Truly valued…are shared services and outsourcing leadership roles career limiting?
“What’s important to me is that I don’t get pigeonholed in shared services.”
“Shared services has no standing in my organization.”
“I’m just running shared services because my boss asked me to. I can’t wait to get back to a real job.”
Sound familiar?
One of the challenges is that, at the present, running shared services or sourcing programs is seemingly a road to the equivalent of the corporate nowhere. Unlike other, more established, corporate functions that have established career trajectories, shared services organization leaders are groping for respect and standing. After all, who gets envious looks when boasting that their dads or mums run shared services in the schoolyard when playmates are the offspring of writers, investment bankers, HR directors or astronauts?
A few years ago, after coming off a bruising experience in a similar role, I asked the late, great Bob Gunn, founder of Gunn Partners and arguably one of the earliest shared services consultants, about the career prospects of shared services leaders. Bob, who mentored many of the folks walking around the industry today, dug into his files to track the career paths of over 80 of his clients over the course of several years. Pouring over his stats and files (accompanied by a good bottle of Cabernet!), we found that while 25 percent earned their stripes through a stint in shared services and moved on to bigger and better things in the same organization, a further quarter left the organization and got out of shared services, while 20-some percent were still slogging away in the same role.
Arguably, the data was limited, but it proves the point—today, shared services as a career path of choice cum proving ground for the best and brightest has some way to go. Is it the relative novelty of the role? The value that the organization places on better business operations? The capabilities of the leaders themselves? What can we do to make shared services and outsourcing leadership either a career ambition in and of itself – or a recognized path to the C-Suite?
Deborah Kops
Managing Principal
Sourcing Change
www.sourcingchange.com