Managing your own career: If you want promotion, avoid making yourself indispensable

Companies can find it hard to promote good people

 Getting Global Process Owners – who really were the experts in their area – to train up staff with the skills needed to do the GPO’s jobs was really hard.

The GPOs liked being the “go to see” and didn’t want to share that. But they never would be fully rewarded in their present jobs and needed to be moved or promoted to develop their careers. We couldn’t do that while they were indispensable. CFO EMEA of a US multinational.

Treasurers often feel they have the best jobs in their companies. But too long in a job and people start to regard you as a fixture. Eventually they will regard you as a “blocker” and so a “problem”.

It goes without saying that treasurers need to demonstrate their breadth, a strategic and operational understanding of the company they work for and their readiness for promotion.

Always recruit people who are as good as or, preferably, better than you to work for you.

Make sure that your team can function at high level without you. Otherwise you make it difficult for you to be moved or promoted into positions which become available, to be seconded to an exciting project – which can often be a company’s way of seeing if the incumbent is ready for a major move or promotion – or maybe even to be a key player, which every treasurer should be, in a task force dealing with the effects on your group of the current downturn in the economy.

By John Grout