How to step up strategically

Unbounded self-confidence, technical excellence and a strong operational prowess are characteristics that can help high potential employees rise to the echelons of the Senior Management Team.  From this vantage, Senior Managers have the opportunity to use their skills to leverage greater levels of influence and deliver a more immediate impact at a strategic level.  But, with such talent reaching the senior team why is it that Executive failure rates can rocket to as much as 75%?  It appears that the skills that have so loyally served Senior Managers in the past are betraying them at the next level.  So what is happening?

In some respects Senior Managers can be casualties of their own success. Their skills have been rubber stamped, verified and prestigiously rewarded.  It’s perhaps human nature for the Senior Manager to feel like they have ‘arrived',and at this juncture they may even start believing in their own grandiose. This degree of positive reinforcement has the power to habitualise behaviours which are effective in many well-trodden situations but may simply not work in new and unfamiliar territory. 

What’s more, the political environment and the power play in a Senior Management team will be far more complex and challenging than experienced elsewhere. The Senior Management Team offers a melting pot of accomplished politicians, Machiavellian characters, highly engaging networkers, traditionalists and visionaries - all of whom may also have a highly internalised belief that their way is the best way – they are where they are, after all.  Yet however advanced the Senior Manager’s technical skills, they are different to the skills needed to perform effectively at the next level.  Imagine for a moment, a professional footballer making it into the national squad only to discover that the squad is playing cricket!  Granted, this is an improbable scenario however in the business world it’s all too common for people to arrive in the C-Suite and discover that they are expected to play an entirely different game.  Rarely are employees with phenomenal technical abilities equipped with or taught the strategic skills they need to hold their own in the senior management team.

Herein lies an opportunity for the organisation to help their Senior Managers to hit the ground running in a way that leverages their existing skills and hones new skills that helps them deal with the complexities of their new role and the strategic challenges they face.