanted to be sure that whoever came in permanently could easily find important documents. “It was a process of maneuvering between what we needed to do and what to hold up on,” explains Allen. “For example, we had some staff work on rejuvenating an educational program, but we held up on a new logo proposal. I had staff work on things that would be for the betterment of the whole organization as it would be.”
