How to Prioritize Your Nonprofit’s Succession Plan with the Eisenhower Matrix
“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” – United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower
This quote is the basis for a time management tool known as the Eisenhower Matrix or the Urgent-Important Matrix, developed by The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People author Stephen Covey in 1989. Covey created the classic two-by-two matrix we’re familiar with, and this article is my spin on the four quadrants to prepare for Leaving Well from your organization.
Quadrant I: Urgent and Important
These are tasks that need immediate attention, like deadlines, pressing problems, and immediate crisis. In the context of Leaving Well, this quadrant is all about high level succession planning for a smooth transition and handoff of leadership responsibilities.
Succession Planning: Prepare a successor or team to take over responsibilities.
Handover of Accounts: Create an inventory of all accounts and important contacts, complete transfer of signatory cards, and banking handovers.
Critical Project Handover: Ensure that ongoing projects have a clear transition plan.
Legal and Compliance: Address any outstanding legal or compliance issues, ongoing crises, or high stakes situations that require a leader’s expertise.
Finalizing Decisions and Budget Approvals: Wrap up major decisions that need your input before departure. Review and approve upcoming fiscal plans and budget items.
Internal Communication Planning: Thoughtfully communicate your departure and support the team emotionally and professionally. Personally inform key partners outside the organization about your transition.
Forward Emails: Create an out-of-office message explaining the transition and set up email forwarding.
Quadrant II: Not Urgent, Important
These tasks are important for long-term success but don’t require immediate action, such as planning, prevention, and relationship building. Be proactive and schedule time to work on these important tasks during your transition period once the urgent tasks are handled.
Knowledge Transfer: Document and share essential knowledge with colleagues, including the documentation of historical knowledge, processes, and contacts.
Ongoing Projects: Create a detailed document outlining ongoing projects, contacts, and critical information for your successor.
Dashboards: Create a Funder Dashboard, and a Board Dashboard if you don’t already have one, to ensure continuity after your departure.
Update SOPs: Revise guidelines and procedures to reflect current practices.
Update Job Descriptions: If job descriptions at your organization haven’t been updated recently, schedule time with the entire team to review everyone’s job descriptions and ensure they are up to date.
Continuity of Culture: It’s important to facilitate conversations on how to maintain or evolve the organizational culture post-transition.
Finalize Long-Term Strategic Plans: Communicate long-term vision and goals to (and with) the team.
Social Media: Delegate account access to the appropriate team members.
Review Email Drafts: Often your email draft folder holds juicy projects or tasks that should be delegated, wrapped up, or completed entirely before your departure.
Quadrant III: Urgent, Not Important
These tasks are urgent and pressing, but aren’t important to long-term goals, such as interruptions, meetings, and calls. In our Leaving Well context, these are things that aren’t important for you to do yourself as you prepare for your exit, and they should be delegated to other team members.
Administrative Wrap-Up: Organizing digital and physical files to ensure that they are organized and accessible is something that can be delegated.
Final Performance Reviews: Wrap up your notes on final performance reviews and delegate the meetings to someone who will remain at the organization.
Scheduling Exit Interviews: Coordinating times and dates for formal exit interviews does not need to be on your plate–delegate it!
Farewell Emails: Make sure you have a discussion with your Board Chair and/or the incoming leader to coordinate these messages.
Arranging Farewell Events: You might have strong feelings about how you’d like to be honored as you leave, but it’s best to hand it over to someone else to plan.
Routine Reports: Complete any routine reports that require your direct input, and hand over the rest to be delegated.
Quadrant IV: Not Urgent, Not Important
These tasks can be eliminated or postponed. They often lead to procrastination or going down a rabbit hole of unrelated distractions.
Social Media Announcements: Wait to announce your departure on personal social media accounts until you’re feeling grounded, well after the transition has taken place.
Non-Essential Emails: It’s tempting to clean out your email archive of old, unimportant emails, but this is pretty much a waste of time. The emails will be handled and deleted by the team after you leave.
Non-Essential Networking: Coordinating future meetings with potential partners should be delegated to an appropriate team member who can take the project forward. Only take meetings with people essential to your departure.
Non-Essential Process Improvements: Minor process tweaks that don’t have an immediate impact can be postponed until after the transition in leadership.
External Events: Skip those non-critical conferences, webinars, and industry events in your final weeks at the organization. Pass the opportunities on to appropriate team members.
Non-Critical Inquiries: Forward that email, friend.
Unrelated Projects: Drop or delay research or side projects that aren’t directly relevant to the transition. Write a short summary if you want to hand a project off to a team member.
- Discover your organization’s natural relationship to change and transition with the Workplace Transition Archetype Assessment.
- Reach out to book a consultation to strategize your succession plan.
- Listen to Episode 62 of the Leaving Well Podcast: Eisenhower Matrix for Nonprofit Exits and Transitions