From Functional Expert to Enterprise Leader: How to Design for Your Leadership Pipeline's Hardest Transition

 

The hardest leadership transition in any pipeline isn't the first-time manager or the CEO successor — it's the middle. The skills that make a great functional leader actively work against them as an enterprise leader. And it's the jump L&D struggles with most.

It usually looks like the brilliant marketer promoted to GM who keeps retreating to marketing, or the finance leader whose rational decisions create chaos elsewhere. They aren't failing because they lack knowledge. Enterprise judgment isn't knowledge — it's a capacity that only develops under conditions where decisions reshape other functions, consequences carry forward, and tradeoffs don't resolve cleanly.

In this 45-minute session, Matt Shell walks through:

• The four specific ways the functional-to-enterprise transition breaks down in high-potential programs — and why most programs only address one or two
• The design response to each break, with examples from programs at Diageo, Cummins, Microsoft and more
• Four diagnostic questions you can put to your own pipeline to see where it's actually failing

You'll leave able to name which break is hurting your pipeline most — and what to do about it.