More than 10 years ago, amid the joyous noise of building the Harlem Children’s Zone from concept to reality, Geoff quietly began to contemplate a challenge that he saw taking shape: The charity needed to become a durable, long-term institution—and it had to do so without him.
True success would mean creating a succession plan. The first task was finding a leader who had the right constellation of skills, experience, and heart; the second challenge was making sure there was time and a strategy for the new person to smoothly slide into the driver’s seat of a fast-moving, complicated, established organization that deals with thousands of high-risk children.
Unlike the corporate world, where succession plans are standard operating procedure, nonprofits—which typically decide on their budgets and finances year to year—often fall victim to leaders who do not prepare their organizations for the next chapter, and consequently, they fade over time. This year, when Geoff announced that after 24 years as CEO he was passing the baton to Anne, the puzzled public reaction was a telling reminder of how rare an orderly transition is.
It’s understandable: These leadership jobs are seductive. But leaving when the organization is ascending, Geoff realized, was the highest expression of leadership and love for the Harlem Children’s Zone, which provides a network of education and social-service programs for children from birth through college. The Zone concept was pioneered by Geoff in the mid-1990s, but he knew that at age 62, he could not guarantee he would be around when the newborns of the Baby College parenting program would be attending actual colleges.
Anne—who has a law degree from Columbia University—was director of the Office of Community Planning and Development at the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, where she had worked for 13 years. The agency responds to allegations of children harmed or neglected by their families. In such cases, it decides whether these children should be removed from their birth families.
Geoff met Anne 15 years ago and became her mentor; she helped advise Harlem Children’s Zone about integrating services that would keep kids safely at home and out of foster care. Years later, when Anne told Geoff she was thinking of leaving the city agency, he began to think of her as a potential successor and asked her to join his organization as chief operating officer.
With a potential candidate identified, the long process of preparing Anne and the organization for the transition began. Because Geoff didn’t want Anne to encounter the tough problems that a CEO faces without the knowledge that comes with experience, he made sure that she was exposed to all the challenges of the job—whether it was an unhappy supporter or a recalcitrant teenager. As Anne learned about the position, Geoff had to intentionally stop giving her the answers.
For her part, Anne found a deeply committed staff, with a firm sense of its own history and culture. Seeing that, she decided to lean back and observe, holding back her natural tendency to speak up.
Anne realized that change should be evolutionary, not revolutionary. She began to assert her voice and rhythms into an organization long accustomed to the standard operating procedures set out by a strong, demanding leader.
In her role as chief operating officer, she set out to build on the nonprofit’s successes and deepen its work. She launched “HCZ Stat,” a forum in which senior managers questioned program directors and staff members about specific students. The discussions inevitably broadened from the specific to the universal, helping the organization head off problems before they got bigger.
But mastering the ins and outs of Harlem Children’s Zone’s programs was only part of the learning process for Anne. Geoff has always said that one of the most disappointing things in the nonprofit field is that people don’t take fundraising seriously enough. He has found that many people who are good at creating and managing programs are often lousy at raising money—the begging part of the work. Fundraising is a no-holds-barred, never-ending struggle; it’s at best uncomfortable, and, unsurprisingly, people just don’t like to do it.
In any organization, a change in leadership causes uncertainty and anxiety. Even longtime donors may sit back to see how things go before they commit their support to a new chief executive. The result is that a new leader has to steer into a headwind while still learning to captain the organization.
In addition to introducing Anne to donors, the Harlem Children’s Zone board decided to create a sustainability plan: to boost the endowment so that a portion of its future earnings could underwrite the annual expenses. The idea was to reduce the fundraising pressure for Anne of meeting the annual budget of more than $100-million as she took on the big lift of making sure the charity’s programming continued to do well.
As it became clear that Anne would succeed Geoff, we had to inform staff members, children, families, and donors. To broadcast the news to as many people as possible simultaneously, we held a “state of the agency” event in February and live-streamed it for those who could not attend.
Geoff announced that he was passing the day-to-day management duties to Anne but would continue to contribute his expertise and knowledge to the organization as president of the board.
Even after four years as COO, Anne was still a new CEO, and the charity’s staff understandably wondered about what the change meant. We held workshops so managers could talk about the feelings set off by the change.
Anne developed a strategy of introducing herself directly to all the staff by going to Harlem Children’s Zone’s more than 20 sites, explaining her life story, her beliefs, her priorities. She also made a point to solicit questions and let the more than 2,000 full- and part-time staff members know they could contact her directly.
Wherever Anne went, people—whether staff members, donors, or the press—wanted to know what she was going to do that would be “new.” Her mantra became that the mission remained the same.
While always noting her debt to her mentor, she told employees repeatedly that “this was always about more than one man.”
In various ways, she called upon staff members to join her in re-dedicating to the mission and the organization’s tradition of high standards. She added that we would innovate wherever the data indicated that improvements were necessary.
On July 1, Anne’s “15-year job interview” ended, and the long, deliberative succession process seemed to pay off. “Ms. Anne"—along with her management style and priorities—are now an indelible part of the organization’s culture.
As the transition ends, the tough work begins: creating a great new chapter for Harlem Children’s Zone’s kids and families.
Geoffrey Canada remains president of Harlem Children’s Zone; Anne Williams-Isom is the organization’s chief executive officer.
