CFO Dive sits down with Kevin Ooley six months before he assumes the CEO role at DataBank, for a candid conversation about succession planning, leadership transition, and what continuity at the top actually looks like in practice. His first order of business: finding his own replacement as CFO.

Ooley’s path to the top seat was far from a foregone conclusion. The company’s board engaged executive search firm Egon Zehnder to conduct a full market sweep of internal and external candidates, a process Ooley participated in alongside outside contenders. He describes it as a challenging but ultimately clarifying experience, one that forced him to answer a more fundamental question than any 100-day plan ever could.

“I think we, and I in particular, said, ‘Hey, let’s let this play out, we’ll respect that process,’ and being given the opportunity to be a part of it was very exciting for me.”
— Kevin Ooley, incoming CEO, DataBank

The board’s decision to promote from within, Ooley says, reflects something larger than his individual candidacy. It is a vote of confidence in the entire leadership team and a signal that the board wants to preserve the strategic continuity that has defined DataBank’s growth over the past decade.

With the announcement behind him, Ooley has spent the intervening months conducting what he describes as a trial run, evaluating every major decision through the lens of the CEO role he is about to assume. He plans to sit down with each of his future direct reports to ask what they would do differently and where priorities could be refreshed — changes more likely to be felt internally than seen from the outside.

Read the full article at CFO Dive.