Succession Planning: October 2021 Integrity Conversation

Creating the Future's
Integrity Meeting:
Monday, October 11th, from 10am - 12pm Pacific time

Topic:
Applying the Integrity lens to Succession Planning 

Watch the recorded meeting HERE

or, LISTEN TO THAT MEETING HERE

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Applying the Integrity Lens to Succession Planning:
This month, our Integrity Body (known in most organizations as the board) will apply Catalytic Thinking to a topic of interest throughout the social change ecosystem (and throughout the for-profit business world as well): Succession planning.

As Creating the Future steps into a larger role in supporting systems change in the world, it is important that we move beyond dependency on our founders. This conversation will be seminal for us - as it is for any organization that is preparing for what might happen when their founders leave.

Not that our founders are going anywhere. But in their words, "Any organization doing important work must ensure that work can continue if a key employee leaves." This is therefore not just about founders, but about any key employee, in any organization.

Staying true to our values, we will be applying Catalytic Thinking to this topic. The question we will dive into on Monday will be the first one in the framework:

Who will be affected by our work on succession planning?

Once we have listed everyone, we can begin to involve those individuals and groups in this conversation, and can then aim at the outcomes we want - what "good" will look like for all those individuals and groups.

For now, though, we will begin at the beginning, engaging anyone who may be impacted by this issue. If that is you, we hope you will join us!

How to Prepare
First, let us know if you plan to attend by sending a note at this link. Per the "How to participate" section below, please let us know which of the 3 ways you would like to participate.

Second, if you are not familiar with Catalytic Thinking or the Integrity functions of our board, the following will be helpful:

For those who think visually, this PDF graphic of the Catalytic Thinking Framework will give you an understanding of the flow of the conversation. For those who work best with text, you can follow along with the questions that guide Catalytic Thinking at this link. We recommend having these pieces available during the meeting, to spark your thinking during the discussion.

To get a sense of the context of our Integrity Board, this post introduces our thinking about that.

3 Ways to participate

If you have never been part of Creating the Future's work, all our strategy and board meetings are open and participatory, for anyone who wants to be part of the discussion. You can see more about that at this link.

Where we meet:

The board meeting will take place right here at this post. If the video does not appear precisely on time, please be patient – we are probably just running a few minutes late.

There are 3 ways you can participate in our meetings.

  • If you are already familiar with and committed to Creating the Future’s work, and you would like to be actively involved in the meeting discussion side-by-side at our online “meeting table,” let us know, and we will send you an invitation to join us online. Read more here about what it means to participate in that way.
  • If you want to participate but are unable to be in the meeting itself (perhaps you’re at work, or maybe at home with kids running around, etc.), watch the live-stream in real time and tweet your questions and ideas to us via the hashtag #CreatingTheFuture. We read those tweets aloud during the meeting, just as if you were there. This is a great first step for those who are not as familiar with our work, but want to get more involved.

(Please note: We will only see your tweets if you use the #CreatingTheFuture hashtag. In addition, during the meeting, we will not look at blog comments here at this post. While we will check those comments later, during the meeting we will only be following the #CreatingTheFuture hashtag in the Twitter stream.)

  • Lastly, if you want to simply watch, or you want to think about what you’re hearing and respond later – or if you will be watching the recording after the meeting happens – please add your thoughts into the comments here at this post. We will include that thinking into the mix of things.

We look forward to your being part of our discussion on Monday, October 11th!

* All Creating the Future's board meetings are open for anyone to participate, or to watch afterwards. To learn more about the thinking behind this openness - and our experiences with being open - click here.

Image credit via Pixabay 

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