Shepherding Positive Change
With interim CEO leadership, the American Academy of Pain Medicine is building association management systems and practices, increasing board trust, and setting the stage for sustainable growth.
When the American Academy of Pain Medicine, a membership organization of 2,000-plus physicians and other pain-management professionals, embarked on a management transition after 37-plus years of management by an association management company, the leadership hired a CEO entrusted to build and execute the needed systems and manage the association. However, when the CEO opted to leave the association, AAPM needed help. The association got it from Vetted Solutions, ultimately choosing interim executive Sharon Kneebone, FASAE, CAE, who had previously served as full-time CEO of two national associations during an association management career spanning more than 20 years to date.
Assembling a Team
Kneebone’s ability to lead change, track record in assessing and installing leading association management practices, and servant-leadership philosophy resonated with the AAPM board. The association needed some additional support, so in parallel, Vetted Solutions connected AAPM’s leadership with a professional meeting management firm, Conference Direct, and a marketing consultant, Scott Oser Associates, both of which were hired to shore up operations in those areas. Kneebone manages those professionals, along with one other staff person. The prior CEO continued to work with the team for five weeks.
The team represented an opportunity for AAPM. With it, the association could access specialized skills needed to shepherd the leap from an association management company model, in which an organization draws upon centralized infrastructure and shared services, to a self-management model in which the association is responsible for its infrastructure and human resources.
Targeting Change
With support from allied professionals, the move to interim executive leadership was a formula for charting a path to sustainable self-management. With the AAPM annual meeting bearing down on the organization, management could address the imminent while also beginning the process of effecting improvements in how the organization would be managed. Kneebone credits the empathy, compassion, and attentiveness that Vetted Solutions brought to its process of identifying resources for AAPM’s needs. Vetted President Jim Zaniello, FASAE, “listened to what the client wanted and what they needed. He is exceptional at teasing out both and marrying them together in a solution,” says Kneebone.
“Interim management was the only way to do [what needed to be done] because this is change management. AAPM would not have been able to leverage otherwise the level of expertise and depth
of experience needed.”
The AAPM board identified three clear albeit complicated objectives for Kneebone’s
interim engagement:
Establish and document an administrative framework and playbook for the successor CEO.
Create financial transparency.
Drive revenue.
Embracing Speed, Earning Trust
Underlying the three objectives was an even more important imperative: engendering trust.
Kneebone recognized that AAPM needed rapid, careful change and that ultimately the board’s level of trust in both the interim and the permanent staff leadership would have as much bearing on the organization’s success as would the CEO’s ability to execute. Consequently, she works on board-staff relationship building in concert with establishing improved association management practices—introducing improvements “at the speed of trust,” as leadership thinker Stephen Covey would say. This means that she counsels at times, communicates frequently and in ways that mirror the board’s preferences, and educates regularly—as she addresses key areas such as the following:
comprehending the state of finances, corporate health, the conference, and governance
righting the financial systems
assessing the organization against leading practices in association management, such as in governance and meetings management, and documenting the needed practices
Realizing Results
Kneebone’s interim leadership began as a four-to-six-month engagement but was extended to 17 months by mutual agreement when it became clear that more time and effort devoted to the systems and practices work would better set the stage for the successor CEO. She and the team spent the first several months in crisis-management mode, highly focused on delivering the mission- and finance-critical annual meeting. In those months, Kneebone notes, she spent about 80 percent of her time moving the organization forward and 20 percent assessing and documenting systems and practices. The balance of her tenure is aimed at maintaining momentum, instilling and documenting leading practices, and defining what a healthy conference looks like for AAPM in its self-managed model.
Importantly, Kneebone points out that she is introducing and documenting effective practices without making lasting changes. The reason is that AAPM needs a change leader like her to meet the association’s desired transition objectives but will need someone with different, more operations-focused and entrepreneurial skills for the permanent role. Her point underscores one utility of interim CEO leadership. The rapid-change-with-care situation at AAPM aligns perfectly with a scenario that a 2022 ASAE Research Foundation Study, The Role of the Interim CEO: Key Insights of Association Executive Transitions, defines as ripe for employing an interim CEO. Interim leadership, especially in a change management situation, “creates a different dynamic between the executive and the board,” says Kneebone. “The role is partner, or consultant, to the organization, with no power-grab risk. We’re trying to set up an environment in which a successor CEO with association management experience can work to improve governance and address other longer-term needs.”
