“We Don't Have Time for That Right Now.” The Most Expensive Thing a Leader Can Say
- Kayla Morse Higgs
- Jul 20
- 2 min read
In 2025, nonprofit CEOs left their roles at record levels — over 860 exits by April alone. The highest number ever recorded for that time period.
Only 29% of nonprofits had a succession plan.
That gap: record departures, almost no preparation. That isn't a planning problem. It's a capacity problem. And it didn't start the moment someone handed in their resignation.
It started years earlier, in the moments when building the bench felt less urgent than executing the work.
I've sat with leaders who, when the subject of developing their people comes up, say some version of the same thing:
"We don't have time for that right now. We're too busy executing."
Or: "That's on them to figure out. It's not my job to manage their development."
Or my personal favorite: "We sent everyone to a workshop last quarter."
I don't say this with judgment. Most leaders genuinely don't know how to do this well — because nobody taught them. They weren't trained to think intentionally about building learning into the work itself. So they outsource it to a one-day professional development event and call it done.
But here's what I know from experience: the workshop isn't what builds capacity. Job-embedded learning is what builds capacity. The stretch assignment. The debrief after a hard decision. The coaching conversation that happens in the middle of a project, not at the end of a performance review cycle. The leader who says "let me show you how I'm thinking about this" instead of just making the call and moving on.
That kind of development requires intention — and investment. Not the kind that disappears when budgets tighten, but the kind that builds an organizational culture of learning and development that outlasts any single person. When you invest in teaching a leader how to create those experiences, you're not paying for a workshop. You're building infrastructure that multiplies across every person they lead.
Right now the education and social impact sectors are under enormous financial pressure. Budgets are tight. Professional development is often the first line item to get cut — which is precisely backwards. Cutting investment in leadership capacity to save money in the short term is how organizations find themselves in crisis when a leader walks out the door. The cost of scrambling to fill a vacancy, losing institutional knowledge, and stalling programs far exceeds the cost of building the bench before it's needed.
This is the worst possible moment to stop investing in your bench.
And it is also — quietly, if you're paying attention — the best possible moment to start.
The organizations building capacity right now, in the middle of the pressure, are the ones that won't scramble when someone leaves. They'll grieve the departure and keep moving. Because the bench was already there.
The bench doesn't build itself. And it doesn't get built in a crisis.
It gets built now. In the work. On purpose.
Comments