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The Challenges of Advancement

If you’re like most managers, you want to advance: to take on more responsibility at a higher level in your organization. Personal rewards and the opportunity to achieve greater organizational results are strong inducements. But advancing can be tricky, even for very successful managers.

CCL has studied what drives the advancement of executives, and has learned that perhaps the most important element is having a broad organizational perspective—that is, being able to see beyond your own functional area and understanding how other functional areas interrelate and support the organization.

Furthermore, having a narrow functional orientation can lead to derailment. A promotion might take you beyond your current level of competence. You may be unable to manage in a different department, you may not know how to handle management outside of your current function, or you might not understand how other departments function within the organization.

Broadening your organizational perspective is not a quick-fix activity. It requires reflection, judgment, planning, and time. But you can quickly gain an understanding of what is required that will eventually take you where you want to go. This guidebook will help you do that.

Throughout this guidebook you will find assessments and worksheets you can use in the effort to broaden your organizational perspective. The assessments will provide information to assist you in understanding your challenges, and the worksheets will facilitate your choosing and prioritizing actions. As we cover key components of your perspective-broadening work, we will refer you to the appropriate sheet and tell you how to use it.

Before you can begin taking action, however, you must take note of the things that stop you. Not surprisingly, both organizational and personal forces play a role, and your past successes and the strengths that propelled them are factors in both of these types of forces. Broadening your organizational view is thus largely a question of acquiring a variety of experiences and learning from them.