Gautam's First Two baby Steps

Micro manager to Macro manager

Gautam’s biggest challenge was quickly moving from managing a function to leading a bunch of functions constituting an SBU. In the beginning, this transition undermined his confidence to take decisions. As a result he got into the over-managing and micromanaging what he had   been well versed with and almost neglecting the rest of the functions. But he became aware of it before it was too late,when his HR  head gave him very valuable but matter of fact feedback about how stifled his GM marketing was feeling, gasping desperately for some space.The tendency of managers like Gautam to remain stuck in their functional comfort zones is a  natural reaction to the inconvenience of moving up to a macro  role. It is not fair to expect newly elevated business leaders to be experts in all business areas, But it is good if they are able to move quickly into the roles of macro mangers and turn themselves from specialists into  generalists who are reasonably well versed with all the functions to lead their businesses.

Doer to Facilitator 

The key responsibility of a  functional leader is to recruit,& select, train & develop, and then manage people who specialize in specific business roles.On the other hand a business leader’s role is to lead the teams of functional experts and facilitate their efforts and  activities to solve problems and achieve team goals..

Gautam found himself caught up with this struggle to make this shift  as he was striving hard to meet the demands of his SBU. His GM Sales, for example wanted to immediately go to market with their new product which he thought would help him achieve his numbers. On the other hand his head of operations worried that they were not in a position to ramp up production so fast to meet this demand. Gautam’s role demanded that he balance the needs of his different functions, and keep an eye on the numbers without forgetting to pay enough attention to R & D and  innovation.This was not possible till Gautam realized that he had to be a facilitator rather than a manager.