3 Different Paths to the Top

The career path to the top used to be linear – you built your career by slowly taking on more responsibility – but now work is increasingly cross-functional.

The New York Times analyzed three ways to the executive suite (below). Quoting Marc Andreesen, the article noted that most successful leaders need a mix of product, sales, finance, and management skills. Lawyers, pay attention to how these execs made it to the top:

1. Pick up adjacent skills. Some execs gain their cross-functional expertise through picking up adjacent but different functions within a larger company. George Kurian, the current CEO of NetApp, started as a software engineer at Oracle, then learned sales, marketing, and team management skills as a product manager there, before moving on to strategy consulting. In-house lawyers, similarly, should not shy away from picking up new specialties and supporting new business units.
2. Learn through a startup. Founders of companies learn by necessity all the business functions that make the company work (finance, sales, marketing, law, etc.). Marla Beck, for example, founded Blue Mercury, an online and traditional retailer, after business school and a brief stint in private equity. She didn’t become CEO by first having expertise across functions. Instead, she started with core analytical skills and developed the necessary experience. Lawyers too can use their core skills at a startup and grow with the company to a top job.
3. Change specialties. The third path is to change functions completely. The president of Nationwide’s mortgage business, Kai Monahan, started as a consultant with Arthur Andersen and then switched to risk management at Ernst & Young. Next, he moved to Nationwide to work on audit before heading the mortgage business there. Throughout his career, he convinced bosses to hire him for jobs he didn’t have the qualifications for on paper. While lawyers are often afraid of switching employers, technologies, or industries, this path is another way to the top.

In-house lawyers, if this topic of recognizing career inflection points is interesting, check out the ACC panel I am moderating at Facebook next month.