Tag: transit CEO leadership
HART’s Ben Limmer: Career Planner Extraordinaire
The following post originally appeared at this blog in July 2019. In light of the tremendous positive response to the post, including the podcast I recorded with Ben, we’re running it again for our blog followers as a holiday treat. Happy Holidays! Doug Eadie
In the informative and fascinating podcast Ben Limmer, new Chief Executive Officer at the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART), recorded for this blog last week he describes the professional path he traveled on the way to the top spot at HART. Ben also explains how he determined that his transit experience and executive leadership skills … Read the rest
Getting Your New Board Committees Off on the Right Foot
Whether newly created board standing committees find their sea legs early in their existence and are soon firmly established depends heavily on two factors: the board chair’s appointment of the right board members to chair the new committees; and the CEO’s designation of an executive team member to serve as Chief Staff Liaison to each committee.
Once the new committees have effectively functioned for a year, the appointment of committee chairs is a more routine matter, but choosing the right first chairs for the new committees will be critical to their success as your board’s “governing engines.” Experience has taught … Read the rest
Benjamin Limmer Takes the Helm at HART in Tampa
In the informative and fascinating podcast Ben Limmer, new Chief Executive Officer at the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART), recorded for this blog last week he describes the professional path he traveled on the way to the top spot at HART. Ben also explains how he determined that his transit experience and executive leadership skills were a good fit with the demands of the CEO position and the Board’s expectations at HART. The result is a model that transit CEO-aspirants and CEOs considering a new position can draw on in advancing their careers.
Listening to Ben as we recorded … Read the rest
The Late Senator John McCain and True Humility
It seems appropriate, as we approach another Fourth of July celebration to re-post this article that originally appeared almost a year ago. It’s about a true military hero, stalwart patriot, and man of sterling character, the late Senator John McCain, who possessed a trait characteristic of great leaders – true humility. I’m sorry to say that it appears to be in ever shorter supply in these times of rampant, bombastic self-promotion. Doug Eadie
Thinking about Senator John McCain this morning – along with millions of my fellow Americans and admirers around the world – reminded me of the critical role … Read the rest
The Creativity-Innovation Nexus: Part One of Our Creativity Series
The innovation process – and the role of the chief executive as your authority’s “Chief Innovation Officer” – has been a major focus of this blog, and several posts have featured real-life cases of successful implementation of significant innovation initiatives. Our focus on innovation makes the best of sense in light of the challenges facing all transit authorities and other public/nonprofit organizations in these times of rapid change. Building your authority’s capacity to innovate is the key to future stability and growth, and standing pat, clinging to the present, is a sure-fire recipe for decline.
Up to now, our posts … Read the rest
Board Evaluation of CEO Performance Can Be a Powerful Relationship Builder
Dave Stackrow and I weren’t able to cover the segment on board evaluation of CEO performance because we chose to leave more time for the CEO panel following our presentation at APTA’s CEOs Seminar on April 14. Since it’s such a critical subject, which we address in our new book, Building a Solid Board-CEO Partnership: A Practical Guidebook for Transit Board Members, CEOs, and CEO-Aspirants (https://boardsavvytransitceo.com/building-a-solid-board-ceo-partnership/), we decided to share some of the key points that we make in the book in this post.
Experience has taught us that a well-designed process for board evaluation of CEO performance … Read the rest
Comet CEO John Andoh Wearing the Innovator-in-Chief Hat
Experience has taught me that successfully implementing significant out of the box change initiatives depends on the strong leadership of a chief executive officer wearing what I call the “Innovator-in-Chief” hat. CEOs I’ve observed over the years succeed at the Innovator-in-Chief role have without exception been what I think of as “change-savvy.” This means that:
They’ve been technically very knowledgeable about best practices in the rapidly changing area of change planning and management, which means they haven’t been wedded to conventional planning wisdom and out-of-date approaches. You’ll never hear a change-savvy CEO extolling the virtues of traditional long-range (or “strategic”) … Read the rest
The Prohibitive Cost of a Weak Board-CEO Partnership
Dave Stackrow and I are pleased to tell you that our forthcoming book, Building a Solid Board-CEO Partnership: A Practical Guidebook for Transit Board Members, CEOs, and CEO-Aspirants, has gone to press. It should hit the streets in late March 2019. The following fifth and final excerpt from our book talks about the high cost a transit authority will pay for letting the partnership between its board and CEO remain weak or deteriorate.
Your transit authority can expect to pay a high price for failing to develop a close, positive board-CEO partnership or for allowing it to deteriorate. For … Read the rest
GM Jeff Knueppel Walks the Employee Engagement Talk at SEPTA
Early in my career I experienced at close range a CEO not walking his talk. I was serving as chief of staff to the president of a large three-campus community college. With the urging of his board’s officers, my boss decided that he needed to focus far more heavily on the institution’s external agenda – specifically, on building close working relationships with the chief executives of critical stakeholder organizations like the community foundation and neighboring universities. So, as a strategy to buy precious time for his expanded external role, the president tapped his executive vice president to become the college’s … Read the rest
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