New School Helps Founders
Handle Strain of Leaving
By Michelle Gienow
MARK LIPTON has spent he past three years helping charity executives step into some big shoes.
As head of the New School’s
Tenenbaum Leadership Initiative, Leading After the Legacy,
Mr. Lipton worked with executive directors who took the place
of the founders of their organizations, helping them make a
smooth transition. But all too
often, he says, those new CEO’s
told him about the obstacles
strewn in their paths.
“In so many cases, it was al-
most like the founder had stuck
their leg out for the new per-
son to trip over,” says Mr. Lip-
ton. “There were patterns in the
stories these participants were
telling. It was as if the found-
ers were giving up their child
and ultimately couldn’t do it.
So it was almost like, ‘Let me
make sure my child fails’ be-
cause it was just too painful to
let go and see their charity go
on without them.”
As a result, says Mr. Lipton,
at least 20 percent of the 60 or
so executives who went through
the Tenenbaum leadership pro-
gram during its 2008-10 run
quit their jobs soon afterward.
“The response to that figure
has often been, ‘Wow, I guess
those are real failures for you,’ ”
he says. “But they weren’t fail-
ures. Rather, these executives
were now able to take an ob-
jective look and say, ‘I cannot
undo the fact that the founder is
still in the corner office’ or ‘The
board is not budging for me,’ or
other situations we heard about.
And they recognize that they
were prevented from effective
action by some founder-related
issue.”
Once he saw so many lead-
ers facing the same problem
at a diverse group of charities,
Mr. Lipton decided to flip his fo-
cus for the Tenenbaum’s newest
program, the Founder’s Studio,
from successors to the founders
themselves.
The original leadership pro-
gram had been created with a
$500,000 gift from the philan-
thropist Ann G. Tenenbaum
and her husband, Thomas Lee,
founder of Lee Equity Partners.
From that nearly spent gift, Mr.
Lipton says, “I realized I had
just enough money left in the
budget to do a prototype pro-
gram—something that would
have impact and we could learn
a lot from.”
The workshop, held in late
April, includes people planning
to step down within the next 18
months from the charities they
founded and led. Mr. Lipton re-
cruited participants mainly
through his contacts at founda-
tions and groups that offer man-
agement training to nonprofits.
Their costs of participation were
fully covered by the Tenenbaum
Leadership Initiative.
MICHAEL DIVI TO
Mark Lipton created the Founder’s Studio after running a New School program designed
to guide people who take over the executive role from those who started charities.
the workshop, Mr. Lipton says
he has no plans for additional
founders’ programs at the New
School.
He’s not actively seeking oth-
er support for either the found-
ers or the successors programs,
saying it would require time
he simply doesn’t have to spare
right now. But, he adds, “if a
foundation came to me and said,
What you’ve found is very inter-
esting, let’s talk, I’d certainly
have that conversation.”
However, he acknowledges
that his one-weekend work-
shop, with its attention to emo-
tional issues, may help create
a new approach for the smat-
tering of other programs that
seek to help founders make a
smooth transition. “If what we
find seems to have substantial
impact or potential, I would love
to hand it off,” he says. “It’s not
intellectual property I want to
just bury if we can’t continue.”
have in a way that is best for all
involved, even as you are navi-
gating some painful issues.”
Last year, Mr. Stahl partici-
pated in a program called Next
Steps Workshop by the consul-
tancy TransitionGuides to help
The workshop may
create a new model
for programs that
help founders make
a smooth transition.
“In so many cases, it
was like the founder
stuck their leg out for
the new person
to trip over.”
plan a seamless handover to a
successor. But he also sought
advice from outside coaches to
help him understand and deal
with the emotional issues that
arose. (Among these, he says,
were some fear and anger, even
though he proposed the tran-
sition to his board.) He thinks
that adding a psychosocial
counseling component to typi-
cal founders-support programs,
which generally focus on such
transition nuts and bolts as fi-
nances and executive searches,
would be “very valuable.”
Mr. Lipton has spoken with
retiring founders who went
through transition programs
like the one Mr. Stahl attended,
and their experiences inspired
his collaboration with Austen
Riggs.
Fear and Anger
Some veteran charity leaders
hope more efforts like Founder’s
Studio get under way.
Ten years ago, Rusty Stahl
founded Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, a membership organization in New
York for young nonprofit workers. He now wants to step down
from his executive-director post
and is trying to do so in a way
that will benefit both him and
his organization.
“It’s very weird to create
something from scratch, to be
the person who knows more
than anyone about the organization and then completely give
up any control,” he says. “You
have a deep emotional attachment to the organization and
the people who work for you. It
is really challenging emotional
work, to separate yourself and
say, ‘This thing I’ve created
needs to have a life of its own
without my leadership’ and be-
Informality Holds Key to Making
a Learning Community Work
Emphasis on Emotions
Unlike the original leadership program, which was a four-month course held at the New
School’s Milano School of International Affairs, Management
and Urban Policy, the Founder’s
Studio is a weekend retreat at a
private estate in western Massachusetts.
with psychotherapists from Austen Riggs, the program focuses
largely on the emotional repercussions that arise when founders step away from the charities they invested their lives in
building.
Because of privacy considerations for the participants—
some of whom have not yet announced publicly, or even within their own organization, that
they are stepping down—Mr.
Lipton would not reveal the
names of any of the eight founders selected to participate in the
program.
No Further Plans
Aside from a short follow-
up session to review lessons
from the program, tentatively
scheduled for six months after
the participants decide to make
it.
She says the group doesn’t
just improve efficiency: “I look
at it as a staff-retention, staff-
satisfaction tool. People want to
be part of a community to make
a difference.”
At a recent meeting of the En-
gagement Community, someone
asked about Pinterest, the hot
new social network. Ms. Zakaib
said she’s thinking of gathering
some people to talk about it, and
she predicts participants will
volunteer to do what it takes to
teach others what works.
“You respond to needs,” she
says. “We’re not making any
huge expectations, we’re just
saying, OK, we are taking one
more step. We’re not trying to
do something huge and official.
We’re just a bunch of people who
want to learn from each other.”
