You could say it chose me! I had studied for the Treasury diploma to understand more about corporate finance and how large organisations funded their operations. Three years later I was offered the role of Group Treasurer of Lombard.
Treasury takes you to the heart of running a business, you’re very close to key strategic issues. Also, as the custodian of the liabilities side of the balance sheet, it provides huge opportunities to add to the success of the business.
Get qualified as soon as you can. The broad and deep knowledge that brings will help you progress quickly into more senior roles.
Being a Group Treasurer was a great first role at Senior Executive level, both in learning to lead a specialist function and in broadening my business perspectives. My career aim was to become a Managing Director, so after Treasury I changed roles twice to gather experience across the major functions in business. Seven years later, I became an MD in Euroclear Group running their banking services globally. All those business experiences including leadership of people internationally are in my kit bag when advising clients today.
Many! Analysis, negotiating skills, influencing others, giving presentations and communicating technical issues in simple terms would be the obvious day to day ones. But also the experience of working at the centre of an organisation, being commercial, thinking creatively, and leading people provides the bedrock of the advice and insights I share with clients now.
Two things: firstly, think about how you can stand out from the rest, what makes you different? And secondly, make time to develop good relationships with others, How is as important as What in a successful career.
Not preparing enough to be a strong candidate for the next role. The current job (and your current employer) are often the best place to look for other opportunities to build experience in readiness for your next role.
Take responsibility for your own career, don’t rely on others to do it for you. And be the best you can be at all times, both in being an expert in your chosen field and in role modelling the behaviours you would like to see in others. Investing time in you early in your career pays dividends in the long term.
More of the same! I’m proud to be the MD of a group of nine senior consultants sharing our business experience to help clients improve theirs. With much uncertainty around in many sectors following the Brexit vote, we’re currently helping several top teams to raise their own performance and that of their organisations.
Two bosses inspired me particularly, and the key lesson I took away from both was this: Business is about people. Learning to get the best out of all colleagues is a career enhancing strategy, and whilst there’s no substitute for building good knowledge and experience in your career, that’s not enough. Leadership is about finding ways to motivate and inspire colleagues to want to deliver more than they sometimes believe they’re capable of.