A CMO I placed a few years ago shared with me late last year that her daughter was encouraging her to pursue her long-held dream of becoming a CEO: “You should go for it, mum!”, she apparently told her. “You’ve spent your whole career working so hard to get where you are – and now there’s just one letter to go!”.
The one-letter difference between CMO and CEO might be minimal on paper, but the leap from functional to general management is huge. Having reflected on it over the past few months, and also canvassed the views of a number of successful current and former CEOs, Presidents and MDs/GMs, below I outline what I see as the key challenges – and share some tips on how to make a successful transition.
Intellectual Challenges
The most obvious intellectual challenge of becoming a GM is that the job is so much broader and more demanding than any functional role, but there are no more hours in the day to do it! As there's less time to dedicate to each issue, this requires asking lots of questions to understand the issues at hand, and drawing upon the skills and knowledge of others.
General Managers must balance achieving short-term results while ensuring long-term growth. This requires quickly getting to grips with how the different parts of the business fit together, dedicating a significant portion of their time to strategy, and effectively allocating capital, talent and time across functions and projects to deliver the plan. To hold their own with the CFO and shareholders, the new GM needs a detailed understanding of the P&L, cashflow and balance sheet.
By far the biggest intellectual challenge has to do with a) no longer being the expert, and b) plugging one’s own functional knowledge and skill gaps. A President I spoke to who was internally promoted said that, in order to show his team he was hungry to learn from them, and also to truly empower his successor (whom they specifically ensured was a star player who would push the President out of their ‘home function’), in the first few years of their role they over-indexed their time more on the functions they knew least about, and under-indexed it on those they knew intimately.
People Challenges
1. Managing Others
While the role of any GM is to deliver business success, the team and broader organisation are looking to them to provide the wider context and set, role-model and lead a positive culture so they can feel motivated by the journey ahead. One MD told me: "A GM needs their team to walk over hot coals for them, so a large proportion of their time should be dedicated to culture-building." Another MD’s top tip for success was: “Lead from behind when times are good – and from the front when times are tough!”.
Being a successful GM requires building effective relationships with, and learning from, one’s top team, asking how to best support them, and co-creating a plan. As one CEO said: "It’s important not to go charging in with an opinion, but to spend lots of time talking to people up front, travelling, listening, engaging, understanding what’s at stake. A listening tour followed by the quick resolution of a handful of key issues will give people confidence that the new GM is not just happy to listen, but also to act. This will hopefully create a positive culture and followship."
To deliver the strategic plan, it’s critical for a new GM to have a high-calibre team they can trust and hold accountable. A former CEO said: "You must surround yourself with exceptional people who are better than you, who will challenge you, and who will fill your gaps. A senior functional leader can sometimes get by with merely solid people underneath them; a new CEO can't compensate for any people weaknesses in the same way, and needs the best team they can possibly assemble.”
Whereas functional roles mostly entail managing across and down, most first-time GMs, particularly CEOs, realise a lot of their new role is about managing up and out. As such, the consensus seems to be that a CEO should spend at least 25% of their time attending to their stakeholders, whether it’s the Board, shareholders or other external parties.
2. Managing Oneself
As counter-intuitive as it may sound for someone who's just been promoted into their first GM role – for many the culmination of a professional dream – making the step can be a tough, even humbling experience.
Several CEOs I spoke to said they knew moving from functional to general management would be an intellectual challenge, but weren’t prepared for it to be such an emotional one.
Why is this? In addition to suddenly feeling (and, indeed, being) under the microscope, having to take on a more intense travel schedule and also to keep their counsel (which, in itself, can produce a sense of loneliness), admitting one’s functional knowledge gaps, taking steps to close them, and showing up without excessive pride or fear, requires self-awareness, vulnerability, humility – and work. It’s often the first time a leader has had to own their own development.
Add to this a far greater weight on one’s shoulders because a) the newly-promoted GM is required to make decisions in unfamiliar territory, and b) for the first time the buck stops with them – both of which it’s natural to feel wrong-footed by. To help with this, ideally before they start the role, the new GM should push for the resources they need to succeed, be this staffing the team with experienced stars, capital to properly pursue growth goals, or funding an external executive coach.
In light of the above, moments of self-doubt are natural. As a CEO said to me: "My coach told me that every day for the first year in my new role I’d think I was going to be fired. He was wrong: it was at least three years before I realised I wasn’t going to be!"
A former CEO told me: "After any promotion, there’s a gap between one’s standing as perceived by others and conferred by the role itself, and one’s self-image. Self-doubt stems from the gap between these two things and, if unchecked, can lead to ‘imposter syndrome’. Time is a good healer for this gap, and what can really help is leveraging the advice of people who’ve successfully made a similar transition."
Crossing The Rubicon
What’s in a letter, then? Quite a lot, it turns out! General management is not an incremental career step; it’s more like crossing the Rubicon.
The challenges are intellectual and people-related, for sure, but I’d suggest the greatest challenge is managing oneself. Knowing what to expect, and receiving advice and support from people who’ve successfully made the move, should make it as enjoyable as it can be – and boost one’s chances of success.