L.Duksaitė: I’ve reached the peak of my career as a manager – what’s next?

What do you do when you reach the top? When you start your career, the road leads upwards. But where do you develop a career as a manager?

This is what we talked about at the ISM Masters Club | ISM Executive School Alumni Business Practitioners ’24 conference.

This was precisely the aspect of the debate that interested the participants.

A career in another industry

A career in another industry is one way. If they are very similar, even changing companies sometimes doesn’t feel like the fundamental and desired change.

Changing the industry is another. Let’s say you move from the financial sector to a manufacturing company.

Some managers deliberately plan such transitions, laying them out as a roadmap for their development. Others dive in spontaneously, simply out of sympathy for a particular area and to test themselves in it.

I notice that younger generations of managers are planning such changes earlier and with more courage. Meanwhile, older generations of managers are often 15-20 years ripe for such a change, and it’s generally the first big change in their careers.

How does the market view such sudden changes?

I have to say that with caution.

If, say, it is an experienced accounting, finance or procurement manager, it is easier for them to make that transition.

However, for example, for sales people in a specialised market such as banking, such changes require more determination and more hesitation on the receiving end. Questions arise as to whether they will really have the best practices in that area, how they will compensate for them, etc.

The banking sector is very conservative in this respect, where careers are usually built from the bottom up, rather than by jumping from other sectors. The same applies to the FMCG sector. Careers are developed from the bottom up.

In the B2B services and trade sector, it is easier to jump across areas because in most cases, similar practices apply, albeit with some nuances.

When managers step down

I also got questions about when does a leader decide to step down?

With 70% of CEOs being shareholders, there are usually several reasons for leaving a company.

1️⃣ When you’re getting ready to retire, when you don’t have family members to take over the business;

2️⃣ You have more than one company that needs a manager;

3️⃣ Willingness to reduce workload;

4️⃣ When planning the sale of a company, some CEOs also look for a hiring manager.

Thank you to the ISM Masters Club | ISM Executive School Alumni for the invitation and for the interesting communication and networking. The importance of the latter in keeping an executive relevant was highlighted, by the way, at the event.