The context this paper addresses
When an organization is publicly watched — because of its mission, its funders, its recent history, or the specific composition of its leadership — board transitions carry a weight that ordinary succession frameworks don't fully hold. Board chairs and executive directors making sensitive personnel decisions in these moments are typically navigating three simultaneous conversations: legal, reputational, and human. Confusing them is the most common failure mode.
A framework for the three conversations
This paper offers a framework for holding those conversations distinctly, in the right rooms, on the right timelines. The legal conversation belongs with counsel and is bounded. The reputational conversation belongs with communications and is shaped by the audiences that matter. The human conversation belongs with the person and their circumstances — and it is the one most often handled last, when it should be handled first.
What we've learned from twenty of them
Faith 1st has advised on twenty transitions of this shape. The consistent finding is that the organizations that come through them with their trust intact are the ones that took the time to sequence the conversations — not because they had a script, but because they had a private space to think out loud before they acted.