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Why Do You Need  an Interim Leader?

Leadership transitions are often times of crises. When faced with sudden change, like the exit of a founder or an unexpected loss of leadership, it can be easy for organizations to make decisions out of desperation and overwhelm, leading to further chaos. An interim leader provides stability, clarity, and guidance during the transition to new leadership.

Just Works Principal Jonathan Rosenthal can help your organization turn a challenging transition into a time of growth and learning. Interims bring deep experience, a fresh, independent perspective, a coherent process to create alignment and clarity, and a sense of timeliness due to the limited nature of the engagement. Interims create a sturdy bridge from where your organization currently is to where you want to be. We help your organization assess, reflect, explore new ideas, heal, or simply pause and regain clarity. We provide vision and wisdom, assuring staff, board members, funders, and external stakeholders that change can be a positive and vital part of organizational growth.

Interims are not candidates for the permanent position, and usually only work between six to eighteen months. From this short-term vantage point, we offer clear, authentic, professional recommendations. Jonathan brings over forty years of experience working on the inside and outside of organizations in many capacities. We offer our deep portfolio of experience and methodologies, working collaboratively to help organizations and the people who comprise them stabilize, heal, reconnect to their purpose, and engage in transformative growth. 

“Jonathan is a compassionate, inspiring human BEING who has the rare ability to identify and nurture leadership capacity. He is a teacher, a source of light and hope, and a wonderful listener. With his grace and steady support, we learned how to build a vision, culture, and soul of an organization piece by piece. It’s only been a few weeks, and I already miss working with him. And I’m simultaneously grateful for the experience.”

—Michele Marchetti, Deputy Director, The Cornucopia Institute

What We Offer
Jonathan Rosenthal brings a lifelong commitment to organizational healing, personal transformation, racial and social justice. His extensive career includes experience as an executive director, interim executive director, coach, strategy consultant, project designer, board member, advisor, and social entrepreneur.

Jonathan brings patience, insight, and a variety of powerful tools to guide organizations though times of transition. His skillful guidance helps organizations reflect on opportunities and challenges, create clarity about their purpose, heal from past harms, and engage in transformative growth.

He helps organizations build a path forward that is inclusive, respectful, grounded in justice, and committed to building a world that is more racially, socially, and structurally equitable. 

Training

As a graduate of the Third Sector Company’s Interim Executives Academy, Jonathan is trained to bring clarity and transformation to organizations so they can successfully transition to longer-term leadership—from within existing staff or through an external hire.

Approach
As an interim leader, Jonathan brings an independent perspective while engaging deeply with staff, blending internal and external views on how to best evolve the organization. 

Jonathan creates a customized plan, based on Third Sector Company’s six steps. Every organization will have its own needs as to what is needed in each phase:

1. The Engagement Phase: through initial conversations and interviews, we will explore together your needs and desires to ensure goodness of fit. Then, we will define the scope of work, responsibilities, and the initial course of work.

2. The Diagnostic Phase: using the approved scope of work, Jonathan will facilitate an organizational assessment. He’ll analyze your organization’s core strengths, challenges, opportunities, and address any urgent needs while building trust with key stakeholders. This assessment will be the basis of a work plan for the following months.

3. The Planning Phase: Using the scope of work and initial diagnostic, Jonathan will prepare a series of 90 day work plans, create a calendar of reporting to key stakeholders such as board, staff, and funders. We will ensure there is a reporting dashboard and identify other leadership tools to be used to strengthen the organization and its systems.  

4. The Interventions Phase: Once basic stability and trust have been established, Jonathan works with staff and board to transform any areas that are problematic or underdeveloped. A customized menu of options will be developed. Typical areas of focus include: board leadership, fundraising, culture healing, financial efficiency, program excellence, and racial justice.

5. The Succession Phase: at this stage, Jonathan lays the foundation for a transition to more permanent leadership, developing either an internal candidate or setting up an external search, recruitment and hiring process. Jonathan will develop, as appropriate, a succession policy and an initial work plan for new leadership.

6. The Pivot Phase: In the final phase, Jonathan works as a bridge between present and future leadership. He facilities the onboarding process, a thoughtful interim exit process, and an interim evaluation. 

To schedule a free consultation to learn more about how Jonathan and Just Works can help your organization successfully move through challenges, contact us: jonathan@just-works.com