A McKinsey study found that just under 15 percent of effective executives, such as CFOs, CMOs, chief commercial officers, chief technology officers, and general counsels, make it to the CEO position. The rest, among a select few, have found success as operational leaders in other organizations, managing large operational units or leading operations.
The CEO position is at its most powerful when his or her hands-on experience underpins critical business objectives. Companies at the forefront of significant digital transformations can benefit from having a CTO in the top spot. In turn, elevating the CMO to the front row can be an effective move for a company rethinking its brand portfolio.
Similar organizations pursuing growth strategies based on mergers and acquisitions or significant cost cutting often look to CFOs.
Research suggests that more than 70% of previous philippinen vorwahl whatsapp CFOs promoted to CEO at FTSE 250 companies were selected because of cost-cutting programmes or merger and acquisition strategies.
Is there career growth for functional managers?
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Despite the diversity of experience among functional leaders, they share a common challenge: little management experience. To explore the challenges and opportunities functional leaders face, we conducted a detailed analysis of data from 599 former CFOs.
The majority of functional leaders are CFOs, which is a key source of information for our research. The challenges faced by CFOs transitioning to CEO mirror the key challenges faced by other functional leaders.
For functional leaders, the challenge is the lack of general management experience. The majority of former CFOs who became CEOs in the study account for three-quarters of all CEO appointments at FTSE 250 companies.
They compensate for their lack of experience by leaving finance for a time. Sometimes, non-finance experience comes from other functional roles. In other cases, CFOs develop their skills by taking on additional strategic roles on boards or by joining other boards. Broader experience like this can be gained through serving on boards that select executives.
In solving such problems, professionals can develop intuitive decision-making skills that go beyond specific numbers and data. After all, most often, CFOs operate with numbers when resolving complex situations.
About 90% of CFOs who become CEOs succeed by being promoted from within rather than hired from outside. A deep understanding of personalities and corporate culture can help a new leader inspire staff as he or she formulates the company's strategy.
With insider status, a leader also often faces the need to renegotiate relationships with former management colleagues who may be competitors for the CEO job. Our research found that approximately 75% of former CFOs joined other management teams within two years.
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Criteria for selecting a functional manager for project management
How to select a functional project manager from among candidates already employed by the company - actual managers involved in the project? Let's analyze the project into key areas of responsibility. Let's say there is an investment project "Achieving the planned profit from the construction and lease of an office building". The main functional blocks involved in the project include:
legal aspect (preparation of the land plot, registration of permits, registration of property, contract system with tenants, etc.);
segment related to engineering and construction issues (preparation of design documentation, implementation of construction works, provision of technical equipment for the building, etc.);
the area of activity related to commercial aspects (searching for potential tenants, concluding contracts with them, promptly changing tenants in the event of a breach of contract terms or the need to replace tenants, etc.).
A suitable candidate for the project manager position may be a specialist in the field of law, engineering or business. Some companies prefer to divide the project into three parts - performing tasks in each direction separately (legal, construction, commercial).
In this case, the main person responsible for the overall result - the planned profit - disappears. At the same time, the issue of coordinating actions on the project falls on the shoulders of the general director, who reports to all three blocks - not the best solution from the point of view of organizing the company's activities.
If we are planning to select a project manager, what criteria should be considered when making a decision? We suggest using an expert approach, involving the top management team and conducting self-assessment of candidates to assess the impact of each criterion on the success of the project.