By Dr Ann Hutchison The transition from middle management into senior leadership is an interesting one. It can be a huge professional shift to be plunged into the responsibilities of ‘executive life’; for, indeed, being a senior executive involves a certain lifestyle too. It is not just about the content of the work; it is also the responsibility, workload, pace, and complexity that comes with the role. The shift involves going from a functional expert to a fully competent ex

By Dr Ann Hutchison As a senior executive, if you were asked by someone what good performance looks like in your role, what would you say? How is your performance measured at the moment? It’s a tricky one. The reason it’s tricky is that senior executive performance is synonymous with organisational performance, and yet … it’s complicated. If you are on the top team, your job is to push the organisation into achieving its objectives. The problem with that is that the organisat

By Dr Ann Hutchison This article is for those who are in the human resources profession. On the top management team in a medium to large-sized organization, the small table of people who lead the business at the strategic level will always include a CEO, and a head of finance; but other functions may or may not be included. For example, there will likely be a head of marketing or a head of operations, but there won’t always be, say, a head of sales. One of the roles that migh

By Dr Ann Hutchison In the business literature, it is a noted problem that senior executives derail with relative frequency. By ‘derail’ I mean they fail to perform in quite a noticeable way and may have to leave their role as a result. Or, they stay in their role and become deemed ‘unsatisfactory performers’. This is a substantial enough problem that books have been written about it. Check out, for example, ‘Why CEOs Fail’ by David Dotlich and Peter Cairo, or ‘Why Smart Exec