About a year has gone by since my last article about why great Association Executives are getting fired and the landscape hasn’t improved much so I’m back at it. My observation is that many Association Executive failures don’t start with the CEO.
They start with a board that never defined what success actually looks like.
Six, twelve, or eighteen months later, everyone is frustrated. The board says the CEO “isn’t the right fit.” The CEO feels blindsided.. Confidence erodes. Staff morale drops. And another talented executive exits the industry wondering what just happened, sometimes after a very expensive lawsuit.
If this sounds familiar, it should.
A Poster Is Not a Strategic Plan
Here’s the first uncomfortable truth.
If your “strategic plan” is a glossy poster with four or five high-level statements like “Enhance Value,” “Become the Voice of Real Estate or “Drive Innovation,” you do not have a strategic plan.
You have platitudes.
Without a real strategic roadmap that includes specific action items, define priorities, measurable objectives, timelines, and resource alignment, you cannot evaluate whether a candidate is equipped to lead you where you want to go.
If you don’t know your destination, how can you assess whether someone can get you there?
You must be able to clearly articulate:
- What does success look like in three years?
- What financial condition must be achieved?
- What capabilities must be strengthened?
- What member pain points must be solved?
- What cultural shifts are required?
- What specific outcomes will define progress?
If you cannot answer these questions, you cannot evaluate candidates intelligently.
And when expectations are vague, disappointment is much more likely.
You Didn’t Define the Skills You Actually Needed
Once strategy is unclear, the hiring process falls apart.
Boards often recruit based on personality, familiarity, or résumé prestige. But recruiting a CEO is not the same as recruiting an agent. It’s not about charisma. It’s not about production. It’s not about who interviews well.
It’s about capability aligned to strategy.
Before posting a job description, you must define the specific competencies your organization is looking for based on the strategic priorities you have identified
- Can this person effectively coach, develop, and hold staff accountable?
- Do they understand financial management and how to optimize long-term financial health of the organization?
- Have they driven effective advocacy that effectively affects change at the local, state and national level?
- Can they produce compelling events that generate revenue and engagement?
- Do they know how to build trust relationships with brokers and top-producing agents?
- Will they continually elevate the quality and relevance of education?
- Can they stabilize or transform culture if needed?
If you haven’t defined the skills you need in writing, how can you design interview questions that probe for them?
If you don’t ask the right questions, how will you know whether the candidate actually has the personality and skills you need?
Liking someone is not the same as validating their capacity.
No KPIs, No Accountability
Then comes the next mistake.
Even when a CEO is hired, many boards never define specific performance requirements or key performance indicators tied directly to strategic action items.
Twelve months later, evaluations sound like this:
“He doesn’t communicate enough.” “She isn’t moving fast enough.” “I just don’t feel like she “gets us.”
Feelings are not governance.
If you haven’t defined KPIs tied to:
- Financial performance and reserve targets
- Membership growth or engagement metrics
- Advocacy outcomes
- Event profitability and attendance benchmarks
- Education participation and satisfaction
- Staff retention and performance standards
…then you have no objective way to determine whether the CEO is doing their job.
Without measurable benchmarks, termination decisions become emotional. Emotional decisions often become expensive decisions.
Do You Even Know What’s in the Employment Contract?
Another blind spot: employment agreements.
Are you clear on:
- Termination provisions?
- Notice requirements?
- Severance obligations?
- Performance review language?
- Due process expectations?
Failure to comply with an employment contract does not just damage trust. It can cost thousands in legal fees and significantly more in reputational harm.
Members notice instability. Staff feel uncertainty. Industry partners question governance maturity.
All because the process lacked discipline.
This Is a Professional Relationship
Evaluating a CEO is not about whether you want to be friends after work.
It is not about personality comfort.
It is about leadership, execution, governance alignment, and measurable outcomes.
Boards that blur this line create confusion. Confusion creates conflict. Conflict creates turnover.
This is a professional partnership built on clearly defined expectations, accountability, and mutual respect.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
The Hard Truth
If you don’t:
- Build a real strategic roadmap
- Clearly define the skills required to execute it
- Align interview questions to those competencies
- Establish measurable KPIs
- Understand and comply with the employment agreement
- Separate governance from friendship
…you are not hiring a CEO.
You are rolling the dice.
And when it goes wrong, contrary to popular belief, it is not always because the executive lacked talent. It is because the board lacked discipline.
A Better Way Forward
If you truly want to stop the revolving door, start before the search.
Build a future profitability and relevance session modeled after how corporations approach strategy.
Interview and survey:
- Brokers
- Top-producing agents
- Emerging agents
- Staff
- Industry suppliers and partners
Ask them what truly drives value. Where they struggle. What they would pay for. What they believe is missing. What would make the organization indispensable.
Then synthesize the findings into a focused, measurable strategic plan rooted in real member needs, not platitudes.
Only then can you recruit a CEO aligned with:
- Your culture
- Your financial reality
- Your advocacy priorities
- Your education standards
- Your long-term vision
Most of today’s “strategic plans” are anything but strategic. They are broad, non-specific and politically comfortable.
But comfort does not drive profitability. And it does not create relevance.
If you need help building a facilitating a future profitability strategy session that produces real, measurable direction, recruiting a new CEO, or executing an objective performance review process, let’s talk.
This decision to hire and properly evaluate a CEO are way too important to improvise.
