62: Eisenhower Matrix for Nonprofit Exits and Transitions
Nonprofit leaders often have too much on their plates, and not enough time or capacity to effectively choose what task or projects are important vs. urgent vs. should be delegated. In this episode, I’m sharing the well-known concept of the Eisenhower Matrix and how it can be applied to workplace transitions. Listen in to learn how to identify which tasks associated with leaving can be postponed, prioritized as urgent, or left entirely for someone else to do.
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Transcript:
This is a quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States. He said, I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent. The Eisenhower Matrix, which is also known as the Urgent Important Matrix, is a time management tool which became widely known when Stephen Covey included it in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
That was in 1989. Covey created the four quadrants that most of us are familiar with. Quadrant one is urgent and important. Those are tasks that need immediate attention, like deadlines, pressing problems, and matters of crisis. Those are do it now items. Quadrant two is not urgent, but important. Those are tasks that are important for long term success, but don't require immediate action.
Planning, prevention, relationship building. Those are the things that fit into this quadrant. Those are schedule for the future. Quadrant three is urgent, but not important. Those are tasks that demand attention now, but aren't significant to long term goals, like interruptions, meetings, calls. These are delegate someone else to do at things.
Quadrant four is not urgent and not important. These are tasks that are often distractions like time wasters and trivial activities. Those are eliminate those ideas. I'm excited to bring you the leaving well and workplace transitions version of the Eisenhower matrix featuring the focus on intentional workplace exits and transitions in nonprofit organizations.
So here's the list, the urgent and important do it now. First, succession planning. Prepare a successor or team to take over responsibilities. Also, handover of accounts. Create an inventory of all accounts and the important contacts, complete transfer signatory cards, and banking handovers. Also on this list is critical project handover.
Ensure that ongoing projects have a clear transition plan. This is another important one. Legal and compliance matters. Address any outstanding legal or compliance issues, ongoing crises, or high stakes situations that require a leader's expertise. Finalizing key decisions and budget approvals, wrap up major decisions that need your input before departure, and ensure that upcoming fiscal plans are reviewed and approved.
Another thing on the quadrant one is internal communication planning. Thoughtfully communicate your departure and support the team emotionally and professionally. So that's on the internal side. Then also on the external side, you want to make sure that you have prioritized your communication plan by having a plan to personally inform key partners and interested parties about your transition.
The last piece of this is to create an out of office and forward email communication. Okay, on to quadrant two. This is the not urgent, but important. This is the proactive action that you need to take and maybe schedule for the future. So in this list of not urgent and important are the following.
Knowledge transfer. Document and share essential knowledge with colleagues, including the creation of detailed documentation of historical knowledge, processes, and context. You're going to want to write a comprehensive menu outlining the ongoing projects, the context, and the other critical information for your successor.
Another thing that is important but not urgent is creating a dashboard for funders. This is also helpful to think about creating a dashboard for your board if you don't already have one. This allows you to develop tools to ensure continuity in reporting and accountability after your departure.
Updating standard operating procedures or SOPs. Revise your guidelines and procedures to reflect current practices. Another important but not urgent is reviewing and updating job descriptions. This should be done well in advance of a transition. But if they haven't been updated recently, schedule proactively some time with the entire team to complete this project.
This is a deep one. Ensuring continuity of culture. It's important to facilitate discussions on how to maintain or evolve the organization post transition. Your culture needs to stay even through the transition and beyond. Another thing is finalizing long term strategic plans, completing and reviewing strategic plans that extend beyond your tenure is important.
And also consider communicating the long term vision and goals to end with the team or the organization. Managing social media accounts, delegating the management of professional social media accounts to appropriate team members is on this list, as is reviewing your email draft folder. Often your email draft folder holds juicy projects or tasks that should either be delegated, wrapped up, or completed entirely before your departure.
Now moving on to quadrant three, this is the urgent but not important. So this is when you should delegate it to someone else. Administrative wrap up. Organizing files and clearing your workspace. Someone else can do that. Final performance reviews, uh, complete in the outstanding employee evaluations.
Maybe this isn't something you can necessarily delegate, but you could wrap up, uh, with your notes and then pass it on to someone else. Same with scheduling exit interviews, coordinate the times and dates for formal exit discussions. Someone else can do that planning. Sending farewell emails, drafting, sending goodbye messages to colleagues and interested parties.
Um, what's important here is to make sure that you have a discussion with your board chair and or the incoming leader to coordinate this communication. Arranging farewell events. Now, you might have very strong opinions about how you want to be honored as you leave, but it's best to hand it over to someone else to plan or help you understand where you can participate in goodbye gatherings or meetings.
Organizing your files and documents. Assigning someone to ensure that all of your digital and physical files are properly organized and accessible is something that someone else can do, as is finalizing any routine reports. So think about grant reporting. You'll want to accept this as either a valid or incorrect submission, and then inform the Chicago Police Department of this is in fact, it would be absolutely necessary to obtain that diagnosis.
Next when you come into the F. H. A. Now, finally is the not urgent and not important, which means you can eliminate entirely or postpone from your list of things to do during transition. So on this list is personal office decor. This might seem like the easy thing to start, but it's something someone else can do.
Take down, sort through personal office decorations and items. Same with updating personal social media. You might have the desire to update personal social media soon, but wait to announce your departure on personal platforms until you're feeling grounded and well, after the transition has taken place.
Clearing out non essential emails. This is another thing that people are always raring to do is start clearing out non critical messages or correspondence. While it is a gift to unsubscribe for many personal emails before your departure and clear your junk and spam folders, the rest of it can just wait and have someone else deal with that later.
Another not urgent and not important is coordinating future meetings. Delegate the scheduling of future meetings with teams and interested parties who can take that work forward. This is the same thing that applies to non essential networking. Meeting with contacts who are not directly related to your outgoing transition role and responsibilities should be passed off and introduced to other team members to take that forward.
Also, non essential process improvements. Postpone or completely delegate minor process tweaks or improvements that don't have an immediate impact. Directly delegate or write a short summary if you feel that you need to about needed process improvements. The same goes for attending external events. Skip those non critical conferences, webinars, or industry events in your final weeks and instead pass that on to team members.
Responding to non critical inquiries is another thing that you should pass on as not important and not urgent. Pass off those non essential questions or requests from outside of your core responsibilities to team members. We're getting almost to the end. Finalizing unrelated research. Drop or delay research or side projects that aren't directly relevant to the transition.
Directly delegate or write a short summary, if you feel that you need to, about the progress so far and then hand that off. So this grid can help you prioritize tasks to ensure a smooth and intentional transition. This helps you focus on what truly matters during the process of leaving well. I would love to know what you think.
Is there something that I missed, or is there something that you think should be in another part of the quadrant? Email me at Naomi, N A O M I, at 8thandhome. com. That's 8thandhome. com. Thanks for listening. If you've not yet taken the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz to discover your natural relationship to change and transition, you can do that at NaomiHattaway.com/quiz. To learn more about living well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace, visit NaomiHathaway. com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation.
Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hattaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.