Whanganui and Partners board chairman Pahia Turia also could not say why Ward left the job suddenly at the end of May after 16 months.
"It was just time for him. He has got other things he wanted to do," he said.
Turia said if Whanganui & Partners was going to have economic responsibility it needed the authority and it had been in talks with Whanganui District Council about changes to its structure.
It had its first formal meeting with councillors last week.
"Historically the way Whanganui & Partners was set up was somewhat of a hybrid model. It hasn't enabled Whanganui & Partners as a council-controlled organisation," Turia said.
"If we are going to have the responsibility, we want to have the authority that goes with that. We are trying to ensure that the structure we do come up with enables us to go on to do what we do, while still being efficient and not costly."
Economic development is a long game, Turia said, but the organisation's outcomes must be measurable.
Interim chief executive Gaelle Deighton said Whanganui & Partners - a council-controlled organisation (CCO) - was a "mature organisation" and capable of more independence from council.
Deighton, who has been a board member since 2019, would like councillors and council officers to have a better understanding of the way a (CCO) worked.
She said once it agreed a statement of intent (SOI) with the council it should be left alone to implement it.
Whanganui & Partners' new SOI will be presented to council at its meeting on Tuesday.
It has required a few changes due to Covid-19 "to ensure enough flexibility to deal with the economic wave that's probably about to dump on us".
When Whanganui & Partners was set up it was "a hybrid model" that was "closely aligned with council", Deighton said.
That could take extra talking time and sometimes a bright idea would be "changed midstream".
The structural changes it is working on with council will not be major, she said.
"I am not into structures changing for the sake of changing."
One change could be council sharing the financial administration of Whanganui & Partners' $2 million-plus budget.
"It's not a big budget to manage here. It's more about what's the most cost-effective and efficient way to manage that."
Deighton is the former CEO of Enterprising Manukau, which is now part of the region-wide council-controlled organisation called Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development.
Whanganui councillor Helen Craig believes Whanganui & Partners has gradually achieved more autonomy from council over years - a change from a time when council officers would interfere with a planned marketing campaign.
"You can't have that kind of interference with what's a very complex set of decisions," she said.
"Whanganui has got 5000 new residents in five years. I never thought we would achieve that, and our tourism figures have grown at a higher rate than the national average. All our other statistics like income are growing, so I think they are doing a great job."
Craig believed some reporting lines needed "tweaking".
Councillor Kate Joblin said Whanganui & Partners was getting a lot of council attention at the moment, that the role of economic development within a council was a difficult one which could not be left to private enterprise.
"For me, the jury is out on what the right model is," Joblin said.
