Transitions: Managing Managers to Functional Manager

Climbing Higher on the Leadership Ladder: Transitioning from Managing Managers to Functional Manager

Being promoted to the role of a Functional Manager involves a significant change in perspective and responsibility.

Once again, you can't lead exactly as you did before and expect to be successful. You need to build on and adjust your leadership approach to succeed in this larger role.

At this stage, your focus shifts from managing a team of managers to overseeing a broader functional area within the organisation.

This transition requires you to integrate various teams and align their efforts with overarching business objectives while maintaining the development of your managerial team.

As you embrace this new role, understanding how to create synergies among different managers and their teams will be essential in driving performance and achieving results.

Shifting Skills, Time Allocation, and Values:

As you transition to becoming a Functional Manager, consider these key adjustments:

1. Skill Development: While your previous focus might have been on leading managers effectively, you now need to enhance your skills in strategic planning, cross-functional collaboration, and resource management. Understanding how different functions interconnect and contribute to business goals is crucial for your effectiveness in this role.

2. Time Allocation: Reassess how you allocate your time. Your focus will expand from managing individual teams to overseeing multiple functional areas. Prioritise activities that promote collaboration between teams, facilitate cross-departmental initiatives, and ensure alignment with the organisation's strategic vision. Ensure you make time to coach and hold your leaders' accountable for how they lead and how they coach their manager to lead.

3. Values Alignment: Your values must now reflect a commitment to fostering a cohesive organisational culture that promotes collaboration, accountability, and shared purpose across different functions. Instilling a sense of collective responsibility will increase the performance of your entire function.

Key Elements of Transitioning to a Functional Manager:

1. Creating a Strategic Vision: Develop a clear and strategic vision for your functional area that aligns with the organisation's goals. Ensure your managers understand how their teams contribute to this vision, fostering a sense of purpose and direction.

2. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Encourage collaboration among the different teams within your functional area. Create opportunities for sharing best practices and leveraging diverse perspectives to enhance overall performance. DO not have them in competition with each other. 

3. Performance Management Framework: Implement systems to evaluate the performance of both individual teams and the functional area as a whole. Use metrics that account for both team success and alignment with strategic objectives. DO not put in place performance metrics that cause friction between teams.

4. Empowerment and Delegation: Continue to empower your managers while also coaching them in their ability to delegate effectively within their teams. This approach will cultivate a culture of accountability and foster leadership development throughout your functional area.

5. Communication Strategy: Enhance your communication efforts to ensure that all teams within your functional area receive clear, consistent messages regarding organisational priorities, changes, and expectations. Facilitate regular forums to exchange feedback and ideas across teams.

6. Resource Allocation: As a Functional Manager, you are responsible for ensuring that your teams have the resources needed to succeed. This may include advocating for budget allocations, personnel, or technology that align with your functional goals. Most companies have initiatives that fail because they are simply trying to do too much. Make choices. 

7. Driving Innovation: Encourage teams to experiment with new ideas and processes that can lead to efficiencies and improved outcomes. Foster a culture where innovation is welcomed and calculated risks are supported.

8. Coaching for Growth:  Develop a coaching culture across your function to ensure a pipeline of leadership talent and maintain focus on developing necessary skills for future roles.

9. Recognising Contributions: Acknowledge the accomplishments of both your managers and their respective teams. Recognition motivated by shared goals reinforces collaboration and collective achievements.

10. Continuous Improvement: Promote an ongoing commitment to learning and development across your functional area. Encourage teams to seek feedback, assess their processes, and embrace change as they strive for better performance.

Pitfalls of a Poor Transition:

Failing to adapt can lead to:

1. Micromanagement: If you are engaging in any level of micromanagement now, you will inevitably fail in this role. Micromanagement stifles your managers’ growth and disempowers them, leading to high staff turnover and severely damaging productivity within your functional area. Focusing too much on the team you came from or your old operational area can tempt you to micromanage there as well. This deep-diving approach may cause you to become both too present with some teams and too absent with others, creating confusion and disengagement.

2. Siloed Operations: Often, it’s natural to pay more attention to your previous team, which can inadvertently create silos that hinder collaboration and communication across your functional area. Such disconnects can result in missed opportunities for synergy and innovation.

3. Inadequate Strategy Alignment: If your strategic vision is unclear or not communicated effectively, teams may work toward conflicting objectives, diminishing overall performance.

4. Resistance to Change: Failing to engage your teams in discussions about changes in strategy, processes, or objectives can lead to resistance and disengagement.

Neglecting Development Needs: Overlooking the individual development needs of your managers can stifle growth and limit the effectiveness of your leadership team, ultimately affecting the entire function

Conclusion

Transitioning from Managing Managers to becoming a Functional Manager requires essential shifts in your skills, time allocation, and values: