Interim Leadership – Just Works

Jonathan is a compassionate, inspiring human BEING who has the rare ability to identify and nurture leadership capacity. He is a teacher, a source of light and hope, and a wonderful listener. With his grace and steady support, we learned how to build a vision, culture, and soul of an organization piece by piece. It’s only been a few weeks, and I already miss working with him. And I’m simultaneously grateful for the experience.

—Michele Marchetti

Deputy Director, The Cornucopia Institute

Why Do You Need an Interim Leader?

Leadership transitions are often times of crisis. When faced with sudden change, like the exit of a founder or an unexpected loss of leadership, it can be easy for organizations to make decisions out of desperation and overwhelm, leading to further chaos. An interim leader provides stability, clarity, and guidance during the transition to new leadership.

We can help your organization turn a challenging transition into a time of growth and learning. Interims bring deep experience, a fresh, independent perspective, a coherent process to create alignment and clarity, and a sense of timeliness due to the limited nature of the engagement. Interims create a sturdy bridge from where your organization currently is to where you want to be. We help your organization assess, reflect, explore new ideas, heal, or simply pause and regain clarity. We provide vision and wisdom, assuring staff, board members, funders, and external stakeholders that change can be a positive and vital part of organizational growth.

Interims are not candidates for the permanent position, and usually only work between six to eighteen months. From this short-term vantage point, we offer clear, authentic, professional recommendations. Jonathan brings over forty years of experience working on the inside and outside of organizations in many capacities. We offer our deep portfolio of experience and methodologies, working collaboratively to help organizations and the people who comprise them stabilize, heal, reconnect to their purpose, and engage in transformative growth.

It was a pleasure being able to work in a leadership transition space at The Food Project with Jonathan, especially through a tumultuous time at our organization. From our experience, we’ve come to find that Jonathan centers three core elements that we value – centering our humanity, belief in self accountability, and holds onto hope for transformation.

His work and belief in us helped build a stronger belief in ourselves. We started to believe that we could do this work, do it well, and not compromise our values. We learned so much and always look forward to the fun periodic lunches where we catch up and talk about all the things.

John Wang & Maritza Rosario, Co-Executive Directors – The Food Project

“Jonathan es una persona con una visión clara que ha revolucionado la vida de mucha gente en nuestros pobres paises para contribuir a cambiar la vida de quienes historicamente han estado en desventaja y por supuesto, con sus iniciativas y ejemplo tambien ha contribuido a cambiar la perspectiva en el mundo desarrollado.

“Todo esto lo ha logrado fiel y firme a sus principios y valores, prefiriendo salir atropellado antes que atropellar; prefiriendo humillarse antes que ser soberbio; prefiriendo replegarse antes que imponerse….esta ha sido nuestra lucha, nuestro estandarte, nuestra mistica. Es como un espejo donde se refleja toda esta integridad suya y es el modelo que sigo, mas aun en los momentos que necesito de esa fuerza que el inyecta.”

—Rosario Castellon, Co-founder, PRODECOOP

What We Offer

Approach: An interim leader brings an independent perspective while engaging deeply with staff, blending internal and external views on how to best evolve the organization.

We create a customized plan, based on Third Sector Company’s six steps. Every organization will have its own needs as to what is needed in each phase:

The Engagement Phase: through initial conversations and interviews, we will explore together your needs and desires to ensure goodness of fit. Then, we will define the scope of work, responsibilities, and the initial course of work.
The Diagnostic Phase: using the approved scope of work, we will facilitate an organizational assessment to analyze your organization’s core strengths, challenges, opportunities, and address any urgent needs while building trust with key stakeholders. This assessment will be the basis of a work plan for the following months.
The Planning Phase: Using the scope of work and initial diagnostic, we will prepare a series of 90 day work plans, create a calendar of reporting to key stakeholders such as board, staff, and funders. We will ensure there is a reporting dashboard and identify other leadership tools to be used to strengthen the organization and its systems.
The Interventions Phase: Once basic stability and trust have been established, The Interim Executive Director works with staff and board to transform any areas that are problematic or underdeveloped. A customized menu of options will be developed. Typical areas of focus include: board leadership, fundraising, culture healing, financial efficiency, program excellence, and racial justice.
The Succession Phase: at this stage, the Interim lays the foundation for a transition to more permanent leadership, developing either an internal candidate or setting up an external search, recruitment and hiring process. We will develop, as appropriate, a succession policy and an initial work plan for new leadership.
The Pivot Phase: In the final phase, The Interim works as a bridge between present and future leadership. He facilitates the boarding process, a thoughtful interim exit process, and an interim evaluation.

To schedule a free consultation and learn more about how Just Works can help your organization successfully move through challenges, contact us: info@just-works.com