The Path to CEO

Finding success in your career has never been as simple as showing up and working hard. An accompanying view of a “career ladder” implies that a defined path to senior management exists. That view is outdated as the reality of advancement is shaped by seizing unexpected opportunities and following unorthodox paths while holding true to your long-term vision of success.

I recently read an article in The New York Times about how the path to leadership in many companies has shifted from a hierarchical process to one that includes experience from a variety of departments to build a diverse set of skills. Here’s an excerpt from the article that sums up this new non-traditional career path:

“ Early evidence suggests that success in the business world isn’t just about brainpower or climbing a linear path to the top, but about accumulating diverse skills and showing an ability to learn about fields outside one’s comfort zone.”

The article references a LinkedIn study of 459,000 onetime management consultants and reveals some fascinating data. Notably, adding experience from additional functional areas, such as marketing or finance, within the same industry drastically improved a person’s likelihood of reaching senior level positions. Just one additional functional area equated to as much as three years of additional experience, according to the study. Among the statistics, this one really stood out to me because my own career has not followed a traditional path.

More than 20 years ago I founded the first online auto insurance marketplace which was purchased by Intuit in 1996. From there I worked in a variety of executive positions and gained experiences across departments from product to new market development to corporate strategy to business development to sales. Each role taught me new ways to help a business succeed as I learned from different people their hard earned expertise.

The idea of separating leadership skills and core business acumen from functional skills is one that I shared with my colleague Laura Messerschmitt, GoDaddy VP of Customer Experience.  Her own journey from business consultant to a member of GoDaddy’s senior executive team is a good example of tapping into a core set of competencies while moving between functions.

Laura began her career working as a consultant for Deloitte. After getting her MBA at Stanford, she moved to Intuit, where she worked across a number of functional areas, from managing partnerships to leading product management for Quickbooks to managing social media marketing. Following Intuit, Laura ran marketing for Outright, an online accounting software startup (it was great to have her on the team as she worked directly for me.) During her time there, the team more than tripled the company’s active user base. This huge success led to GoDaddy acquiring Outright in 2012. Laura became Vice President of Social Media and Advocacy before transitioning to her current role where she is responsible for marketing and customer experience within GoDaddy’s ecosystem of products.

I asked her how the variety in her roles has impacted her career growth:

“ In a sense, many different functional roles require similar core capabilities: having an understanding of the business; being able to think through problems analytically; and being able to influence decision making outside of your organization. From operations to product management to marketing, I’ve found that these are the skills that are transferable and that you develop over time regardless of what seat you have at the company.”

Taking risks in your career and taking on jobs with which you’re unfamiliar can also have incredible payoffs, as long as those new roles are adjacent to your current expertise. For example, when Laura joined GoDaddy, she had social media experience, but it was the first time she managed the social media for something as large as a Super Bowl Campaign.

“ This was a big event with huge reach and one of my first major projects in my new role. I felt very energized being outside of my comfort zone because I knew I would learn a lot, and because it was going to be very visible.The campaign went off without a hitch and my team had a blast managing the social campaigns related to such a major marketing push for the company.”

It’s important to note that Laura’s career transitions were all within the same industry. In fact, the study found changing job functions resulted in a positive boost to one’s career, but changing industries had a negative impact on moving up the corporate ladder.

I have personal experience with switching industries. I left Intuit to become the CEO of a company called Posit Science. The company was deeply rooted in neuroscience, while my background is in small business and technology. I quickly realized I had a large knowledge gap when it came to understanding neuroscience. This led to slower decision making and a struggle to earn and keep the staff’s respect. After working hard to get the company cash-flow positive, I stepped down from my role at Posit Science and shifted my focus back to small business. I found this move helped me refocus and revitalize my career trajectory.

If you want to become a senior leader, it’s best to get experience across a range of departments but within the same industry. I asked Laura how working in a range of departments impacted her skill set and what sort of challenges she faced.

“The main difference between my roles has been which part of the core business I represent: In operations, I represented efficiency. In product, I represented the customer and the future product vision. In marketing, I represented the revenue, brand, and business sides. By transitioning functions I had to think about problems from the perspective of a different constituent group each time, which provided me with a diverse skill set, but also a more valuable, well-rounded view of the business.”

As Laura explains, this wide range of experience provides greater context of the entire business, rather than operating from a viewpoint of just one segment, which is highly valuable at the senior executive level. The new path to the executive-suite may be a long and winding road, but it’s far more interesting and valuable than the traditional climb up the corporate ladder.

What has been your own career path? Have you switched industries or moved into adjacent job functions? What experiences in your career have you found to be the most valuable and most challenging in getting you ahead?