Help! My Board's Gone Rogue: The "Churn" effect we predicted is here

"Rebecca," Ann said after returning from the ASAE annual conference, "boards are going off the rails!"

Association managers across the country are discovering it’s not just them dealing with board dysfunction—rogue members doing end runs around leadership, gadflies hijacking meetings, controllers demanding new strategic directions without consultation.

What looked like isolated "board bullshit" is actually a lagging indicator of CHURN—the #1 trend we identified in our 10X10 report. We predicted this leadership transition crisis. Now it's playing out exactly as forecasted.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

The data keeps rolling in, validating our thesis with jazz hands:

• “Peak 65:” 11,200 Baby Boomers turn 65 every day between 2024-2027, creating an unprecedented wave of retirements among board members, association executives, and community leaders.
• Record CEO turnover: 2024 was another record setting year for CEO turnover…but then January 2025 came along, setting a new record in the US—the highest for any January since tracking began in 2002
• Community organization upheaval: From Fortune 500 boardrooms to local Chambers of Commerce and United Ways, we're seeing systematic leadership transitions across every sector

As we noted in 10X10:

People are moving. From job to job. From job to entrepreneurship. From job to retirement, and back... Our communities are changing.

Why Boards are Struggling

1. Institutional Knowledge, Exit Stage Left - When seasoned directors who anchored boards, capital campaigns, and rich networks step away simultaneously, they take decades of relationships, procedural knowledge, and conflict resolution skills with them.
2. The Inexperience Gap - New board members often lack governance experience. They don't understand the cha-cha between board oversight and executive leadership—or when they're overstepping.
3. Accelerated and Compounding Timelines - Organizations that historically managed one or two board transitions annually are now managing four, five, or six departures simultaneously. There's no time for gradual knowledge transfer.
4. Corporate Ripple Effects - When CEOs retire from companies, they also vacate community boards. Your local Chamber, United Way, and Community Foundation aren't just losing one leader—they're losing the entire network that leader represented.

There's an upside to all this! Churn can be dynamic; it brings in new voices, ideas, and experiences.

Churn can also be traumatic as teams and boards have to relearn how to work together, how to gel.

From Chaos to Cadence

My colleague Bryan Derreberry—who led chambers in four states over 39 years—has written a playbook every organization needs: "From Chaos to Cadence: Rebuilding Board Performance." Please check it out.

What about you? How is churn affecting your boards and organizations? Please drop me a line and let me know.

Read more:

• The Transformation of the CEO: Global CEO Turnover Index Annual Report, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, 2025;
• Dealing with Difficult People and Harassment, Mulcahy Community Association Cheat Sheet