The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company, Second Edition

Chapter 12. The Functional Career Passage

The leadership pipeline branches out in a second direction at the passage from functional manager to business manager. Instead of moving from functional manager to business manager to group manager to enterprise manager, some managers move upward on a functional path. For the majority of people who work in large companies, this is the relevant upward path, as very few are selected to be business managers. For some of you, this path may seem irrelevant. The six major passages we've discussed tend to be the ones that command the greatest attention. However, this functional offshoot is one most people will follow. We include this chapter because we have encountered problems with functional heads feeling that ...