Small, high-impact organizations like SEI can't afford to treat succession planning as an afterthought, and they can't afford an approach built for a much bigger team either. We built them a process sized for the team they actually have: one they can run themselves long after we're gone.
As SEI's role as Summit County's education backbone organization grew more complex, its internal documentation and continuity planning hadn't kept pace. The organization had no succession plan for its senior leadership or board, and no consistent practice of documenting how key work actually got done.
No clear framework existed for leadership or board succession, creating risk for SEI's long-term sustainability.
SEI needed clearer definitions of leadership roles, responsibilities, and transition readiness, independent of who currently held each seat.
SEI needed alignment between board strategy, executive leadership, and the organization's future direction.
Reviewed SEI's existing source documents, then met with the CEO and senior leaders to identify which roles carried the highest succession risk.
Built Success Profiles for SEI's four most critical roles, the Executive Director, Senior Director of Finance, Senior Director of Community Engagement, and Senior Director of Research and Evaluation, each defining the experience, competencies, and measurable KPIs the role requires, independent of any specific person.
Assessed the board's collective expertise against SEI's four strategic plan goals to confirm governance readiness, then facilitated working sessions to train leadership and the board on sustaining the succession process going forward.
SEI's small team carries a large mandate: sustaining educational progress for roughly 65,000 students across Summit County. A succession plan that outlives any one leader or board member is what lets that work continue without interruption, no matter who's in the room a year or five years from now.
We knew we were exposed if a senior leader left tomorrow, but we didn't have the capacity to fix that ourselves. Stronger gave us a real process and real tools, not just a binder we'd never open again.
Stronger Consulting partners with mission-driven organizations to turn complex challenges into clear, practical action, from strategy through implementation.
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