NAIS recently published a survey that indicates that many heads depart in their first few years due to a misunderstanding with their boards about expectations, goals, timing, or just plain not connecting.

Littleford & Associates has also reported consistently on the trend of a short tenure of heads of independent schools in the US and around the world.  The average length of service for a head of school is 3.5 years internationally, 5 years in the US and about 7 in Canada. Why not longer? 

1. Head turnover often results from a loss of institutional memory among boards members and a short term for chairs.  This means that the board that hired that head is gone, and the new board members have little or no memory of why that head was hired and what he/she was charged to do going forward.
2. Heads hired from the outside often move too fast on the wrong issues, but often at the behest of their boards who are eager for change. They then pay the price when a faculty revolt turns the board against the new head, or when parental or alumni backlash occurs.
3. An “incident” for which the head takes the fall occurs, it but may not have been the head’s fault at all.
4. Transition support is lacking or half-hearted at best. A new head, even an experienced one, should receive guidance from a transition committee of the board whose role is to advise the head not to step into “holes” that are dangerous, offend key stakeholders or tackle explosive issues early on. Transitions are not nearly as exciting as searches but are equally important. 

The most dangerous time for a school is when it changes heads and the second most dangerous is when it changes chairs. The terms for chairs should be at least 3 to 5 years. The terms for board members should be ideally 9 to 12 years assuming that the Committee on Trustees is functioning as it should. If strong governance is in place, we would argue further that term limits are damaging in the long run and not helpful when wise, capable trustees are forced to step aside.

We have also noted the lack of real internal succession planning in most schools.  The reason that many heads “leave early”, i.e., they are terminated, is because they were outsiders who did not know the culture. Very few internal succession choices are “fired” because they are familiar with the culture, are aware of and avoid the landmines and know where the bodies are buried, yet boards may feel that an insider will not make the tough decisions that may affect their own colleagues.

Sometimes schools hire firms at great expense to do national or international searches when the board and the outgoing head know full well that the best candidate is INSIDE the school. The board and the search firm argue that we need the “feel” and “look” of an extensive external search so we can prove to the constituents that we did cast a broad net. Another argument often used is that the insider needs to be compared to the marketplace of current and aspiring heads to prove that the insider is the strongest among a talented and diverse candidate pool. 

However, if the inside administrator appears to be a very good fit, there is a way that an impartial outsider can engage a cross-section of constituents to validate that choice, so the stakeholders still feel that the process was fair and that the board did its due diligence.  More schools should be doing these “executive assessments” instead of the more expensive and potentially risky and destabilizing full-blown searches.

Only about 10% of independent and international schools really engage in thoughtful succession planning by grooming their qualified talent. Hence, this talent is often recognized by others and recruited away. 

If an internal candidate is never going to get the job, then boards should not encourage that person to put a hat in the ring. But if there is an especially strong internal candidate, and if that executive assessment can demonstrate that most stakeholders respect that individual and would like her or him to be appointed, then the board should move in that direction.

We all need to be a better job of ensuring healthy long-term boards and strong board chairs and thus longer-term heads, but when it is time to select a new head, boards need to give more credence to strong internal candidates. This is not only based on research but common sense.