"The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill."- Robert Heller

It is very clear to almost every successful beginner what needs to be done to shine in a Corporate world and gain first sings of reward and recognition. The youngster has to be smart, fast, loyal, work hard and be a good team player. It’s important to ask for additional responsibilities and appreciate constructive feedback. Any feedback, even the one that is not necessarily nice. Business results are important too, but much less compared to listed above. Because business results may vary due to market situation, bad launch or poor strategy. And the young manager has very limited influence on that. So the first few years of career growth really depend on the person. And here it is… Starting at the very bottom level of the organization, the young star grows fast, assumes more and more responsibilities, learns how to manage people and becomes self-confident. If everything goes well, then in 7-10 years our young high potential becomes a department head or something like that.

And then it suddenly stops. Because all that has been learned is not anymore enough to get to the next level, i.e. become the member of Company leadership team or Executive Committee member or … (different Companies have different names). WHY?

I think that the answer is change of required elements. It is not anymore about having great skills and deliver the analysis, project or any other task it time with high quality. It’s about something very different. WHAT?

Having big picture knowledge and intuitive feeling

Ability to push back and say “NO” (sometimes with very limited number of data based arguments)

Reading people well and being able to make them simply believe you

This is a very important switch and not every single ex Hi Po can easily do it. But there are many ways to help, executive coaching being one of the tools that delivers great results. This career jump is very difficult to achieve, but it’s even more difficult to survive there and be successfull.

(posted on LinedIn on July 11, 2014)