About five months ago, I started a short LinkedIn series highlighting business books that have influenced how I lead. I wrote about Liberating Structures, The Leadership Pipeline, and How People Learn and more. These are books I keep close because they’ve shaped my practice over time.

Recently, my focus has narrowed. I’ve been exploring resources that support nonprofit leaders during onboarding. In my consulting work and in my own career transitions, I’ve seen how important it is to get people up to speed quickly. The First 90 Days remains the gold standard for onboarding in many sectors, but nonprofits bring added layers of complexity: shared leadership with a board, mission-driven staff, distributed resources, and sometimes a culture that resists the very change a new leader is brought in to champion.

That’s why I found The Nonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide by Tom Adams to be such a valuable read.

This is not a “quick-start guide” for incoming CEOs. It’s broader and more strategic, with insight and advice for the organization as much as the leader. It outlines what it means to plan for a healthy executive transition and what it takes to build leadership pipelines that are sustainable over time.

What stood out most to me was the emphasis not just on the individual stepping into the role but on the role of the board and the organization plays. Adams walks through the full life cycle: preparing for a transition, managing the interim period, onboarding the new leader, and supporting long-term leadership development. The book also includes sample policies, planning tools, and checklists that are practical without being overly prescriptive.

If you’re on a nonprofit board, in a senior leadership role, or thinking ahead to a future transition, this book is worth a read. It’s less about “how to be a good leader” and more about “how to create conditions where leadership can thrive.”

We need more of that in the non-profit sector.